Facts, Irony, and useless “meager suggestions” In S.E. Cupp’s article, “Clooney, Clinton and useless 'soft outrage ',” many topics, both controversial and potent, are tackled. She outlines several different situations—the Sony hack, Paris attacks, Chibok kidnappings, and Nigeria killings—and the reactions to them by celebrities and political leaders. She uses multiple specific occurrences and factual evidence along with direct quotes, logical organization, and witty undertones. This, paired with her strong, opinionated voice, is nearly enough to convince readers that her argument is effective and sound. However, this is not the case. While Cupp uses a surplus of factual backing and even some emotional appeal, her argument is ultimately lacking. …show more content…
Immediately following this summarization, she jumps right into her accusatory tone, using the terms “soft outrage” and “hashtag activism” to explain what celebrities are doing by posting about these events on their various social media sites. Cupp coins the term early on in her article, retorting “… one only needs to look back at some recent examples of other horrifying atrocities to know that mere symbolism and solidarity -- what I call the weapons of "soft outrage" -- will not be enough to stamp out terrorism in Europe or anywhere else (par. 7). Later, she adds another made-up term into reader’s vocabulary, “hashtag activism.” She defines this by commenting “even though [#BringBackOurGirls] went viral… hashtag activism hasn 't proven very effective in the face of violent Islamic extremism” (Cupp, par. …show more content…
She makes her point that “soft outrage” and “hashtag activism” are completely pointless and unhelpful clear, but suggests one tactic—force. She does not give any other ideas, and does not even elaborate what she even means by force. The audience has to assume that Cupp expects George Clooney, Hilary Clinton, and Michelle Obama to suit up and go take care of the issues addressed for themselves. In order to strengthen her argument, she should add more suggestions of what would be the right thing to
The London Riots took place from the 6th to the 11th of August 2011 in London, England. It started off as a peaceful protest, to attain justice for the killing of Mark Duggan, who was killed by the police for allegedly being armed. The rioting began when the police restrained and injured a 16-year-old girl for throwing a champagne bottle at them. Over the next few days, “copycat” riots began to occur in parts of London and these riots were organized via the use of social media. Although there was no individual culprit of the riot, many believe that some of the blame goes to the media for representing the Mark Duggan case as well as the coverage of the riots wrongly, which in turn sparked subsequent riots in London. In this essay, I will discuss
In “A Lot To Learn,” David Brudnoy uses extreme bias and illogical fallacies in an effort to stimulate the drive America needs to fight his definition of the “war on terrorism,” but instead he diverges on unrelated tangents that detract from his argument. From the start of his article, Brudnoy tries to appeal to his audience’s emotions to win their support. In the second paragraph, he uses an “overemotional” fallacy: “To see the Twin Towers in New York City vanish, like some repulsively persuasive special effect in the latest action movie, and then to see them vanish again and again” (226). Brudnoy uses italics to create the impression that 9/11 was a complete shock and that people had to relive it to believe it. Highlighting the action movie also appeals to his audience because it connects his point (irrelevantly) to popular culture. Next,
The reaction from the general public to the forced removal of passenger David Dao from United Flight 3411 is thus far the best example I have come across of the dangerous, growing influence that social media has on how we perceive news and global events. David Dao, a 69-year old Asian-American doctor from Kentucky, was violently removed from his seat on an overbooked United flight by Chicago Department of Aviation police after refusing to give up his seat to United staff. Following the release of a recording of the incident, thousands of people over various social media platforms reacted in outrage to United, claiming that the handling of the situation by the airline and police was inexcusable. Additionally, many believe that Dao was justified in his relentless refusal to leave the aircraft after being requested to by both United and Chicago police. The injuries sustained by Dao as a result of his removal from the flight by
Activism is the practice of taking action in support or opposition of a cause or controversial issue (Activism). Millions March NYC is a New York City based activist coalition combatting the issues of police brutality, institutionalized racism, and an examination of the New York Police Department in order to ensure a better treatment of all New Yorkers, primarily focusing on the lives of members of vulnerable populations, particularly black lives. This is a coalition of young activists from various racial backgrounds who are demanding for the justice of the victims of police violence and police brutality. Right now, they are one of the many faces of activism in New York City and the surrounding areas. In the wake of recent cases
Hashtags act as memes in the manner that they,” spread themselves indiscriminately without regard to whether they are useful, neutral or positively harmful to us”(Blackmore). For instance, there can be hashtags ranging from peace in the middle east, to Kanye for president. Through the invention of hashtags, a new mechanism commonly referred to as “social activism”(Gladwell) has arisen where people use the power of social media websites such as twitter to protest and spread activism from behind a screen. In 2009 social protesters took credit for the protests against Moldova’s Communist government labeling it as the “Twitter Revolution”(Gladwell). Mark Pfeifle, a former national security advisor went as far as saying, “without Twitter the people of Iran would not have felt empowered and confident to stand up for freedom and democracy”(Gladwell). Gladwell strongly disagrees with Mark Pfeifle’s reasoning and quotes Evgeny Morozov, a scholar at Stanford who points out, “Twitter had scant internal significance in Moldova, a country where very few Twitter accounts exist”(Gladwell). Gladwell believes that social networks are incapable of accomplishing acts of the significance of a revolution and states, “The platforms of social media are built around weak ties,” and “weak ties seldom lead to high risk activism”(Gladwell). People feel dependent upon this new method of social activism for
Activism via social media creates weak ties and sets the stage for low risk activism. Weak ties are defined in Malcolm Gladwell’s article “Small Change” (234) as an impersonal relationship
The old proverb “the Pen is mightier than the sword” (Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Richelieu; Or the Conspiracy) still holds significance in protecting of public rights. Words such as freedom, and liberty engendered the idea for democracy. Such words formed into sentences and paragraphs enlightened the public to take action against tyranny and corruption. Freedom of the press is what ensured the general masses of their public rights. The exemplary case in which the freedom of the press played a role was the endeavors of Woodward and Bernstein to unravel the corrupted politics behind the Watergate Scandal. The movie All the President’s Men depicts the proceedings of the Watergate scandal, the scheme to attack the crux of democracy: “ the open election”. Also how the two journalists of the Washington Post progressed to unveil the relationship between the Watergate Burglary and the White House. On one hand, the movie represents the role of the media in its obligation to convey the truth to the masses. On the other hand, the movie reflects political corruption and conspiracy. The accomplishment of Woodward and Bernstein presents the importance of the interaction between the media, the government, and the general masses of society. The role of the media is not only to intervene between the State and the public, but also to take account of public ideas and to apply those ideas to new policies. Also, the media acts as a safeguard to prevent the corruption of the State. Thus, the Watergate scandal signifies the significance of the media as an intermediary between the government and the public mass.
In an article captioned “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted” Malcolm Gladwell, a writer for the New Yorker, and crowned one of Time magazine’s top 100 greatest influential people in 2005, argues that, social media is effective in uniting a large group for a cause, but ineffective in promoting high-risk activism.
Hi-tech lynching has even effected the “King of Pop,” Michael Jackson. The “policemen of the electronic age” have been involved in destroying the reputation of Jackson by playing video clips and interviews that mock his personal lifestyle (Koppersmith 1). Various networks feed on ratings, instead of the valued notions of morality. Michael Jackson’s case has become the example of guilty until proven innocent, even though we, as American citizens claim to value due process and equal representation under the law.
Though social media has many positives, it serves to be helpful for low risk activism but may be unfavorable for high risk activism.
From the above example we can see that how social media activism can influence thousands of young minds with ease. Youth today have the opportunity to use media is ways that couldn’t have ever been imagined 15 or 20 years ago. We now have the tool to use social media safely, to analytically scrutinize the messages that are being convened to us from various sources and learn to construct and share our own skills, thoughts and knowledge on our own terms. With this new knowledge and new tools, we have the open wide world to discover, learn and share.
Writers have the ability to influence the world, to change people’s views, and to inform those reading of events. As writers of CNN, Wesley Bruer and Evan Perez have the job of informing the public of current events that affect our lives. They also have the ability to influence the way their readers perceive that situation. Upon writing the article “Officials: Hackers breach election system in Illinois, Arizona”, these two authors ignored the fact that these hackers may have had the intention of affecting the elections.
...what the context, if that is besieged in some way, it feels unjust. It feels wrong’ (CNN, 2011). This raises an important question of where the limit is on how much information we should be allowed access to, when concerning public figures.
Therein, as Merton (1936) suggested in his research, the lack of any meaningful culture upon which to base standards for evaluating risk, leaves us with only the ability to discuss right and wrong in the most limited terms (Merton, 1936). A common culture which can place relative values on things like naked selfies on iCloud vs the humiliation of naked selfies being stolen from the I Cloud and posted on the internet, creates an abstract of Merton’s theory at the lowest-common-denominator (Cloward, 1959). By extrapolation, the culture of political correctness creates the impulse to lynch all perpetrators in righteous fury and console all the wronged as victims regardless of prior conduct or risky behaviors (Mann,
Popular, digital, and social media are primary sites for engaging with social and cultural norms and racial, gender, sexual, and class ideologies (Lindsey). More recently, we see evidence of young black people having a sense of empowerment and freely displaying it on social media. Influences in the media have also jumped on board, reflecting their views on racially charged topics within their work. Consequently, social media is notorious for either virally uplifting of condemning society without any sense of tact. With the media spotlighting the recent out lash geared towards people of color, society was finally being exposed to the uncensored struggles of this ethnic group. The violent outbreak of police brutality against black people and racial profiling, agitated people of color in every community. A few of the many tragedies such as Michael Brown, Tamar Rice and Travon Martin, gave us the realization that being black is not safe. This epidemic had triggered uncertainty, that had Americans questioning the credibly of our communities in a long time. With situations like this in the face of the media, the choice to turn a blind eye was no longer an