Black Lives Matter Movement Analysis

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Starting as just a hashtag on a known social media app, evolved into a mass social movement we now know as the black lives matter movement. The black lives matter movement is a long movement that started shortly after the death of Trayvon Martin, a 17yr old black teenager who was unarmed and killed at scene by a man that went by the name of George Zimmerman. In response to his death, the boy in the hoodie, led to the creation of the famous and popular hashtag #blacklivesmatter as well as other co-occurring hashtags following the deaths of other African American males. Social media became a platform to help bring light to the issues that are a rising concern to African American citizens in the United States. Moreover, as a result to the death …show more content…

Questions that will help guide the research of the movement are; What factors have led to the emergence of the movement? What factors can explain the timing? What are its main grievances, and its main modes of expression and mobilization? And how does it relate to previous instances of protest politics in the United States? The essay with begin with a brief review of the black lives matter movement, as well as a general understanding of what social movements are and how they function and become successful. Following will be one of the core factors that led to the emergence of the black lives matter movements which is the discussion about police brutality and the case of Trayvon Martin. Last but not least the discussion of social media as it was a platform where the hashtag #blacklivesmatter was created and used to help develop the black lives matter movement. Furthermore, this essay will examine the use of social media, the case of Trayvon Martin, Police brutality and the use of protesting a mode of expression will explain why the Black Lives matter movement developed in the United …show more content…

Many people use social media every day around the world as it has become a significant part of our society (Cox, 2017). Social media can help shed light on current issues rising in all around the world, and bring people together around the issue (Byrd, Gilbert, & Richardson, 2017) In Jonathan M. Cox article, a study was conducted on how students who participated in the study used social media as their sole source for information about the Black Lives Matter movement. The article also discusses how it can be problematic of relying solely on social media for information, furthermore results showed that students gathered their information from social media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook (Cox, 2017). Moreover, having easy access to the internet and social media, users are encouraged to post their own content and interact with others (Ince, Rojas, & Davis, 2017). Looking at how the evolution of the hashtag #blacklivesmatter can help with our understanding of the black lives matter movement and how the hashtag helped bring attention to the issues the movement is attempting to address (Ray, Brown, & Laybourn, 2017). Before the black lives matter movement became a movement, it first started as a hashtag on twitter created by Patrice Cullors, Alicia Garza, and

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