Social Media Activism

Awhile ago in class we talked about social media and live activism. I didn't give much thought about it because I am normally annoyed when I see continuous posts about certain rally's or protests. I always thought, "why can't you just post it once or twice, and then let other's spread the word about it." Since joining a Dance Marathon committee though, my views have changed. Social media is becoming one of the only outlets of media that people actually pay attention to and look at multiple times during the day. Sure, we could keep putting articles into the newspaper and on the radio giving information about the Marathon and our events, but those outlets don't help us as much as social media does. We create facebook events for fundraisers, and post the links to our own fundraising pages. People our age need to basically be pushed into doing something, so posting several times a day or a week about an event will most likely lead to higher attendance. It's hard to ignore something when you constantly see posts about it. It also spreads the word faster about things because you can retweet or share statuses and whatnot. Now I enjoy seeing multiple posts about different events because without social media I probably wouldn't have heard about them at all.