Health & Fitness
Social Media Gives Power to the People
Social media has given a voice to huge numbers of people who were previously voiceless.
If you ever doubted the power of Social Media, the recent flap over the Susan G Komen for the Cure Foundation’s decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood should put that to an end. In just three days the practioners of Facebook and Twitter forced the sudden reversal of policy by Komen.
“The intimate nature of social media, and the ability of folks to communicate across all lines — I’ve never really seen anything like it,” said Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood after Komen announced it was changing its decision Friday morning. In the three days after Komen announced it was changing its grant rules in a way that would bar Planned Parenthood from receiving some funds, Planned Parenthood supporters flocked to social media to express their outrage.
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“Planned Parenthood’s Facebook page got 10,000 new friends in the past couple days”, Richards said. The social media surge in turn drove and became part of the mainstream media’s coverage.
Twitter users sent more than 1.3 million Tweets referencing Planned Parenthood, the Susan G. Komen Foundation and related terms and “hashtags”, according to a Twitter spokeswoman. The chatter built steadily through the week, with more than 460,000 related Tweets on Thursday. “I absolutely believe that the explosion of Facebook and Twitter really drove a lot of the coverage on the mainstream media as well,” Richards said.
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“Social media really has given a voice to huge numbers of people who were previously voiceless, who had to rely on others who had a platform to convey their messages”, said Salon’s Glenn Greenwald. “That has changed how these controversies play out, and I can’t recall a more vivid case than how quickly Komen was forced to retreat.”
Another striking example of the power of social media was the fierce opposition to SOPA and its cousin, the Protect IP Act (PIPA). In the week of Jan. 16, when those pieces of legislation were scheduled for a vote, SOPA and PIPA dominated online conversation, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism’s News Media Index — and most of that conversation came in the form of vehement protest. Not long after, the bills effectively died, despite the considerable lobbying muscle of their proponents.
