The Role of Social Media in Social Movements: The Case of Black Lives Matter

Abstract

The motivation for this thesis is to explore the social movement of Black Lives Matter to discover and analyze the reasons for its formation, associated events that have taken place, and most of all the societal impact the movement has had on America and social media's role in the process. Social media and social movements will be examined with specific regard to the Black Lives Matter movement with the theories of collective identity, examples of recent social movements, slacktivism and the role racial injustice in the 21st century. Through collective identity, this thesis will show that a shared sense of "we-ness", emotional investment and a dissociative group are extremely important to create a collective and lay the foundation for a social movement to form. Slacktivism will display that meaningful forms of activism like protest should be coupled with token (non-meaningful) forms of support to achieve the meaningful and lasting change desired. This thesis will also illustrate how racial injustice has been engrained into American society for scores of years leading up to the formation of the Black Lives Matter movement, whether that be in policies promoted and endorsed by political candidates or through school segregation. It will be demonstrated that racial injustice is real and has to be addressed in constructive ways. The Black Lives Matter movement will be examined from its beginning through the immediate events that led to its creation and indicate some of the impact that it has had in America to prove that Black Lives Matter is the culmination of a history that has consistently said that black lives do not matter.