Ever wondered how social media impacts our perspective? Until now, I haven’t thought too much about it. However, I think that the ways in which social media informs us about current events and important news likely has a large impact on how we perceive such events. The hashtags we imbed, slang we include, and pictures we add all impact the ways in which we think about the content. Curious about this idea, I created a twitter feed for women’s suffrage in America to formulate how it might have been shared on social media:
The movement began in 1848 at Seneca Falls with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott heading the Seneca Falls Convention:
After the Seneca Falls Convention, the Women’s Suffrage movement began to really take off. However, when the 15th amendment was ratified (allowing black men to vote, but not women), there was great dispute among suffragists about how to handle it.
As a result, two groups formed: the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), which did not support the 15th amendment because it still did not grant the vote to women, and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), which supported the 15th amendment because they felt that it was unfair to limit black men’s suffrage even though women still did not have the vote.
However, the animosity soon dispelled, and the groups came together to form one group called the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).
As this unified group continued to lobby Congress and speak in various states, the West began to support woman suffrage. However, many Eastern states held out, until NAWSA finally broke them down in 1920 and the 19th Amendment (granting the vote to women) was ratified.
Reading the thread back is sort of funny. It is hard to imagine someone like Susan B. Anthony using hashtags, but the truth is that if she lived now, there is a good chance that she would. Comparing this twitter thread to what I’ve read in textbooks highlights a huge difference in perception. Everything feels so much more informal on twitter than in a textbook. Truthfully, I find that tweets are less persuasive due to their casual nature. To think that most of what I read about current events comes from social media implies that perhaps I fail to perceive such events with their full severity; rather, they come across as more nonchalant when they’re littered with hashtags and slang.
On another note, it is interesting just how easy it is to generate a fake Twitter thread. I simply went to a social media generator website, upload a profile picture, and typed in all the necessary details. And, arguably, most of these tweets look real. The ease with which fake content can be disseminated makes me cautious about the material I interact with online. How much of it is fake? And, could I even tell if it was?
Regardless, this activity was incredibly telling. Be careful of fake tweets out there, all of you 🙂 And, next time you see a current event on twitter, maybe check out some additional articles to enrich your perspective. Go beyond hashtags and “lols” to find what is true and allow its severity (or lack of severity) to fully hit you. Your perspective is everything – treat it well.
Works Cited
History.com Editors. “Women’s Suffrage.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 29 Oct. 2009, www.history.com/topics/womens-history/the-fight-for-womens-suffrage.