If the Hunger Games was real life we would all have our phones out and ready to record the brutality that goes down in the games. We would record rues death and Katniss’ reaction and someone would have uploaded it to YouTube or Facebook to show the world. Before we know it we would all be raising our hands in protest.
That’s how a revolution starts!
But what if I told you that we are already living The Huger Games!
Last year, Freddie Gray was killed by alleged police brutality and the whole arrest was recorded by a bystander.
The arrest was uploaded online and the word quickly spread. First, the leader of Black lives for Justice, Malik Shabazz used social media to organise a peaceful protest.
After seeing the social media announcement, hundreds of people took to the streets to call for justice for Freddie Grey.
It soon became out of hand.
A social network revolution was born.
Before long the Baltimore Riots began.
As soon as the riots broke out, the online world was flooded with images, videos and tweets from people and police at the riots or those commenting on the violence expressing their disgust or allegiance.
Although, posting online allowed for the fast involvement of citizens to have their say–however this is addictive. This is because the openness of social media allows us to have a voice and because we have these platforms available to us we feel the need to exercise our right to broadcast our opinion.
This creates an aggregation of perspectives online.
Facebook and Twitter were also used amongst High School students from eight different schools to organise a protest at the local mall. They called it the Purge– a reference to an independent film made in 2013.
It’s interesting to think about these riots as being organised and fuelled on social media. I wonder how long these riots would have lasted if social media wasn’t the key factor in fuelling the fire. I wonder if Malik Shabazz’s idea of a peaceful protest would have lasted. Would they have received justice if they protested peacefully?
Monique Lombardo 
The fact that what was meant to be a peaceful protest manifested and contorted itself into a catastrophe due to the catalyst of the social media response/revolution is extremely confronting. The themes that you mentioned in your curation of this weeks topic examine the scalability and speed that social media and the internet provide us with, breaking down the barriers of space and time. The coordination of individuals through social networking can indeed be a scary thought, post a revolutionary video that speaks out about oppression, lack of freedom or any problem in society and start a riot in your home town or anywhere around the world. This technology is truly ground-breaking, although in this circumstance, a negative outcome was created. If you want some proof of the internet being the fastest mode of communication, twitter actually beat the official earthquake alerts which gave forewarning to citizens enabling them to prepare (an article here on how unreliable ‘legacy media’ is and how fast the internet is: http://www.livescience.com/45385-earthquake-alerts-from-twitter.html). What you said at the end of your post was also extremely interesting, if social media wasn’t invented in society and all the resentment, hatred and contempt against a certain issue manifested itself into something physical, I feel as though the repercussions would be worse than that of people having the freedom to share their thought and opinions in an instant.
Great post, any Hunger Games meme is a good meme 🙂
~ krisesandchrosses ~
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It’s amazing how social media has suddenly become this platform for users to post about large scale events, protests and general news about what is happening around the world. I had been following the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag for a while, and its insane how much happens behind closed doors… this is why social media can be such a useful and informative tool for users to have at the touch of a button. What do you think would happen if we didn’t have social media today, how would anyone find out this kind of information?
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Your example really shows the effect of scalability and this brings to question the result of the protest planned through social media was beneficial to the bigger revolution. I think that it would have been interesting to know what the aftermath of this riot was in order to gain a better understanding of how this protest effected Baltimore in the long run.
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We are living the Hunger Games. What a fascinating statement; it’s certainly an accurate (yet brutal) portrayal of the world we live in. The way Katniss interacts with her audience and sponsors whilst in the arena and uses her salute to reach them in protest is an interesting parallel to modern-day revolutions, one you have captured well in your meme. The combination of multiple perspectives combined on a platform such as Twitter has such an immense power over a society.
This source (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pablo-barbera/tweeting-the-revolution-s_b_4831104.html) goes into detail of Facebook and Twitter hashtags being linked to actual ground activity during the Euromaiden protests. The statistics recorded show a significantly large portion of the social media activity came from a foreign audience. Linking this to your example of people flooding the streets to protest the treatment of Freddie Grey, I wonder what your opinion is of international involvement? Certainly if social media wasn’t used in this example, there would hardly be any international interest – at least not for the time it would take the legacy media to publish relevant content. Do you think the use of social media to attract international interest improves the prospects of a revolution, or does it simply make a ‘mess’ of things; is it better for a nation or group to protest alone than to make a ‘needlessly’ vicious protest?
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Hi Monique
I am impressed by the way you delivered a range of examples in this post supported by great visual aids. All of them created a big picture about various phenomenon happening all over the world that were fueled by social media. Your metaphor of The Hunger Games was also great as the film depicted a quite familiar scene today, that is people in some parts of the world are being restrained and cannot do anything but to accept being abused. If social media existed in the film, we would see a huge protest.
My only recommendation is that beside the examples of riots and protests, maybe you should include cases in different fields (such as the Ice Bucket Challenge) as well to justify that social media have a comprehensive influence on our life.
This source provides 10 prominent examples of social media power in various aspects which I think you might take a look
http://memeburn.com/2012/10/10-prominent-examples-of-social-media-creating-social-change/
Great work. Keep it up.
Cuong.
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Hi Monique
The examples you used really typified this week’s topic effectively. The Baltimore Riots especially was a good insight as such a violent movement and event was caused by social media communication. The comparison to a violent event like this to the Cronulla Riots is personally interesting to observe as word of the riots were spread by text messages and word of mouth locally within the area which caused a large riot. If Facebook, twitter and other social media platforms were as popular back then, it’s interesting to think how it would have panned out with a larger array NSW knowing what was going to go down, maybe it would have been the same or bigger than Baltimore?
Great post, and loved the meme!
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I like your point, and great post you sum everything to be easy to follow. I agree how scary is social media revolution everything inside there seem to be so real. Baltimore was one of the good example of the brutality social media. but If we thinking about it is to much freedom in social media are bad?
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I think the point where it leaves social media and actually happens is the point when anything can go wrong. Most people do have good intentions when going to these rallies but there are some people going there just to wreak havoc. Thats one downfall about sharing it on social media because it invites everyone on social media, even the ones who mean harm.
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