Week 4 blog post

This week we read ”Social Media and activist communication” by Poell and van Dijck, which introduced the concepts of acceleration and personalization in 21st century activism online. With the interconnectedness of social media, news outlets, and other online spaces, information spreads much more quickly between people, particularly big or shocking events with pertain to activist movements, catching people‘s attention much quicker. The personalization is more about the way people are now sharing and connecting with each other on personal levels, rather than a community of movement level, which is more about disseminating info. The authors frame these phenomena as overall negative for the activist community online, since it has shifted the focus from the long term issues and solutions, and more on the significant events and participants of the movement.

In the movement I chose to focus on, the disabled rights movement, we can see a general shift towards more personalization of social media posts and such. Many posts focus on people‘s personal experience with their disability and their struggle moving through a world not designed for them, with others able to offer sympathy and relate to it. It is certainly a good method of awareness though, since many people simply aren’t aware of how the world is built mostly for abled people.