Post Class 12/3

We are quick to say that propaganda proliferates more easily on social media, but there is some work being done to counter it. Like we discussed in class, information on the BLM protests over the summer was heavily shared on all social media platforms. Many posts promoted protestor safety, shared donation links, and accounts offering radio relay for various protest hot spots appeared. There were also many contradictory accounts of the events, as news outlets wanted to break the stories as fast as possible. One of the top sources of these stories were police departments themselves. Details were often warped and misreported, usually at the hands of the victim narrative the police wanted to send. Protestors were framed as aggressors and rioters, while the police were victims of the protestors’ violence. On social media, police departments would also post out of context footage of the protests, but users who witnessed these events themselves and recorded them would often reply with their own videos. The videos from these eagle-eyed protestors would usually show the incident from different camera angles as the police video and also show some events shortly before and after what was shown in the police department’s video. These videos unveiled the true intentions of police departs and showed that the videos reported by police departments were often highly staged and edited in such a way that removes the involvement of the police at all. These users act as alternative news sources, and it is much harder to repress social media posts because of the visibility offered by social media platforms. If one post is taken down, multitudes of reposts will appear in its place, putting evidence of doctored videos in front of more users eyes. The spread of ideas on social media is faster than ever, but this is not always a bad thing.