For 24 hours, the world of social media rocked like a roller coaster off its tracks. The outbursts of rage over the Supreme Court’s decision to annul a key section of the Voting Rights Act Tuesday morning had barely subsided before environmentalists began obsessively tweeting every nuance of President Obama’s climate change speech a few hours later. As afternoon became evening, Wendy Davis’ filibuster in the Texas Legislature became a legend-in-the-making, complete with a stunning chaotic denouement watched in real time streaming video by hundreds of thousands. The following morning, a rolling tide of ecstasy and joy swept across the Internet within seconds of the news that the Supreme Court had ruled the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional.
Of course, I should be clear: This was my world of social media. We are filtered by whom we follow and friend. If I associated with a different motley crew, the cries of joy and rage could easily flip places. Social conservatives believe that what happened in Texas Wednesday night was a travesty of democracy and that Jesus is weeping in dismay over the prospect of a flood of gay marriage in California. And they’re on Twitter too.
But something is still happening here. The social media noise and clamor — 9,000 tweets per second on DOMA right after the Court’s decision! — over the past 24 hours isn’t just partisan froth. Our society and politics are headed in a direction; there is a clear narrative in play. And social media is influencing, reinforcing and assisting that narrative. If, as Martin Luther King so famously said, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” then what we’ve witnessed (and tweeted and liked) over the last 24 hours is social media increasing its leverage over that laborious transition. Heisenberg understood this: You can’t observe something without affecting it. And we’re observing more now than ever before.
Is that too bold? Calculating the political consequences of our social-media filtered world is tricky. Can we really say that Facebook and Twitter and Reddit and Imgur chatter are influencing political change? Or are they just reflecting what’s already happening? One more conservative judge on the Supreme Court, after all, and DOMA still stands. The evisceration of the Voting Rights Act is a giant backward step. President Obama made what many environmentalists considered a solid promise not to approve the Keystone pipeline, but would all the anguished tweets in the world make a damn bit of difference if he weaseled out of that promise in the weeks to come? My social media friends might be ready to elect Wendy Davis as president in 2016, but most of the country still has no idea who the woman is.
But let’s look at the big picture. The Republican Party depends on socially conservative white males as the bedrock of its political support. But everyone knows that the country at large is getting more diverse. Young people, women and minorities — who, by and large, trend more liberal on social issues — have delivered the presidency to Democrats two elections in a row. Plug all the sound and fury on social media in the last 24 hours into that framework, and you will see something that must make conservative politicians very, very nervous: A changing country that is increasingly self-aware and on the alert.
Of course, I should be clear: This was my world of social media. We are filtered by whom we follow and friend. If I associated with a different motley crew, the cries of joy and rage could easily flip places. Social conservatives believe that what happened in Texas Wednesday night was a travesty of democracy and that Jesus is weeping in dismay over the prospect of a flood of gay marriage in California. And they’re on Twitter too.But something is still happening here. The social media noise and clamor — 9,000 tweets per second on DOMA right after the Court’s decision! — over the past 24 hours isn’t just partisan froth. Our society and politics are headed in a direction; there is a clear narrative in play. And social media is influencing, reinforcing and assisting that narrative. If, as Martin Luther King so famously said, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” then what we’ve witnessed (and tweeted and liked) over the last 24 hours is social media increasing its leverage over that laborious transition. Heisenberg understood this: You can’t observe something without affecting it. And we’re observing more now than ever before.
Is that too bold? Calculating the political consequences of our social-media filtered world is tricky. Can we really say that Facebook and Twitter and Reddit and Imgur chatter are influencing political change? Or are they just reflecting what’s already happening? One more conservative judge on the Supreme Court, after all, and DOMA still stands. The evisceration of the Voting Rights Act is a giant backward step. President Obama made what many environmentalists considered a solid promise not to approve the Keystone pipeline, but would all the anguished tweets in the world make a damn bit of difference if he weaseled out of that promise in the weeks to come? My social media friends might be ready to elect Wendy Davis as president in 2016, but most of the country still has no idea who the woman is.
But let’s look at the big picture. The Republican Party depends on socially conservative white males as the bedrock of its political support. But everyone knows that the country at large is getting more diverse. Young people, women and minorities — who, by and large, trend more liberal on social issues — have delivered the presidency to Democrats two elections in a row. Plug all the sound and fury on social media in the last 24 hours into that framework, and you will see something that must make conservative politicians very, very nervous: A changing country that is increasingly self-aware and on the alert.
by Andrew Leonard, Salon | Read more:
Image: Facebook
