The Black Lives Matter movement saw a resurgence in the summer of 2020, following the untimely death of George Floyd, and a lot of this can be attributed to the advent of social media and cell phones in the modern day.
The reason why this technology was so imperative to this resurgence was because the video of Floyd had been uploaded to popular social media platforms like Twitter, where it served as a call to action for followers. More importantly, cell phones played a huge role in orchestrating protests and marches across America to show solidarity and further the cause. Much like Hong Kong protesters had done earlier in the year, BLM supporters used platforms like twitter to mobilize rallies and protests in an efficient manner. By using the “BLM” hashtag, they were able to efficiently communicate when and where protests would be taking place. This resulted in an easy platform of information. An issue with this, however, was that the hashtag could become cluttered – as seen on “Blackout Tuesday”, where supporters were encouraged to post a black photo with the BLM hashtag attached. This “caused more harm than good” [1], as it resulted in information being clogged up, which would negatively impact the flow of important updates coming through.
Another important reason for cell phones being used during this movement was through the advent of camera phones. Citizen footage kick-started the resurgence, and it played a pivotal role throughout. Protestors at marches shouted out “This revolution won’t be televised! It’s going to be streamed!” [2], and that was true. This shows a shift in how information that captivates protests and civic action has changed, with bystanders being able to control the narrative that they are taking part in. Another reason why this was important was because it could disprove any statements or videos published by the mainstream media, which might have depicted the protestors as nothing but rioters and shied away from the severity of police conflict taking place. The use of easy internet access that cell phones provides means that the time between documenting and uploading this footage has been greatly reduced, to the point where twitter live videos can capture these moments almost as soon as they happen. This can help boost the speed through which citizens can process this information and engage in civic action than ever before.
Sources:
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/02/us/blackout-tuesday-black-lives-matter-instagram-trnd/index.html
[2] https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2020/0617/Black-Lives-Matter-movement-A-case-for-camera-phones