Class as a Pass to Online Activism

Photo by Kyle Thornburg

Irrelevant are the days when news spread like wildfire. Rare are the instances when one is separated from another by six degrees. With modernity and technological advances that keep society consistently synchronized and updated, time and space now envy the capabilities of the Internet. For the purposes of social activism, Internet set itself up as the link to complete the chain of justice.

As trial and error might have it, Internet was not the final link in the chain. While entities, such as social media, lent a viral dimension to the possibilities within activism, it simultaneously segmented American society.

In recent history, the topics of social issues have been held to a modern light on virtual platforms. However, these dialogues are negligent of demographics such as members of the lower class. In its idealized form, online activism would elevate offline forms of activism by infiltrating the otherwise unreachable corners of this nation with a plan of action, a meeting place or refute of the dominant thought.

Reality indicates that unreachable ground is, in fact, being covered. Yet the people receiving the message are not proportionate to the demographics of American identity. As the journalist Malcolm Gladwell asserts, communication of any medium manifests a centralized group and the inevitable outliers.

For social movements in contemporary American society, including discussions on gender and on race, social media has enabled the voices of a particular kind. From a study by theWashington Post in 2010, research illuminated that the most prominent groups that were flourishing via Internet presence were young Americans and women. Estranged from the data were members of low socio-economic status.

“Although online activists are younger and more likely to be women than traditional political activists, they still tend to be wealthier and better educated than the rest of the population,” the Washington Post article stated.

For women looking to partake in the advocacy for personhood online, following hashtags such as #YesAllWomen will allow the opportunity. For Americans looking to partake in the advocacy for minimum wage, following hashtags, such as #RaiseTheWage, will allow them to share testimonials of their own. In both instances, the lack of access to the middle class commonplace smart phone, tablet or laptop mutes the participation of lower class members.

Even for members of the lower class with access to social portals, their Internet literacy deters their effective contributions to the movements taking place online. Without the aptitude for navigating distinctive spheres of thought on Facebook with educated additions or the ability to pinpoint and follow hashtags on Twitter, the low-class citizen renders themselves static. Unlike a sit-in in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1960 where a silent placeholder at a diner spoke volumes for justice, the placeholder on social media is wasted space.

Online or offline, access is a privilege for the American citizen—Internet access included. For the lower class, this not only means they are unrepresented in the dialogues of Facebook and Twitter, it also necessitates their unawareness of utilitarian rebellion.

America’s historical social movements have filled streets, ratified discriminatory thought and earned demographics of people their national rights deemed essential by American forefathers. In the virtual world, however, activism is invitation only and the lower class is just out of America’s range of delivery.

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Shallow No More

In 1998 if your pocket was vibrating, it could only mean a few distinct things: either your digital Tamagotchi pet needed feeding or you were being paged. Literally. The rectangular machine clipped onto your faded Levi’s was beckoning you to work or to respond to your peers via pager.

Our rectangular pocket machines have undergone significant updates in function and fashion since then. With these updates, came great demand, as our technological presence slowly begun to outweigh our lifelike presence. A modern life is chock-full of examples for hyper-connectedness, but with award show season on the forecast it seems fitting to reference the live-feeds that invade social media during nights like Sunday’s American Music Awards.

The 41^st showing of the AMA’s was decorated with chart-topping hits from the year, and some chart-topping performers of years past. Favorable or questionable, all opinions from the night of music were littered on Twitter and stamped on Instagram.

When Jennifer Lopez took to the red carpet, close-ups, wide shots and candid photos of her dress by designer, Reem Acra, which traced the curves of the 45-year-old’s toned bodywere splashed on Instagram. Centered on the visuals, the red carpet updates on Instagram let the public make early predictions as to whether J.Lo would appear on best or worst dressed lists. According to Hollywood Life, “We knew we were gonna see something totally sexy on her, but we didn’t think it was going to be something this revealing!”

Jennifer Lopez on the red carpet at the 2014 American Music Awards, drew by Reem Acra. Courtesy Hollywood Life.

On Twitter, however, garnering “likes” on photos took lower priority to the opinion sharing and commentary that this social media platform is known to collect. On my own Twitter feed, I learned whether my thoughts of J.Lo’s performance at the end of the show were in alignment with the greater population of viewers. J.Lo had me on my feet at the television, so I was happy to find that Twitter responses included, “Well @Jlo had a killer performance at the #AMAs2014” from @BrittaaanyXx and “WOW @Jlo!!! That performance was sick.. Shut it down #AMAs” from @PiaToscano.

The hyper-connectedness between the masses, as demonstrated above, is not only a daily privilege—it’s an opportunity that connects members of nearly every subculture in the U.S. and in the world from minute to minute in modernity. For popular culture fanatics, it necessitates a virtual connection, a red carpet of sorts that bridges the common critic to the celebrities we Tweet in support of.

I’ll admit my bias, and say that award show season is my Mecca. And I’m sitting front row with binoculars and the Thesaurus app open to find as many synonyms for “awe-inspiring” to Tweet about pop divas. However, there is a digital divide within these media spheres wherein specified conversations spiral out from the primary topic. The digital divide creates the cliques of the virtual sphere. This is seen in the access and know-how that Instagram users withhold in making a post with as much visual quality of a photocopied image from a 20^th century fax machine versus a post that belongs in an editorial magazine, and likely will if the right eyes see it.

Jennifer Lopez during her performance of "Booty" ft. Iggy Azalea at the 2014 American Music Awards. Courtesy of Daily Mail.

Keeping in tune with J.Lo during the AMAs, the digital divide spun into some prevalent categories all its own. When looking to J.Lo’s gown on the red carpet, Latino Twitter users dubbed her an array of fiery titles to assure that J.Lo represents a Latina pioneer—la chica ultima. Looking at the same gown, however, middle-aged women of non-Latin descent look to J.Lo and sparked discussion over her age. “Forty-five and fabulous,” they said.

And so she was. Lopez was “bellisma” and she was fabulous for her age. Thanks to the multimedia capabilities that reside in our rectangular pocket machines, celebrities are indebted to the general public in addition to the mainstream media for criticism and appraisal.

The depths of conversation burrow much deeper now, from media sphere to hashtag and the curated conversations that happen therein. It’s true for award shows and for the daily dealings of life. Society keeps connected with more than the shallow sonars of the pager from here on out.

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