A recent anomaly on my Facebook stream is a post on Bring back Our Girls that was at the same time as our
reading “Is the Bring Back Our Girls Movement a Failure?” by Demetria Irwin from
May 18,2014 (thegrio.com/2014/05/18/is-the-bringbackourgirls-movement-a-failure).
The posting on my stream was titled “Remember #BringBackOurGirls? This Is What
Has Happened In The 5 Months Since” written by Charlotte Alfred on
huffingtonpost.com/TheWorldPost Posted on September 14,2014 and updated on
September 19,2014 (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theworldpost/ , Posted: 09/14/2014 11:57
am EDT Updated: 09/19/2014 9:59 am EDT ) and posted on Facebook on September
16,2014. The World Post is partnership with Huffington Post and Berggruen
Institute on Governance. For my edification I had to go the The Berggruen
Institute website find out who and what they are all about. On their website
they describes themselves as the following “The Berggruen Institute is
dedicated to the design and implementation of new ideas of good governance --
drawing from practices in both East and West -- that can be brought to bear on
the common challenges of globalization in the 21st century.”
On the Facebook post there
were 553 comments and it was shared by 23,651 people with that many shares and
comments there is a wide range of reactions. The remarks span from the
political discourse in the Ukraine to the Ebola virus outbreak in Africa to Ferguson, even recent topical trending talk for in stance the ice bucket challenge. The
two posts share the same sentient that a hashtag activism by itself cannot make
the total change. But in some cases it works very well. In the section “Hashtag
Activism Successes” of thegrio.com text Alfred points out some victories
outcomes.
“Hashtag activism seems to work best when it is tied to some type of
public relations nightmare that could negatively impact a company or person’s
finances. When IAC public relations executive Justine Sacco tweeted an
insensitive, racist “joke” about AIDS,
Black Twitter took her to task with the #HasJustineLandedYet hashtag.
Sacco was en route to South Africa, and the by the time she landed, she was out
of a job. IAC is the umbrella corporation for a slew of companies, including
Match.com, Vimeo, Tinder, the Daily Beast and many other popular brands. The
digital media powerhouse was not interested in keeping an executive who made
potentially brand damaging comments. Score one for hashtag activism.”
Now I’m not going to get
into the fact the that the Nigerian military seemed to be incapable of
getting the girls back. And that leads to the question why? when getting some
support was offered to provide assistance. Or the fact the Nigerian military
actually stated that they know where the girls are being held on national
television. And the fact the girls have not as of this posting have not be
returned. Because that is not what this blog post is about as a whole.
When I shared the story on
my Facebook page the comments were not as many as a big media outlet such as
The Huffington Post, but I still received a passionate share of voices to the
post. One post being from my friend Eddie Hussein Nwabuoku who is actually from
Nigeria, and well versed in the geo political state of his home country. He
states “If anyone expected a mere Twitter hashtag to result in the return of
those girls, they are high on something. As someone who lived in that part of
the world for yoinks, I can tell you categorically: One does not simply walk
into that area of Borno state of Nigeria”. His post is accompanied by a meme
that helps to bring his point home that the problem is bigger than any hashtag
can ever solve.
#socialmediablacklatinohunterCUNY
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