Social Media, Social Movements, and Race

With the current racial climate and the continual growth of online presence, strong interest has gravitated to social media usage and its causes and effects. Its connection with social movements had been taking a big liking as well. A heightened awareness of social problems has been achieved through media coverage and in this realm specifically, social media by multiple platforms including but limited to Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Thus social media usage will be analyzed to study race relations within different social movement organizations (SMOs) and their social media accounts. These organizations being Free Ohio Now, Black Lives Matter Cleveland Chapter, and Showing Up for Racial Justice. The qualitative research method being used to conduct this examination is content analysis. We will be collecting data from the aforementioned SMOs from January 1, 2020 to January 31, 2021 from the accounts online. Coding will be done to organize important themes and central patterns for the ultimate findings of how social media is used within these organizations’ social movements in their surrounding communities and beyond regarding race relations.