Essay On The Occupy Wall Street Movement

Social Change Having gone through one of the more-tense election cycles in the history of our country, I have witnessed crowdsourcing on social media being used for organizing protests. Prior to social media, protests were a lot more complex and a lot harder to organize (Madison, 2017). This was because a lot more resources needed to be put into them like building phone trees, sending out physical resources, etc. Using social media for organizing these movements has allowed them to organize faster and at a larger scale. The common example of a protest that was the child of social media crowdsourcing is the Occupy Wall Street Movement. Occupy Wall Street leveraged social media to grow their call for eliminating wealth inequality. However, this Movement did not just occur on Wall Street. The supporters of the Movement crowdsourced participants from all over the country and encouraged them to hold

Nonetheless, whether anyone agrees with President Donald Trump or his actions is irrelevant, his use of social media during and after his election has allowed him to hold onto his supporter base. A better way to put it: he is crowdsourcing support through his social media practices. Every past President or even presidential nominee has not used social media for the primary means of communicating with the people and campaigning (AKA crowdsourcing support). This makes President Trump’s actions innovative in a way (Carr et al. 2015). Beyond President Trump, social media has real potential in enabling people in power to communicate to the people they serve. One benefit it offers is to crowdfund (next section). Another is to quickly garner support for a bill, movement, or a candidate. If an elected official or candidate needs to spread a message, it is simple to do through the crowd available on social media