nursingforsocialjustice

I have a Twitter account, an Instagram account, Linked In, Facebook. You know, all the major players that people above the age of 30, who are middle-class-ish, urban dwellers, and, career-oriented probably have. The management, and maintenance of such account are quite a time consumer. And, funnily enough, they give me a sense of pride that I’m virtually out in the world fighting the good fight for my cause. How do I know? By tracking likes and shares, hearts and thumbs up. Though I’m still trying to wrap my head around how I actually know if they are useful in any way more than making me feel like I am sharing my wisdom with the masses.

A secondary function of social media is that it makes me feel bad about how much I don’t accomplish on the day, how much I’m not working go out, how I’m not living, laughing and loving my heart out and finding my passion each moment of each day, living my best life. And so, it’s very apparent that social media is a place for norm sharing.

I’m not sure if it s a place for disrupting dominant narratives because it’s not a place where people friend and connect with a diverse range of people to engage in transformative conversation. That simply is not how friend networks function and not how algorithms designed to keep you from on a page as long as possible and direct you to advertising for products and services that you will likely want to purchase, function. They aren’t platforms of personal growth. At the very least they are places to connect with like-minded people, friends, family, without having to spend resources on creating your own online forum. At the most, they are places where you can pay money to sell stuff. So, it’s strange sort of, that the mission is accomplished everyday in terms of me getting sucked in and reading news feeds, seeing how many shares and likes something I wrote received, watching videos celebs post. And I also share other stuff, that hopefully other people read because it’s informative and interesting and can change the world. And, I can keep up the facade that I’m out there fighting the virtual good fight.

Love,

Michelle D.