The Battle for Public Opinion

 Social media definitely brings me trust issues. I generally question just about everything that gets posted or shared, because I just assume that there's another side to the story (depending on what the story is). While I would like to believe everything that gets documented about an important, socially historic event, I still question people's accounts, because at the end of the day, we're human and people will be biased. Social media allows for people to share their accounts of events from their perspective, then it goes viral, and soon it becomes what everyone believes. We need to be careful with what is disseminated through social media, because sometimes people grow up to see the world a specific way and it's hard to change that.

I think some ways in which people use social media to reach the hearts and minds of people would be in emotional topics such as gun control as a result of mass shootings in public locations, or even other topics like animal rights. The non-profit organization for animal rights, PETA, is one of those organizations that uses social media actively to expose animal abuse and try to make changes to stop the exploitation of animals in different industries. On their Twitter you'll see how they post often, multiple times a day to expose animal abuse and push for more animal rights.

You can check out their Twitter here: https://twitter.com/peta/?lang=en

Another example of using social media is in the topic of women's pay gaps, specifically the gap between the NBA and WNBA. I understand that people want to bring more awareness to the pay gap, but simple pointing out the gap isn't going to change the economics that goes into why the gap is the way it is. While this is a positive attempt to bring light to an issue, it also isn't the way to solve it. At the end of the day, it seems more like an attempt to just tug on some heartstrings and gain attention (or followers), because sometimes that's all social media really is.