Social Media in campaigns

The twenty first century has seen the transition in ways of protecting and campaigning; from the use of placards, marches and violent clashes to a much more civilised way of turning to social media and creating links, tweets, posts, bloggs, hashtags and websites.

old traditional ways of protest

The first successful and global outrage to be expressed on social media, chiefly twitter and Facebook were the #bringbackourgirls campaign which even took the attention of the United States first Lady Michelle Obama to join. With one picture, Michelle Obama took a trending hashtag in April 2014 and turned it into a social-media supernova. In an image that has now come to represent the #BringBackOurGirls movement, it demands the return of more than 200 Nigerian school girls captured by Boko Haram. “In these girls, Barack and I see our own daughters,” Michelle Obama said in a five-minute address. “We see their hopes, their dreams, and we can only imagine the anguish their parents are feeling right now.”

US First lady joins twitter in the #bringbackourgirls campaign

Recently, Facebook and twitter have been highly trafficked with the #stopxenophobiaSA campaign, as people use social media to protest again the brutal treatment of foreigners, especially Zimbabweans in South Africa.