Black Lives Matter: Social Media and a Social Movement, Pt. 2

Growth: Instances that Allowed for A Movement

As I mentioned previously, the phrase “Black Lives Matter” was first officially introduced in the summer months of 2013, but according to an article titled, “Beyond the Hashtags: #Ferguson, #BlackLivesMatter, and the online struggle for offline justice,” authors report that the phrase did not come to signify a movement until the later months of 2014. The most prominent reason the hashtag came to be widespread and significant at this point time Is due to a situation that occurred in Ferguson, Missouri in which a Ferguson police officer by the name of Darren Wilson fatally shot a man by the name of Michael Brown. There was a lot of speculation surrounding this occurrence. Ultimately, many people felt that the death of Michael Brown was unjustified and took to the streets to protest and were sometimes met with military tactics in a battle for control of the city. This was when the phrase truly made its biggest stride in the making of the modern Civil Rights Movement. According to an article in the Huffington Post, the only bigger surge in the usage of “#BlackLivesMatter” was in November of 2014 when a grand jury declined to indict the officer on charges related to Brown’s death. Shortly after the non-indictment of Officer Wilson, it was announced that another officer, by the name of Daniel Panteleo would not be indicted on wrongful death charges for placing an African American man named Eric Garner in a chokehold that led to Garner’s death. This sparked another surge in the usage of “#BlackLivesMatter” on social media. The fourth most prevalent surge in the usage of the phrase came about after a man named Freddie Gray died in police custody in what has been perceived as suspicious circumstances. Although these different surges all came about early in the movement, they are still very significant building blocks in the growth and development of the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

Michael McLaughlin. Figure 4. Digital image. Huffington Post. Huffington Post, 29 Feb. 2016.