Instagram Activism

The death of George Floyd in late May was a watershed moment in American history. Although this was certainly not the first incident of police brutality towards a black man, it sparked a movement that will have significant lasting effects on America. Protesters flocked to the streets in almost every major city in the country, in some cases protesting gave way to looting and rioting, and a call to “defund the police” and reallocate its funding became popular. Another phenomenon George Floyd’s death spawned is the sharing of Instagram stories about various social justice and other issues by many young people.

These Instagram stories have some virtues. They are perhaps the best way to spread awareness for an issue very quickly. The very idea of defunding the police was spread far and wide through stories in a matter of hours from its origin. Memorials to George Floyd and resources on how to stay safe while protesting were shared by millions. As time passed and the chaos of May calmed, Instagram stories did not stop circulating. Stories about a much wider variety of issues became popular. For example, the problems with billionaires, the latest controversy of the Trump administration, information on the election, and much much more. Instagram stories became a way for people to share all of their political and moral beliefs with their followers. However, these stories are never something that was created by the person who is posting the story. They are reposted from another Instagram page that specializes in some type of activism, some popular pages are chnge and shuanking. Many of the stories are actually reposts of Instagram posts that are screenshots of tweets. 

While Instagram stories do have plus sides they also have some major pitfalls. The most concerning problem with how this information is being shared is that there is no accountability in telling the full or truest story. This is not necessarily intentional but often more a result of how fast the information circulates. Someone reads a headline makes a tweet about it, and then that tweet is spread across countless stories, and before anyone can really question it, it has been forgotten about. One of the most egregious examples of this I’ve encountered was a story about a black 15-year-old girl from Michigan in jail for “not doing her homework”.

I found this shocking and decided to figure out if there was more to the story. I immediately found a news story from the local news station where the girl lived and learned that the information on Instagram was aggressively misleading. In fact, she was arrested for not doing school work, but only because doing her homework and passing classes was a requirement for her probation from domestic violence and theft charges a year earlier. Another post I took issue with was a tweet alleging that “our slave labor is too sick from the plague to fight endless climate change induced forest fires” in reference to the lack of prison fire crew currently working in California. A second slide of the post suggests that the prisoners receive “next to zero pay” and when they are released they can’t become firefighters. This post is hugely misleading. To start this isn’t slave labor at all because the prisoners are not only paid but also volunteer to do the work. In fact, in the California prison system working at a fire camp is a highly sought after job as the living conditions are better and the inmates get to work outside in the forests. The pay is around two dollars normally a day and three dollars a day when fighting a fire which is certainly not great, but the prisoners receive Cal Fire training for free. When they are released, prisoners absolutely can get jobs with Cal Fire. Almost the entirety of this post was misinformation that accomplished nothing but grabbing someone’s attention for a few seconds so they could scoff at how horrible our country is. I could continue to provide examples like the misleading picture of an Oakland A’s coach holding up a “nazi salute”, multiple claims that pictures of the civil rights movement are printed in black and white to make it appear farther in the past, or a tweet alleging more Muslims have been killed in China than Jews were killed in the holocaust (this is the only post I’ve seen corrected by those who shared it), but I think that would be redundant at this point. 

Instagram stories are a powerful tool to spread information and ideas, but they have zero accountability to actually provide you with accurate and unbiased information. These stories are certainly not a source of news and are hardly a place to find well-thought-out opinions. Next time you see something on an Instagram story and you can’t believe how horrible it is, do some research on your own because it might not be entirely true. It often takes only a few seconds to figure out what the actual story behind an Instagram post is, and it’s well worth your time to not be completely misinformed. If you are someone who shares Instagram stories, verify the information yourself before you post it. In a society that is now dominated by sound bites, tweets, and social media, I fear that in the future most people will get their news from sources like Instagram stories that feed them misinformation.