Expert discusses pros, cons of social-media use

February 25, 2016 at 12:05a.m.

YOUNGSTOWN

Many activists in the civil-rights movement of the 1960s in the Deep South who communicated with one another and sought to correct injustices had to call the organizations they represented, handle written reports and mail them to the press, lawyers and others – a process that often took days.

Today’s social activists, on the other hand, can communicate more quickly and with a few button clicks, a media expert said Wednesday.

“Now, movements’ momentum is at our fingertips, thanks to social media,” Angela Burt-Murray told a few hundred students and others during her one-hour presentation, “Black Voices Matter: Exploring Race and Gender in the Age of Social Media.”

Her talk in Youngstown State University’s Williamson College of Business was one of the university’s Black History Month events.

Burt-Murray, a 1992 Hampton University graduate, is a former editor-in-chief for Essence magazine. She also launched and is a co-founder of Cocoa Media Group LLC, which is a digital-media company offering a network of websites that provide social-media engagement, videos, celebrity news and other features aimed at young women of color.

During her career as a journalist, Burt-Murray covered everything from mass incarceration of minorities to President Barack Obama’s White House bid to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, she recalled.

She first interviewed the Obamas in their Chicago home when he was an Illinois senator, then at the White House shortly after he became president in 2009.

Obama’s presidency symbolized for many that race relations had vastly improved and provided hope they would continue that improvement.

Nevertheless, more-recent challenges related to race, including an increase in police shootings of young, unarmed blacks, vitriol and angst online and some politicians’ divisive language, have caused some people to wonder if society is moving backward in that regard, she said.

On the other hand, Twitter and other social media platforms are great tools for galvanizing and mobilizing a young generation of potential activists, she noted.

Burt-Murray encouraged her audience of mainly college students to use social media to continue conversations regarding challenging the status quo, racial injustices and other societal wrongs.

“There’s still so much work we have to do,” she added. “The revolution, ladies and gentlemen, will be digitized, so I’ll see you online.”