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 A life, brutally ended, and a simple action by a 17-year-old Black girl sparked the largest social movement in U.S. history, and offered lessons about the role of a rapidly changing digital landscape in movements for liberation.

On May 25, 2020, Darnella Frazier witnessed a crime being committed by the men sworn 鈥�to protect with courage, to serve with compassion.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin had buried his knee into George Floyd鈥檚 neck and was slowly killing him. Hearing Floyd beg for his life, who was pinning him down, knee to neck. Floyd managed to eke out the words 鈥淚 can鈥檛 breathe.鈥� Ten minutes later, a stretcher carried away his lifeless body.

In the wee hours of the next morning, Frazier posted her video on Facebook and Instagram with the caption: 鈥渢hey killed him right in front of cup foods. No type of sympathy #POLICEBRUTALITY.鈥�

The Minneapolis Police Department claimed that Floyd鈥檚 death resulted from a 鈥�,鈥� but the now globally circulating video exposed their lies. After Floyd鈥檚 murder, the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag peaked at 1.2 million tweets per day, , while a count by the Institute of Strategic Risk Management suggested there were nearly 48 million #BlackLivesMatter tweets between May 26 and June 7, 2020.聽

鈥淚 can鈥檛 breathe鈥� became an anthem for millions who braved the COVID-19 pandemic and poured into the streets to protest the injustice meted out on yet another Black person. In the U.S. there were more than 4,700 protests during that time period, an average of 140 a day, followed by .

The speed with which people revolted and demanded change may not have been possible without social media and the connecting, communicating, sharing, and informing that it enabled. Social media brought 鈥渢ogether large numbers of people and ideas, and groups across potentially large amounts of [geographic] distance to engage in collective acts,鈥� explains Ramesh Srinivasan, a professor of information studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the founder of the UC Digital Cultures Lab. The speed of communication 鈥渆nables people to contest certain types of power or [to] reclaim power.鈥澛�

Frazier鈥檚 video, the hashtags, and the resulting demonstrations and organizing they fueled raised awareness about the brutality Black Americans endure, particularly at the hands of police. But they did more than that. Together, as part of the court proceedings, they helped produce of a police abuser. Advocates also won changes to police training, mandatory body cameras, bans on no-knock warrants, and in problematic cities, including Minneapolis.

These wins set BLM apart from other social-media-driven movements that failed to result in concrete changes.聽

From Encampments to Presidential Policy

The 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement might have fallen into this category if not for a small group of its participants using their combined political and social media savvy to effectuate long-term change. Social media helped propel 鈥溾�濃�攁 slogan symbolizing disproportionate wealth and power 鈥攖o reach and resonate with masses of people. throughout the world to demand a fairer economic and political system. 

However, it still took years after the demonstrations and encampments closed down for Occupiers to enter the halls of power. As Michael Levitin documented in his 2021 book, , after Sen. Elizabeth Warren declined to run for president in 2016, activist Charles Lenchner queried 60,000 Warren supporters on the Occupy listserv about whom else they might recruit. There was an emphatic answer: 鈥淪upport Bernie鈥� Sanders.

By the time Sanders launched his presidential campaign, , which Lenchner co-founded, had already recruited thousands of volunteers. With the spirit of Occupy鈥檚 decentralization guiding it, the campaign grew and flourished. 

Social justice activists, scholars, and others joined because 鈥渢hat was our best shot to change a lot of things,鈥� says Srinivasan, who worked as a surrogate on the Sanders campaign.

Although both Sanders鈥� 2016 and 2020 bids failed, President Joe Biden鈥檚 allies joined with Sanders to develop and agree on policies before Biden took office. Still, the seemingly intractable problems of the political economy have persisted, with , indicating that without engagement within political institutions, social media as a tool for liberation remains limited in promise.

A Tool for Democracies Fails in Dictatorships

In 2011, Chilean students used social media to protest economic and educational inequality. Some movement leaders 鈥渁ctually ended up taking state power eventually,鈥� says Srinivasan. The so-called 鈥減enguin revolutionaries鈥� won elected offices, including at the highest position: In 2021, 36-year-old student leader Gabriel Boric was elected Chile鈥檚 president.

However, such tools have not worked as well to foster democracy in authoritarian countries. In 2009, the Iranian regime crushed the country鈥檚 grassroots Green Movement, which was protesting voter fraud and demanding the removal of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Similarly, the Arab uprisings in Egypt, , and Syria failed to produce substantive . In 2020, which was demanding free and fair elections, and which enthusiastically used both traditional and social media to mobilize.  

Even if demonstrators in Hong Kong, Iran, and those nations roiled by the Arab uprisings failed in the short term to achieve liberation, social media usage to learn about the desires, struggles, and commitments of ordinary people to be free from corruption and oppression. Like a modern-day SOS to the world, social media enabled these movements to have witnesses and allies that they otherwise may not have had.

In 2022, Iranians revolted again after 22-year-old died while in custody of the country鈥檚 morality police.聽

The 鈥淲oman, Life, Freedom鈥� movement sprung to life to protest the regime鈥檚 brutality. The hashtag reached tens of millions of people across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, and was in the first month after her death.

If knowledge is power, these technological tools are slowly helping people build the latter through real-time documentation, dissemination, hacked evidence, and pleas from all corners of the world, calling out to each other and building a global community. 

Uniting Frayed Communities

Early in its activism, the hacker group Anonymous targeted the Church of Scientology by leaking a video of actor and scientologist Tom Cruise hosting a church event in 2008. It was the first of many such acts of digital activism.

After police shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, members of the city鈥檚 website. In 2015, Anonymous members released personal details of alleged Ku Klux Klan members, and when George Floyd was murdered, members hijacked a United Nations agency page to memorialize him. After Russia invaded Ukraine, Anonymous members , paralyzing the institution that controlled Russian satellites, according to a .

Srinivasan sees the work of Anonymous and related groups as 鈥渁 form of social, collective action鈥� and the group as the 鈥渉acker wing of the protest movement.鈥� In contrast, legal organizations, including the Center for Constitutional Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and related legal groups, law firms, and individual lawyers act as the movements鈥� legal arm, helping protestors maintain free channels of communication. 

For example, the for international human rights movements to have access to vital communication tools that we may take for granted, including Google Chrome, Google Earth, Java, and hosting services, which are often denied by authoritarian governments. Their lawyers have also sued corporations鈥攐r as the EFF calls them, 鈥渞epression鈥檚 little helpers鈥濃�攆or providing repressive regimes with surveillance technology that abets human rights violations by surveilling, tracking, and imprisoning journalists, activists, and ethnic or religious minorities. 

Scholars like Srinivasan see such digital repression as perhaps the greatest obstacle to social media as an instrument for liberation. In these cases, authoritarian governments and corporations use these same technologies as 鈥渢ools of disinformation to manipulate and disrupt … to track and infiltrate … to pose as double agents … pushing out deep amounts of disinformation campaigns and hateful campaigns,鈥� he explains.

During the recent Israel-Hamas war, Israel cut Gazans鈥� , on which they relied to find safety from the bombings. Palestinians then accused social media platforms of algorithmic 鈥渟hadowbanning鈥� to demote their stories. In spite of its limitations, social media can connect diaspora communities long torn apart by genocides, wars, or imperialism to maintain their connection, traditions, and languages. Before Elon Musk鈥檚 takeover of the platform now known as X, Black Twitter, a , enabled robust discourse and collective action on a wide range of issues, including police brutality and racism.聽

As Jennifer Brinkerhoff, a professor of public administration and international affairs at the George Washington University, noted in her 2009 book, , Afghans, Egyptian Copts, Somalis, Nepalese, and Tibetans have all used digital tools to form virtual nationhood while scattered across the globe. Torn apart by war, migration, or other forces, they can maintain a sense of belonging, identity, and values through the internet even when they have no physical access to their communities or historic lands.聽

In 2020, when Azerbaijan and Turkey joined together to from the Armenians of Artsakh (internationally known as Nagorno-Karabakh), an already globally scattered Armenian diaspora organized partly through social media to aid the Armenian survivors of torture, war, and ethnic cleansing. In addition to organizing demonstrations, some Armenian diasporans met via social media to help launch the , an organization to help survivors seek redress through volunteer lawyers. 

As the refugees fled to Armenia, the diasporan charitable arms, such as the Armenia Fund and Armenian Relief Society, used to organize delivery of food, clothing, and blankets. 

In addition to these more visible, global movements, Indigenous people and smaller communities have seized upon technologies to assert their self-determination and protect their sovereignty, ways of life, values, and land. With 鈥渟imple mapping tools鈥� created by organizations like Digital Democracy, 鈥渃ommunities around the world can map their lands in ways that allow them to … show that the land is theirs to protect鈥� to institutions like courts and other political bodies, Srinivasan explains. 

He adds that some have even built their own internet networks, so 鈥渢hey can organize and use these technologies to network in whatever ways they want.鈥� This includes freedom from algorithms, surveillance, 鈥渃orporate capitalism … [and] the dog-eats-dog kind of mentalities of constantly being in an antagonistic relationship with one another.鈥�

Some of these efforts have been supported by technology leaders who have parted ways with their earlier corporate bosses. Justin Rosenstein, formerly of Google and Facebook, created Asana, a collaborative software company, and the nonprofit , which supports communities seeking to mitigate economic, climate, and governance crises. Yet, as long as corporations, regimes, and anti-democratic movements use technology and social media to blunt change through violent or insidious means, social justice movements need legal and institutional protections, including what Srinivasan calls a 鈥渄igital bill of rights.鈥� But more tools are necessary to ensure progress while protecting communities from the harms of technology. 

As Srinivasan says, 鈥淥ur understandings of technology and how it may support living beings around the planet have been co-opted by big tech, its vagaries, anxieties, and fantasies. And as our world becomes more technologized鈥攎ediated by data and computing than ever before鈥攊t鈥檚 high time to return the domain of technology to the values that make us shine as human beings: our capacity for care for one another, the possibility for us to repair our planet, and the ability to stand up for justice, rights, and a planetary, life-affirming mission. It鈥檚 time to take those steps.鈥澛�