Sam Leanza at The College Conservative explains how Twitter has made it much easier for the population to participate in political action, but has also made it a whole lot worse at doing so:

Social Media and Social Unrest

Much like Apple has revolutionized the way we buy music, social media has changed the way we receive our news. Some are calling this the “post-televised news” age, meaning journalism, or what passes for it these days, is no longer exclusive to the professionals. In 140 characters or less, you too can report news from across the globe. As news unfolds faster and faster, and more opinions are entering the marketplace of ideas, social movements seem to be adapting to the social media age. I can only wonder how the Rodney King riots would have unfolded had Twitter existed in the 1990s. Can’t you just see the hashtag “#CantWeAllJustGetAlong” sitting at the top of the trending topics?

Over the last few weeks, the major topic on social media–besides the onslaught of ALS Ice Bucket Challenge videos–has been the riots in Ferguson, MO. Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that close to 8 million tweets on the subject of the unrest had been sent between August 9 and August 18. That is roughly 4,400 tweets per minute. Whether they be expressions from afar or reports from on site, people cannot seem to stop talking about Ferguson.

In an August 22 article for the Financial Times, Hannah Kulcher reported that TV networks were woefully behind Twitter specifically, as over 1,000,000 tweets hit the web before CNN had even one full minute of coverage. This statistic, taken from the Pew Research Center, refers to the first appearance of the story on any medium.

Another recent violent protest driven by social media that comes to mind is the 2011 Arab Spring, which ultimately resulted in the ousting of long-standing Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. In a study from 2011, just after the Arab Spring, the University of Washington looked at “more than 3 million tweets, gigabytes of YouTube content and thousands of blog posts, [only to find] that social media played a central role in shaping political debates in the Arab Spring.” Project leader Philip Howard said that online media provided a source for average citizens to play a role in the domestic political scene. Through social media, those in Northern Africa were able to create “a virtual ecology of civil society, debating contentious issues that could not be discussed in public.”