Why does someone have to tell us to care?

 

 Martin was killed in late February but it took weeks for the story to become so popular on the Internet. Why? Social media still needs broadcast network news for a story to grow and spread. Even though stories can take off much quicker they don’t get started until there is a catalyst like the story being broadcast on the nightly news. the Trayvon story wasn’t reaching mass readership until last week when two things happened: 1) Geraldo Riveria said something stupid about hoodies and 2) President Obama said something sensitive about the case.  After these two tags happened the story begand to take off.  

 

 

“In February and March there was relatively little national news about the shooting; early reports like this one on Trayvon Martin’s shooting offer few details and do not even question why the shooter was not arrested. Social media was focused on the Oscars (Martin was shot that same night) and new technology flowing out of Mobile World Congress. It took weeks for the #JusticeforTrayvon hashtag to emerge.” (From Mashable.com article 

It seems like we needed the media to tell us the issue was important before we really started to care as a society.  That is sad really.  

This does not bode well for citizen journalism in the future.  It seems we need experts, or individuals on record to tell us what we need to care about. Left to our own devices we re just going to keep googling  things like “Kim Kardashian Flour Bomb.”