#IfIDieInASchoolShooting

-

Design by Karina Delgado | tolerance.org

#IfIDieInASchoolShooting: The Origin of a Movement


Following the 2018 shooting at Santa Fe High School in Texas,  which was only a few months
after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, college freshman Andrew Schneidawind
started a hashtag to express his concern with the unsettling increase in school shootings across the
United States. His hashtag, #IfIDieInASchoolShooting, soon went viral, and thousands of Americans
used it to discuss their anxieties and political concerns surrounding mass shootings, specifically in the
school setting. The result was a national conversation about activism, gun reform, shooting trauma, and
fears.
According to Teen Vogue, Schneidawind has been passionate about gun reform since the 2012
shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. He says he can’t believe the United States government
didn’t enact gun reform immediately following the incident, and since then, he and many of his peers
have been worried about experiencing school shootings firsthand. In his interview, he says that he often
spends class time envisioning escape routes just in case a shooting occurs. He and other students who
feel the same way used his hashtag to explicitly outline the thoughts they have every day about school
shootings. After his tweet became an internet phenomenon, Teen Vogue reports that Schneidawind
wanted to print the responses and send them to Paul Ryan in an attempt to advocate for gun reform. 

 According to Good Morning America, about two weeks after Schneidawind’s hashtag became a Twitter
sensation, photographer Christina Angel, owner of Paint the Sky Photography, decided to create a
photography collection inspired by #IfIDieInASchoolShooting. She photographed children and teens
with targets pinned to their chests and signs that displayed what they would miss if they died in a
shooting. Like the hashtag, her photos went viral. However, unlike Schneidawind, Angel’s motives
weren’t political; instead, she seized an opportunity to make a powerful statement about modern
children’s fears rather than politics. Because both Angel and Scneidawind had different motives
but still expressed important ideas, their viral work shows that despite intention, internet activism is a
powerful tool because it reaches the masses and causes people to reflect on specific situations. 

 Below are several examples of the photos taken by Angel. Her complete series consists of 13 photos.

The current articles and tweets surrounding #IfIDiedInASchoolShooting show a particular trend:
anyone can use social media for activism. Schneidawind did it as a college freshman, and Angel did it as
a photographer with a small online following. By looking at the tweets inspired by the hashtag and the
various news articles of different political affiliations that covered the movement, the immediate and
far-reaching tool of social media activism is undeniable. Although Schneidawind and Angel may have had
different intentions, they still proved that the internet is a powerful—and albeit essential—tool in
today's activism. 

#IfIDieInASchoolShooting’s Impact on Twitter

After Schneidawind’s initial tweet went viral, many individuals from a vast age demographic adopted the hashtag to provide insight on their own experiences. The widespread use of the hashtag implied that many people—including students, parents, and educators—harbored anxieties due to the increase in school shootings in the U.S.

 Many of the students who used the hashtag confronted their mortality at a young age. They discussed the important parts of life that they would miss, such as graduation, marriage, and having children. Some even talked about what their parents would lose if they died, such as their only son or daughter. Take a look at some of the sobering examples:


While some of the hashtags were sentimental, others were bluntly political. Some students used the hashtag to politicize their experiences or their anxieties about shootings. They crafted concise calls-to-action, instructing their Twitter followers to advocate for gun control in their name.


On the other hand, some students disagreed that gun reform is necessary, claiming that guns don’t kill people—only people kill people. They used the hashtag as a political statement as well, but they took a more conservative approach.


Of course, parents and educators have fears of shootings as well, so they used the hashtag to discuss their own experiences in the wake of shooting increases. Educators were vulnerable and revealed their anxieties attached to becoming protectors against attackers, and parents tweeted about losing their children or dying when picking up their children from school.

The variety of tweets from the vast demographic shows, once again, how powerful social media activism can be; Schneidawind simply tweeted about his beliefs, which inspired several people from different walks of life to do the same. Some agreed with his original sentiment of gun reform, and some didn’t. Regardless, #IfIDiedInASchoolShooting went viral on Twitter and sparked discussions everywhere, including news outlets of differing political viewpoints, which is another topic worth discussing.
#IfIDieInASchoolShooting’s Impact on Traditional Media Outlets

Even though the hashtag definitely made its rounds on Twitter, professional coverage of it helped facilitate discussion on broader levels and worked to shape the narrative of the story. Interestingly, the coverage of the hashtag origin remains mostly the same regardless of the individual biases and factors within the publishers who ran this story. Most left-leaning publishers, such as Washington Post, report on Scheidawind’s start to this hashtag much in the same way as right-leaning articles, like The Hill. 

Regardless of political affiliation, the basics of the story remain the same, with various publishers making use of individual tweets and photos to showcase their arguments. The sentiment of a universal condemnation of the school shootings is true; however, some news sites believe the hashtag is political while others don't. The Hill, for example, is a right-leaning site, and in its article, the only mention of gun control or the NRA is within one of the tweets that it used. According to  The Hill’s article, Angel said, “There are so many people who understand the message we’re spreading, that understand at its roots, it isn’t political.” 

Fox19Now makes a similar case in a different way. The article from Fox19Now makes no mention of Scheidawind’s start to the hashtag. Instead, the article talks about Angel’s photography with the Paint the Sky Photography Facebook Page. The article goes out of its way to assure the reader that the issue isn’t political. The news source says, “She [Angel] and the students involved in the project believe that the photos are not about politics or politicians or about the ongoing debate surrounding guns." This focus provides a stark contrast to more left-leaning articles.  BBC’s article specifically points out that “many thousands of young people used the hashtag to call for the reform of gun control legislation." 

It seems clear that right-leaning media outlets tried to avoid political inclinations when reporting on the hashtag, and left-leaning outlets discussed the hashtag as a political movement. However, one thing is universal: the hashtag made a statement that was powerful enough to reach news outlets of all political affiliations, and whether they were conservative or liberal, all outlets discussed it in a positive light to promote the collective aversion to school shootings. 

In many ways, both the individual tweets and the responses of newspapers are the same as this political divide occurs on multiple levels of social media. The difference for bigger news sites, however, is that they can amplify the opinions of the majority, whereas the individual’s platform is all their own. The fact that #IfIDieInASchoolShooting went viral is proof that digital activism is effective because it shows how widespread it becomes.
Is Social Media Activism Beneficial?
Social media activism is visible on multiple levels in the modern era. Thanks to the accessibility to social media, it is possible for people like Schneidawind to make statements that reach thousands. Professionals used to regulate the field of activism, but the internet has created a shift that includes anyone and everyone into social and political movements. It’s thanks to this innovation that anyone can participate in discourse. Political or not, the hashtag #IfIDieInASchoolShooting bonds everyone together under a fundamental theme: their humanity. The condemnation of tragedies on the national level speaks to a truth held universally; humanity’s belief in the value of human life.

#IfIDieInASchoolShooting is a great example of beneficial activism. Maybe Schneidawind didn't create immediate gun reform as he intended, but he started a conversation and created a way for people from all walks of life to connect, and that's the beginning to any radical change. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

#OwnVoices

-
Image
Introduction Authors in majority groups (e.g. white, straight, male, abled, etc.) have long told stories that are outside of their experience. For instance, think of an abled man writing about a woman struggling with bipolar disorder. Some may argue that someone with a similar identity and perspective should be writing such a story, rather than the man. After all, a story told by someone within a certain group would be more authentic. Yet, what if the man's mother had experience bipolar disorder, and he'd been close with her? Should he be allowed and encouraged to write her story? Who decides what constitutes a lived experience? Enter the hashtag #OwnVoices. [2] #OwnVoices hit Twitter in 2015. The movement focuses on furthering diversity in publishing by having the author be a member of the marginalized group that the story represents, which is what the hashtag denotes. The idea is that books will have better representation if marginalized authors write from their own perspecti...
Read more

#BuryYourGays

-
Image
#BuryYourGays Travis: Introduction The media trope that has now been deemed as “Bury Your Gays” has lived a whole life of its own, even prior to its emergence as a hashtag on social media platforms like Twitter. Through its time in television shows and movies, the Bury Your Gays Trope has evolved in various ways; the main difference is the reason the trope is used throughout various periods of time. The title of “Bury Your Gays” expresses the trope it labels in a fairly self-explanatory way - media often kills Queer characters to the point that the narrative decision to do so has received “trope” status. However, how did this trope begin, how has it changed, and how can we grow to become more aware of its existence? Context Figure 1: Side-by-side of Ursula and Divine, the drag queen that inspired Ursula's design. To understand the ideology behind Bury Your Gays , we first have to look at the cultural climate surrounding the Queer community at the time. In the very early stages of t...
Read more

Istandwithahmed

-
Image
#istandwithahmed In 2016, a boy by the name of Ahmed Mohamed entered school with a homemade alarm clock. This homemade creation was mistaken for a bomb. Bringing his project to school led him to be arrested by the police. People all over the country took to social media to voice their opinions, anger, and support. The hashtag #istandwithahmed was created for those to show support of Ahmed and encourage his dream to pursue robotics despite the newfound fear for what might result from his creations. Social media not only allowed Ahmed’s story and voice to be heard, but also revealed that the world wants to come together to call out injustice. On the day Ahmed was escorted, he was wearing a NASA shirt, reinforcing he is a student with a strong interest in science and robotics. The photo of Ahmed, paired with an article by Business Insider, has become iconic with this movement. #istandwithahmed is the story of a boy with a love for robotics and science whose dream was met with backlash by...
Read more