Persuasive Essay On Ebola

Online communities, such as Facebook, Twitter, or WhatsApp, allows individuals to receive world news in a matter of seconds. Social networks have become micro-blogs that people use as tools for political and social revolutions. Henry Jenkins, a media scholar and Professor of Journalism and Cinematic Arts, argues in his essay "Convergence Cultures," that technology convergence is actually a cultural movement that ordinary people participate in (434). Jenkins claims that "when people take media into their own hands, the results can be wonderfully creative; they can also be bad news for everyone involved" (443). The 2014 Ebola virus outbreak on social media demonstrates the problematic side to user-generated platforms but also the benefits of social media.
One of the popular tweets came from music performer, Chris Brown. Chris Brown tweeted "I don't know ... But I think that this Ebola epidemic is a form of population control. Shit is getting crazy bruh." Brown’s tweet suggests that he only posted about Ebola to start a trend and get paid. Pia Gadkari's article, "How does Twitter make money?" states that twitter is a nonprofit company but that Twitter makes money in three ways: “...by promoting a tweet that will appear in people's timelines, promoting a whole account, or promoting a trend." With 15.1 million followers, Chris Brown’s devoted fans will begin to retweet and post about Ebola. The downside of social media, the ability to export information in seconds all over the world, causes Brown’s opinion on Ebola a bad reputation of the United States. Individuals from other countries that did not know about the scare would have thought that the U.S. government actually was terrorizing their citizens. Chris Brown’s tweet demonstrates the political turmoil social media