Studio Session 1 Reflection - Occupy

Before our first studio session, I had heard of Occupy Wall Street but I had no idea what it was or what the movement stood for. So during the first studio session, I spent most of my time familiarizing myself with the topic and learned that when the movement first started in 2011 in the United States, there was little organization and a heavy reliance on the Internet and social media. At the first protest in New York City, a video went viral of women being pepper sprayed by the police and from this video, the movement grew around the web. I think that it will be really interesting to see how this movement used the Internet to gain supporters and spread their movement. I think that today, I am very use to using the Internet and social media methods to promote something that I am interested in and it is hard to think back to before social media blew up and how people promoted campaigns. One thing that caught my interest was how at the first Occupy Wall Street protest, the protesters were upset with the lack of media coverage they were getting and because of this, published their own newspaper “The Occupied Wall Street Journal.”

One thing that my group discussed is where we want to focus our research. We wondered if we should focus on how Occupy used the Internet and the Web to initially start their movement or how they used the Internet and the Web to spread their movement around the country and the world.