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Alusine Kabba
Professor Rodrick
QS 115
25 September 2016
Social Media Helps the LGBTQ Community
The LGBT community has struggled throughout history to become accepted and
receive the equality that they deserve. Generation after generation society begins to
have different feelings and views toward the LGBT community. Though we the
community don't get all of the respect that we deserve, with time things are becoming
more equal with the occurrences such and approval of same-sex marriage in every
state. I believe that we are all beginning to become all people rather than items that are
labeled as something or someone. Social media has a big part on helping and guiding
the LGBT community through guidance, support, love, and the most hardest part of
being categorized in the community from others, acceptance.
Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change pointed out the idea that media
is actually a great way to represent different social groups such as the LGBTQ
community. Throughout the article they speak of how the queer community has been
putting use to certain social medias such as Twitter. With twitter you have a much wider
range of reaching out to people, they explain, and it makes whoevers situation much
more easier to deal with because they then notice that they are not the only person out
there and begin to gain support throughout these groups. Even President Obama and
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have posted videos and actual posts on social media
on how the use of social media isnt a bad thing once it begins to bring people together.

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Social media has become a gateway for anyone to meet others and the LGBT
community in particular has been using it and a great way. Social media is used to
represent different groups and the LGBT community uses it and a great way to support
all. They bring in and accept everyone to their inner circle and since social media has
such a wide range there's a greater chance to reach out to everyone. The "It gets Better
Project" was a social media campaign that reached out to any kid in need. It was very
successful in helping anyone who needed it. It was created to prevent incidents such as
the two suicides committed by two young teenagers who were treated terribly and
bullied because they were gay (Salzburg Academy). "With the surge of support from
LGBT rights, there is been a surge in the LGBT social media campaigns" (Salzburg
Academy) and because of the surge of social media campaigns more people are
beginning to get the help that they are seeking. Social media is not always a good thing,
but when it comes to helping people and guiding them with support and acceptance, it is
great and gets the job done by bringing people together.
Once President Obama came into office and stated how he supports same sex
marriage and outburst of support and guidance opened up through social media. Social
media helps those who might not necessarily receive help from anyone of their
surroundings. According to Christina Silva from IBT social media has made it easier for
people to be socially accepted. Through her studies she has learned that the LGBT
community has become a lot more comfortable with expressing themselves through
social media, either with it being able to show their friends their significant other or

partner or to being able to come out as themselves publicly. Seeing photographs of

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families in timelines, hearing about milestones in each others families and seeing the
hardship faced by loving and committed couples has an incredible impact on how
people think about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, Osborn (2012) NPQ
and that is why I believe things are changing because now people have a direct view
from social media of how living in the LGBT community really is and that its not much
different from any other life style and give direct proof that we are all just people and
nothing should really define us. The social media program called Facebook has had an
outburst of LGBT supporters who came out through their accounts publicly. "Roughly six
million of Facebook's United States users identified as LGBT and 800,000 came out last
year" IBT(2015) and that's because of all the supporters from the social media users
and others. Facebook statistics on coming out has really increased once the legalization
on same sex marriage was approved. The fact that Facebook really accepts and
supports the LGBT community brings more people to begin to accept themselves and
come out to their friends on Facebook. John Hoffman from NPO says that social media
was originally made for story telling, so basically explaining how your day was or what
was the highlight of lowness of your day. The LGBTQ community made that statement
of use; all of our lives are big huge stories waiting to be told and the one outstanding
storing for the Queer Community would be your coming out story. He explains how
society has began to change as we are now able to express our selves through social
media. With Obama supporting the LGBT community and the legalization of same-sex
marriage in every state, it has made a lot more queer categorize people comfortable
with who they are.
Throughout the past few years society has began to grow and accept all kinds of

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people. Social media has definitely helped all different social groups including the LGBT
community to reach out to a lot more people and receive all the acceptance and support
that anyone struggling with any type of situation would need. It has made it a lot more
easier and safer to meet up with people or just have a conversation with someone.
Coming out could no longer be a thing anymore because social media is beginning to
make people more comfortable to be who they are and it could be the norm now and it
should be. Now that society is learning that we are all people, things are beginning to
change especially with the help of social media.