The youth-led March For Our Lives is founded on the idea of young people forced into advocacy by unthinkable tragedy. The movement exists in a digital age where the lines between the physical and digital have become increasingly blurred. By using the work of scholars such as Manuel Castells and Henry Jenkins as a foundation to analyze this movement, we can gain a deeper understanding of why MFOL has succeeded and failed in the ways that it has. These noted digital activism academics will be used to explore how collective anger is expressed and created through the use of personal stories about gun violence to create unity across the United States in the hopes of fueling legislative action. These concepts will then collide with classic film theory, utilizing scholars such as Bertolt Brecht, Walter Benjamin, and Bela Balazs to examine how this physical protest is immortalized in a digital format, using film conventions to translate the emotional impact online. This analysis points to the unique structure of a movement fueled by emotion and run by a digitally native generation. It will also point out ways in which the original research on digital social movements can be updated to reflect changing models of social activism.

In the traditional agenda-setting theory, the agenda-setters were the news media and the public has a minimal role in the process of agenda-setting, which makes the public a passive receiver located at the bottom in the top-down agenda-setting dynamics. This study claims that with the development of Information communication technologies, primarily social media, the networked public may be able to set their own agendas through connective actions, outside the influence of the news media agenda. There is little empirical research focused on development and dynamics of public agenda-setting through social media platforms. Understanding the development and dynamics of public agenda-setting may be key to accounting for and overcoming conflicting findings in previous reverse agenda-setting research. This study examined the public agenda-setting dynamics through a case of gun violence prevention activism Twitter network, the #MarchForOurLives Twitter network. This study determined that the agenda setters of the #MarchForOurLives Twitter network are the key Never Again MSD student leaders and the March For Our Lives. The weekly reflected important events and issues and the identified topics were highly co-related with the themes examined in the tweets created by the agenda setters. The amplifiers comprised the vast majority of the tweets. The advocates and the supporters consisted of 0.44% and 4.43% respectively. The tweets made by the agenda setters accounted for 0.03%. The young activists and the like-minded and participatory public could continuously make changes taking advantage of technologies, and they could be the hope in the current and future society.

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