Analyse af 'The Righteous Anger of Parkland Survivors'

The Righteous Anger of the Parkland Shooting’s Teen Survivors

School shootings in the US, have over the years, become a growing problem. The victims of these shootings are the students, teachers and of course the parents to the victims. In recent year more and more students have expressed their opinion. Most of them blame the loose gun laws in the US. Many of these opinions are represented in Robinson Meyer’s “The Righteous Anger of the Parkland Shooting’s Teen Survivors” from 2018.

Meyer’s article explores how teenagers are becoming activist for gun control. Meyer uses the recent event of the school shooting of Douglas high school. His article analyses the survivors’ reactions and their use of social media to express their concern for gun control. Meyer has included various tweets in his article, where the victims have expressed their outrage and concern for the recent shooting. His use of the teenager’s tweet in the article gives the topic some form of pathos, because we see the impact of the shootings and the problem surrounding the gun laws of the US. Meyer goes on to explain how today’s teenagers grew up with social media and saw how it was used for political goals: “The current cohort came to heightened political awareness during the 2016 election, meaning they have watched the logic of Twitter absorb the presidency while adopting and adjusting the language of Twitter – and Snapchat and Instagram – for themselves” (P. 4 ll. 35-37). Here he is stating that the younger generation, the ones who grew up using and were exposed to social media, knows how to react and how to use social media effectively, and that they know the power of which social media have. As a result, the survivors of Douglas high school, used social media to raise awareness about the cause of the mass shootings: “Their lives have been drenched in media, and they have made much of that media themselves. They are used to telling their story. And when their story suffered a catastrophe, they told it” (P.4 ll. 39-40).