A Radical Message

Essena O’Neill was a famous Instagram model who recently posted a radical blog on October 31^st 2015 revealing the dangers behind social media. She first posted a vlog on Vimeo and then two days later posted a clip on YouTube explaining her decision to quite social media, in the mean time she deleted over two thousand of her Instagram pictures and renamed her Instagram “social media is not real life”. O’Neill explained how her life was negatively impacted by instagram as she spent most of her days going to extremes to get the ‘perfect picture’ and being paid by companies to promote their products.  Essena O’Neill's radical message went viral.

Another radical whose revolutionary message went viral was that of Thomas Paine in the late eighteenth century. Pain created a pamphlet called Common Sense which argued for America’s independence and separation from the British power (Standage, 140).

Both O’Neill and Paine’s content of communication were very radical, but the message was articulated in different modes of communication. Both authors used simplified language to articulate the message so that the general public was able to understand. However, O’Neills message became popular faster than Paine's, because it was more accessible. O’Neill shared her message through social media, meaning that it was quickly shared on different social networks and made available to anyone who had internet access. Meanwhile, Common Sense was a pamphlet and only one thousand copies were published at first, thus it took longer for Paine's message to reach the majority of the population. Furthermore, rather then individuals simply digitally sharing Common Sense, people had to read aloud Paine’s pamphlet in coffee shops or physically share their copy with a friend. Hence the communication modes of affect took longer for Paine then that of O’Neill's. In other words, individuals were tentative to form an opinion about Common Sense, until they knew what their peers thought. Meaning, that they had to wait till the friends read the text then write a letter or discuss it face to face before coming to a conclusive decision about Common Sense (Standage 139-145).  However O’Neill’s blog received immediate feedback as individuals were able to view their peers thoughts by reading the comments written on the blog, and also take note of their social media friends who shared the message on viral networking sites. Hence, O’Neills blog gained power/popularity faster, rather than Paine’s which took a while to be recognized and become influential (mode of accumulation).