After the popular Puerto Rican TV personality and gossip
queen #LaComay said on her show #Superexclusivo that two of the four suspects
in the murder of publicist #JoseEnrique were allegedly prostitute women he
picked up and that he was partially to blame for walking into an area of
#PuertoRico known to be dangerous territory, a #transnational #calltoarms #socialmediacampaign
was born. The movement called to not
only take La Comay off the air but to raise awareness and reduce the
skyrocketing violent crimes on the island.
The use of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram were most helpful in
providing a space for Puerto Ricans both on and off the island to unite, give
face to the reality of murder crimes on the island, and moved people to take
physical action offline.
Hashtags such as #todossomosjoseenrique on Facebook and
mostly Twitter brought together a community of Puerto Ricans to fight an issue that
wasn’t made big just because of the one guy that was murdered but because as
the hashtag suggest, every Puerto Rican was affected by the record breaking
murder crimes. What made the hashtag even
more powerful was that the Puerto Ricans using it were not just from the
island. Puerto Ricans from both the
island and the United States took part in the campaign to bring justice. As suggested by Harlow’s research “Social
Media and Social Movement: Facebook and an online Guatemalan justice movement
that moved offline”, social media in this case allowed for the social movement
to gain momentum and support without the interference of time and space. Puerto Ricans from all over posted pictures
and commented their opinions on the issue. Also protests and vigils were held in
both Puerto Rico and New York connecting with the theory that online activism
enhances offline participation (Ramos,
Zuania. "Puerto Rico Crime: Protests On And Off The Island As 'Todos Somos
Jose Enrique' Movement Continues." The Huffington Post.
TheHuffingtonPost.com, 9 Dec. 2012. Web. 25 Sept. 2014). For an otherwise divided community
because of believed “differences” in culture, the use of social media allowed
them all to see that they were more the same than different in wanting to
diminish the violent crimes on the island as seen with yet another hashtag
#bastaya (#enoughalready).
For decades, the TV personality La Comay was the go to news
outlet for Puerto Ricans. Whether it was
real news or just gossip, Puerto Ricans could be heard saying, “Well the Comay
said this” and “The Comay said that.” In
the wake of the #todossomosjoseenrique campaign, there also grew
#todossomoslacomay. The users and
followers of the hashtag voiced their disapproval with how the Puerto Rican
community and the news engines were placing blame on a show that was made
popular by a puppet. One twitter post
read, “Enough already with these small groups that want to control what is
seen, said, and thought starting with @PedroJulio #todossomoslacomay and
#noalacensura” which translates to #notocensorship. As mentioned with the Harlow and Harp
article, “Collective Action on the Web” social media allowed an alternative
voice to be heard. Simply, this case
could be the murder of a Puerto Rican man but two other ideas emerged, the
first being the high murder rate on the island and the second being addressing
media gatekeepers. On one hand, Puerto
Ricans united to bring awareness to the violence on the island. They didn’t allow for the death of Enrique to
be misconstrued with allegations as they saw La Comay was doing but on the
other hand it allowed Puerto Ricans to dig deeper to question who was really to
blame. Was it La Comay? Was it the newspaper La Comay was said to had
been quoting? Or was it the Puerto Rican
community in general for not having done anything before and just gossiping
about it? One facebook post ranted about
how the government does whatever it wants and on a past murder that had still
been unsolved. The facebook post read,
“Where is the justice for #Lorenzito? In
these cases we need the voice of #lacomay.” Lorenzito was an eight year old boy whose murder suspects
included his mother and her boyfriend.
Alternative voices in this situation allowed for there to be an
intersectionality of issues all raised by the use of social media.
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