After my little run in with the Ada Police I couldn't help but think about the George Zimmerman Trial over the summer. I didn't do much research on the trial until after the verdict, however I was kept up to date via Twitter. During that time period I saw a variety of emotions and reactions to the trial all from people wanting "Justice For Trayvon" and all who felt as Zimmerman was innocent and did nothing wrong. Thanks to Twitter I was able to see news clips from the trial, read news articles, and actually gained some interest. Since I worked almost constantly over the summer it was a fast and easy way to get the news not only about the trial but other things what were happening at the time. However, with a tool like Twitter it can show that millions of people care about this topic but it can also show how fast people get over topics like this as well.
Think about it, after Zimmerman was found not guilty everyone on Twitter instantly became a lawyer, a civil rights activist, and/or Zimmerman's or Trayvon Martin's best friend. For those who were team Trayvon wanted Zimmerman's blood. You would've thought everyone on my timeline grew up with the kid, or something, bringing race into the mix and dropping legal terms as if they knew what they were really talking about. Team Zimmerman, on the other hand, also threw in some legal terms, and praised Florida's flawed legal system. I for one had no opinion on the matter, since I was in the dark about the whole issue.
For two weeks the news talked about the Zimmerman verdict, people still tweeted about it, and even parody accounts added in their two cents, but that lasted just two weeks. Two weeks later it seemed like everyone is like, "Trayon, who?". Not a single tweet in sight, the news hardly reports, and you know it's real when it isn't even a Trending Topic anymore. The people who were so invested in the trial basically treated it like MySpace, it was something to do but, once something more interesting comes along people abandon it.
That's just my two cents, but I'm sure people will start to care again if the Martin family does an appeal. Until next time, y'all...
This is actually an observation I have made in the past, and also one reason I really didn't care for social media in the past. However, the public does have a short attention span. So, who can really blame people for wanting to be a part of the buzz, then letting it drop when it's over? If the information is not constantly thrown into the public, eventually people become disinterested, no matter how important the matter once was. Obviously there are exceptions, but for the most part this is why public relations is so important for a business. Public relations professionals are the people who keep filling the public's mind with this information about the business for which they work.
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