Blog Post 5 - Freedom Convoy

The Freedom Convoy of February 2022, in which protestors took over the streets of Ottawa, would not have been possible without social media. Right wing individuals on social media apps such as Facebook and Tiktok expressed that they felt the government was stifling their freedom with vaccine and mask mandates meant to control the spread of COVID-19. When truckers were told they couldn't enter the USA unless they were fully vaccinated, this set social media ablaze, and people opposed to the mandates agreed they had to do something. The solution was to occupy the parliament building and surrounding areas in Ottawa. The protests caused problems with individuals engaging in activities such as dancing on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and displaying racist symbols such as the swastika and Confederate flag. After over a month of protesting, the Emergency Act was invoked and the police forced the protests to be shut down. 

If McLuhan could have witnessed the formation of the Freedom Convoy, he would have wanted to group it into either hot media or cold media. Because the Freedom Convoy was created through multiple different uses of media instead of just one, it can be difficult to classify. Some elements of cool media is that it is very high in audience participation and tribalizing people together to complete a common goal. Some elements of hot media include engaging a single sense in high definition, as many of the social media posts that led to the protests were written posts. Overall, the Freedom Convoy leans more towards cool media, not because of the media itself but because of how it was utilized. The Freedom Convoy media was entirely created through audience participation and because of that, it prided itself on being the voice of the people. This made it fundamentally a part of cool media, as its entire goal of rallying people against the government was done using its audience participation. 


Comments

  1. Lydia G.December 12, 2022 at 7:28 PM

    Hi Ashley, Great post!

    I completely agree with how it is difficult to classify the convoy into one form of media because of how many different elements its protestors used. I also believe that it leans more toward cool media because of how each media was used to reach a certain goal. In my blog post, I mentioned how everything changes over time which results in the way people utilize certain elements. With change throughout time, I believe that the meaning and purpose of a certain technological advancement also develop and evolve.

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  2. JustinCoutoDecember 13, 2022 at 1:49 PM

    Great post. I also believe McLuhan would view the Freedom Convoy as an example of cold media. Not only did the protests require a lot of audience participation, but they engaged multiple senses through their social media, the television news, and radio among others. I like how you mention the freedom convoy being conveyed as the voice of the people because it truly was astonishing how large the protests actually became by its end. The message from the Freedom Convoy was also said to have made waves in other countries as well further showing it being the voice of the people as you mentioned.

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  3. Sarah HumphreysDecember 13, 2022 at 2:03 PM

    I really enjoyed reading your post Ashley! I also determined McLuhan would view the Freedom Convoy as more of a cool media, as there was a lot of room for audiences to interpret media, and the Freedom Convoy required high audience participation in engaging in multiple senses.

    I think your post is very strong as you also acknowledged the difficulty in classifying the Freedom Convoy into one type of media. I definitely had difficulty in my decision, as I went back and forth from cool to hot media when deciding what McLuhan would view the Freedom Convoy as. I believe the Freedom Convoy definitely had both hot and cool media characteristics, however, I decided that the cool media characteristics outweighed the hot.

    Great Post!

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