This week the news has been filed with reports about Ahmed Mohamed, a high school student arrested when his teacher mistook his home-made clock for a bomb.  Social media has been ablaze with the #IStandWithAhmed hashtag. Today the college student who started the hashtag is profiled in a USA Today article. She argues that the response to the hashtag shows the power of social media to give voice to the voiceless. Let’s hope that this will contribute to lasting social change to reduce the racism and Islamaphobia that the arrest illustrate.

Today I came across an example of how a Twitter post led to action, as Netflix changed its description of the movie Pochontas after a critical tweet. The author of the tweet concludes the article by noting, “sometimes I’m still amazed by the power of the internet.” Indeed!