We encountered a number of variables that affected the validity of the corporate posts and thereby the memory of the social justice movements. These include:

• followers responded by holding corporations accountable for lack of action:
  • ColourPop Cosmetics, Converse Calvin Klein
  • Nordstrom , Disney
• followers responded with irrelevant comments to disrupt the threads:
  • Facebook, Starbucks
  • Amazon , Warner Bros.
• a noticeable discrepancy between the number of followers and the number of likes and comments:
  • PepsiCo, Target, RiteAid
  • Nordstrom
• corporations are gaining an association with the social justice movements. Read more:
  • We’re Entering the Age of Corporate Social Justice 
• corporations are striving to stay relevant and gain new consumers through the social justice movements. Read more:
  • Companies declared “Black Lives Matter” last year, and now they’re being asked to prove it 

Even with these variables, our survey found that the followers’ comments and corporate social media messages combined affect the memory of the social justice movements “a moderate amount” as determined by 34.29% of survey participants, “a great deal” as collected by 8.57% and “a little” by 22.86%. These categories quantify 65.72%, or, substantially more than half of those surveyed, which suggests that social media activity is affecting the collective memory of these movements to some degree.

The chart below represents the action that corporations took based upon the posts collected. The greatest activity, 42%, was social media account posts that displayed a message to the hashtag.