Within the past five years, social media applications have provided an accessible platform for many popular movements like Black Lives Matter, #MeToo and the Women’s March to begin spreading their message. However, it has become increasingly difficult for small movements- ideas that have just begun to bloom- to build deep roots amongst so many trending topics that seem to leave as rapidly as they came. When addressing this question, Twitter was the first app that came to my mind, but I realize it is not specific to a cause. Though it has served as the jumping-off point for many recent calls for social change, I couldn’t help but wonder if there were such a site specifically addressing these topics in real time.

A quick search of “social justice app” brought me to quite the list of websites, including The New Yorker and Tech.co; the one I found most interesting, however, is web-based app called CrowdVoice. This website and its corresponding app are specifically designed to “track voices of protest.”

The site hosts both “feature voices” and “current voices” with an array of headlines featuring protests and grassroots movements, both nationally and internationally. This could be useful for those seeking to share a cause they a working passionately to build via the app’s “Add A Voice” option, or useful for researchers like me, not only looking for popular causes, but those that have not bloomed via social network.

The website is effective due to both its usability and accessibility; the home page features between eight and ten current protest headlines. These headlines are followed by statistics that are easy to read and categorically organized by recent updates, new facts, or feature stories.  

Website like CrowdVoice allow for interested parties to not only better understand what is happening in the world around them, but to plant the seeds of meaningful change in movements that affect them in an arena that is much easier to navigate than a traditional social media site like Facebook or Twitter.