The artifact I chose to do my analysis on was a tweet that I retweeted on Twitter. It’s an article about the Parkland shooter, Nicholas Cruz, and how infamous “serial killer groupies” are sending him money, letters and explicit photos of themselves. After reading the article, I was thoroughly disgusted and shocked. Almost all of the $800 in Cruz’s commissary was sent to him by fans. He was also sent a disturbing letter from an 18-year-old girl who said she was attracted to him and sent nine suggestive photos from an unknown woman. This reminded me a lot of Charles Manson’s groupies who would send the killer letters while he was in prison. I retweeted it in hopes that my followers would see and react as I did. I use Twitter more often than any other social media because it’s where I can reach the broadest audience. It’s also the platform where I have the most “followers” so it’s logical that I would reach more people through it. The post is actually a link to a Washington Post article with a text description of what it’s about. The person who posted the tweet, DeRay McKesson, is a social activist, so his twitter profile has a lot of articles about social and political issues going on in America. He is known for his activism specifically on this platform and was actually arrested after he participated in a protest in Baton Rogue after the shooting of Alton Sterling, an unarmed black man. This tweet warranted posting in the first place because serial killer groupies are a phenomena that have been around since the popularization of such serial killers such as Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, and Jeffrey Dahmer. It is also socially relevant as the Parkland shooting occurred in February of this year, 2018. When I retweeted this particular post, I didn’t have a specific group of people in mind that I didn’t want to see the post. In retrospect, I guess I wouldn’t want the dubbed “serial killer groupies” to see this as they portray them in the article as disturbing and wrong. I guess younger people would also be an audience I wouldn’t want reading this as there are explicit mentions of inappropriate behavior.

Link to article : https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/03/28/the-parkland-shooter-has-fans-and-theyre-sending-him-letters-and-money/?utm_term=.fb1a131a3a0c