Monthly Archives: November 2018

Maintaining a conscious approach is not always easy when discussing something as colossal as social media. It feels as though every claim made about its ability to contribute to society can be countered by ways in which it is seen working against society. Indeed my perspective on both Castell’s and Dean’s chapters, as well as the relationship between social media and sociopolitical change, has changed.

In preparation for our debate, I was assigned Castell’s chapter on The Egyptian Revolution. What stood out most to me was Castell’s argument that social media, mostly Twitter and Facebook, provided the event space to host planned protests and give voice to otherwise silenced individuals during the Egyptian Revolution (60). Thus, my belief in social media as a positive tool that benefits sociopolitical challenges through their increased attention, was satisfied. However, following the debate and specifically my role as an assessor, I gravitated more towards the potential that the same promotional capacity of social media can be a negative attribute. Naturally, as a reader I was captivated by the structure of Castell’s argument, highlighting the importance more than the danger of social media’s role in the Egyptian Revolution. Conclusively, the debate allowed me to move in a liberated mental space and visualize multiple perspectives and contexts.

Being actively involved in a debate allowed me to obtain a relatively balanced outlook on the relationship between social media and sociopolitical change given the context of the Egyptian Revolution. However, not being an active participator in the debate on Dean’s chapter led me to an even more developed intellectual stance. There is a certain benefit in listening, but not being able to contribute to an argument, which enhanced my sense of awareness and critical capacity. Furthermore, only having read one of the chapters – Castell’s – made me feel a certain foreignness that was comforting.

A notable difference between Castell and Dean’s perspectives is the audience that Dean’s text targets. Perhaps this effect derives from the fact that his text has a broader focus on “Technology and Communicative Capital” using many examples to support his thesis, as opposed to Castell’s focus a particular occurrence – The Egyptian Revolution – which is equally, if not more, important. This gives Dean’s argument more flexibility and the opportunity for reader to draw on their own personal experiences on Social Media. While both texts assume a certain cultural context of their readers, they both dominate a certain perspective – Dean looking predominantly at how social media can hinder sociopolitical change and Castell at how it helps. Ultimately, my lack of positional bias throughout the duration of this activity shaped my ultimate conscious outlook. It is true – Social Media can be an asset and a barrier to Sociopolitical change.

For the debate, I was a part of the “against” side for Dean’s resolution, “be it resolved that social media inhibits sociopolitical change.” Prior to the debate, upon hearing the resolution, I disagreed immensely because I strongly believed that social media enables sociopolitical change, because I have seen first-hand the discourse online when there is a political crisis, or when certain groups are trying to make a change. Social media certainly, in my view, does not inhibit sociopolitical change. Whether it enables it is, as Dean suggested, merely up to the environment and time period.

When, however, my team began to do research for the debate, I was able to understand how the opposing side may have a valid argument. Dean explains in their article that social media has a very high volume of content always circulating, and because of this voices do not always get heard. I still stand by my position, which is that social media does not inhibit sociopolitical change, but I was more willing, after doing some research, to understand how it is all dependant on the setting. For example, an online movement in the USA, where the majority of the population have mobile devices and social media accounts, may cause a larger impact than somewhere where the general population does not have access to such resources.

Castell’s argument, as I understood it, was mainly about how the media enables sociopolitical change by creating a new way of communication that does not rely on spoken language. This definitely changed my perspective of the topic, because I had only looked into that effect of social media (the use of images and videos) very slightly for my own debate. Castell comparing this phenomena to animal communication helped me understand it even more. Castell’s and Dean’s major difference was just the way they thought about social media; Dean looked at it as some giant pool of content that we have to sift through to find meaning, whereas Castell, from what I gathered, sees social media as an extension of our own senses, a new way to communicate and gather information.

Overall, my general position on the resolutions has not changed, but instead my understanding has grown deeper. The other side of the debates have valid points, but their argument only helped me understand my own more clearly.

Knowing about the debate definitely caused me to engage with Dean’s article differently. Since I knew I would be arguing against Dean’s claim, my goal was to identify the missing evidence and unsupported assumptions in her case, in addition to understanding her perspective. As I read and reflected on the article, it was very clear that Dean viewed social media’s role in sociopolitical change as having a settled conclusion.

However, it became evident through the debate that there is not only one, or even two, angles from which to view the issue. My role as a presenter of our group’s rebuttal required me to look at social media’s affect on change from as many perspectives as I could come up with. As the opposition to the idea that social media inhibits sociopolitical change, my group had to first learn Dean’s side of the argument before we could formulate our side of it. Even after all the preparation, there were still points brought up during the debates that I had not considered beforehand.

Observation of both debates reinforced the multi-faceted nature of our subject. Although both debates centered around the same general topic, each one focused on slightly different aspects of the controversy. For example, those of us discussing Dean’s claim focused specifically on the impact of media messages and online activism. Whereas the dialogue on Dean’s perspective focused on the reasons for social media’s effectiveness (or lack thereof), the group debating Castells’ case looked at social media as a tool. The side upholding Castells’ argument chose to emphasize how communication platforms can be a helpful tool, particularly in revolutions, while the opposition pointed out how such platforms could be taken control of to suppress people. The examples used in both debates ranged from more recent news to historical events – like the Arab Spring uprisings and the massacre at Tiananmen Square – and from political events to cultural trends – such as the 2016 US Presidential Election and the ALS ice bucket challenge.

As social media has evolved, so has its usage and society’s behaviors along with it. Inevitably, the continual rise of social media will have implications, both good and bad, for our governments as well as society at large. Whether social media inhibits or enables sociopolitical change is a question that’s far from resolved. However, by examining the issue from every angle, perhaps we can find the key to making social media indisputably conducive to change.

Sources:

Dean, Jodi. “Ch. 1. Technology: The Promises of Communicative Capitalism .” Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics, Duke University Press, 2009, pp. 19–48.

Castells, Manuel. “The Egyptian Revolution.” Networks of Outrage and Hope , Polity, 2012, pp. 54–94.

Dean’s article focuses primarily on how the presence of social media and how its excessive use is, effectively not an efficient platform for promoting sociopolitical changes in societies. Throughout my preparation for the in-class debate on the topic of whether or not social media inhibits sociopolitical change, I knowingly read Dean’s article with the idea that I would be arguing for this prompt. While I do agree with some aspects of Dean’s article, I still have some opposing ideas. As a result of the debate and being able to hear the opposing role as well as the debate about Castell’s article, my opinion has stagnated in between the two arguments simply because I see how there are different outcomes in every situation.

While on one hand, I argued in the debate that social media is a circulation of information that no individual takes seriously and only contributes to that circulation to be a part of the majority, I have also come to realize that in opposition, there are many different scenarios where social media has made a positive impact on certain sociopolitical changes. Before hearing the other side of my debate as well as the other group’s, I had read the chapter of the article with one mindset. However, in doing this, I also began to question it afterwards. One example of this would be when I questioned how important social media is for communication and furthermore how all of this was done before the presence of social media and the internet existed.

While both debates gave me insight into the relationship between social media and sociopolitical change, there were a lot of points that unveiled different perspectives on the topic. Seeing as how Dean and Castell have very different views with respect to social media and its impact, I was able to notably identify and consider all sides before I could finalize my opinion. I was able to consider how on one hand, according to Castell, social media connected all individuals, bringing societies closer together versus how according to Dean, those connections made through online platforms were merely strategies for people to share their possibly ungenuine ideas and boost their egos while ultimately creating a pool of information that was not taken seriously.

Overall, I think that the debate gave me a great amount of insight on the topic and while neither debate prompted me to choose one specific side, I have come to a conclusion that it simply depends on the timing, situation and people to establish whether or not social media is an effective way of creating sociopolitical change.

Jodi Dean in the first chapter of his book Technology: The Promises of Communicative Capitalism makes an interesting, however, questionable appeal on how communicative capitalism and political activism through social media fail to succeed. My group, in the class debate, was designated to contradict his beliefs by arguing against Dean’s resolution “be it resolved that social media inhibits social-political change.” During our preparation, my group and investigated what would be the possible counterarguments of the other group, therefore, we would be able to provide the best rebutting. The more I researched about the topic, the more I was sure that social media is, in fact, an essential part of for a political change. We are currently living the technology revolution, a social media era, in which social platforms are not only places where one can communicate with friends and family or create networks of people, but it is also a place where people are free to start a movement, have the liberty to speak their minds, manifest their opinions to the world, be heard and debate.

Some of Dean’s arguments, however, were also very convincing and hard to argue against. He used a variety of examples to support his claims, and utilized quotes and citations from other authors to make his point persuasive. After reading his text, it is not fair to say that I entirely disagree with his arguments, however, my opinion that social media and social platforms helps democracy and political activism remain the same, even after hearing all the arguments of the other groups. Moreover, Castell’s text was helpful to my group as it provided a lot of counterarguments to Dean’s text. What’s a better example of a successful revolution that started online if not the Arab Spring? Listening to the other groups debating, as well as analyzing their reasoning and defences, lead me to think about additional explanations I didn’t think previously. For example, the assessment group for Castell’s debate stated that riots and protest online fail to provide variety, due to the fact that technology is usually restricted to those who have access to it. Nevertheless, not everyone has access to this technology, one a more specific group of economically privileged people. To sum up, the debate was very helpful and instructive on helping me mould my ideas around Dean’s and Castell’s resolutions. In the end, I stick and believe even more that technology and political changed are related and can make an effective change in the real world.

My role in the debate was to assess the positions of both sides of the arguments and provide a result to who had the better rebuttal in the end. In order to do so I had to keep an open mind when reading through Dean’s article “Technology: The Promises of Communicative Capitalism”. When providing a result for a debate, you must take down important points for each side in preparation. When doing this I found that I had more points down for how social media inhibits sociopolitical change, this may have been because Dean’s article was ultimately very negative in relation to technology and the media although, when listening to the other side of the debate I was persuaded to think that social media has a strong influence in enabling socio-political change. They brought up points about the incredible #MeToo movement that went above and beyond to produce actual change and it started out online by people who created awareness of the issue. Their points about how the internet provides a faster and easier way to promote change with a large number of users, more that could ever be apart of a protest, stood out to me as well as change requires many voices. The only point I found that went against their statement was when they mentioned that memes encourage awareness for socio-political change. This kind of entertainment media is not something that can promote vast change in any political aspect as people can’t take the real issue seriously or even gain knowledge on it when watching a silly meme on Twitter. Ultimately, I agree with how the majority of social media can promote socio-political change by creating awareness but we ended up favouring the other side of the debate because of the examples they provided and how they communicated their argument.

When listening to the other debate of the Castell’s article I found it a bit easier to make a decision when regarding social media and socio-political change. Their arguments discussed a narrower topic than the Dean debate, the Egyptian Revolution. Because we watched The Square in class and had knowledge on the subject already, it was a bit more interesting to follow along when our classmates were debating. In the end, I sided with how socio-political change enables political change because of the amount of positive change that happened in Egypt from posting online and gathering awareness. They dethroned two dictators that were ruining the country from the numbers that they generated in protest and online.

I found this debate incredibly eye-opening and a valuable exercise to gain knowledge on both sides of the argument for social media and socio-political change when studying media studies. 

Works Cited

Castells, Manuel. “The Egyptian Revolution.” Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age, 2nd ed., 2015.

Dean, Jodi. “Technology: The Promises of Communicative Capitalism.” Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics, Duke University Press, 2009.

For someone who has always believed that social media was a boon to society and the modern world, going against a resolution for it seemed difficult to actually convict to the topic. While researching for the introductory statement I was gonna give, I started to realize the way social media actually restricted sociopolitical change in so many ways from the government putting a tax on social media in Uganda to arresting and banning influential users from social media in Singapore. Like this, I came to know of so much information that made me realize that even though social media is “free” it isn’t. In return for using their platform, we give our information, our clicks, our likes, etc which they use for their gain by selling it to other firms or help in pushing personal agenda or even sway users towards or away from a political agenda. My perspective entirely changed as I was looking at the “image” of social media from a consumers’ gain POV, but looking at the whole picture made me realize how it actually is a bane in its own ways. As I was doing the introduction, I knew I had to set the basis and foundation of which we would argue against Castells’ resolution and this forced me to broaden my mind and look at social media from an entirely different perspective which in turn changed my personal viewpoint on social media.

Watching and listening to the other group’s debate gave me another viewpoint as I was merely looking at it from a political aspect whereas they introduced the social detail of it. Key incidents of successful revolutions like the Tiananmen square revolt which occurred without the help of social media as compared to failed revolutions like the uprising of Egypt in 2011 which had the help of social media drives home the point that social media is more of a bane in sociopolitical situations due to the mere fact that the government can so easily warp or shut it down, thus making it an undependable tool if the goal is sociopoltical change.

As I learned about the Egyptian revolution, it was apparent to me that social media played a great role in its successes. Manuel Castells article “The Egyptian Revolution” coincided with my beliefs that social media enables sociopolitical change. Being able to present ‘for’ the statement, allowed me to fight on the side I believed in. Going into the debate I felt strongly about my beliefs, although I was open to hearing what the other group was going to propose.

The Castells reading expressed how social Media sites like Facebook, twitter and YouTube have given Egyptians a platform to express their beliefs and, therefore, spark a conversation on political issues. It was social media that allowed information and news to spread quickly across Egypt, allowing for the number of revolutionaries to increase rapidly. Our group felt strongly that during the revolution, social media gave Egyptians the ability to hear news straight from the source, unlike mainstream media outlets in which news was often skewed to paint the revolutionaries in a negative light. We believed that social media gave Egyptians a voice that could not be silenced by the government.

After taking part in the debate, most of my opinions stayed the same. The side arguing ‘against’ did have some valid points on how many revolutions have occurred throughout history before social media was invented. Although, I acknowledge that many great social movements have occurred, I believe that social media ultimately enhances the traditional forms of protest that have been used in the past. Hearing form the side that read the Dean article, it was evident that the article differed from the Castells reading as it relied on the idea that social media is unreliable and possibly invalid because anyone can post on social media.

In conclusion, my opinions on whether ‘be it resolved social media enables sociopolitical change’ have not been altered after partaking in the debate.

Works cited:

Castells, Manuel. “The Egyptian Revolution” Networks of Outrage an Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age, 2015.

As social media becomes increasingly ubiquitous in today’s culture and political climate, it is critical that we assess its efficacy in affecting sociopolitical change. In preparation for the in-class debate on this very topic, I was responsible for assessing Manuel Castells’s The Egyptian Revolution (2015). Furthermore, it was required that I make a case in favour of the aforementioned resolution. Going into this exercise, it was already my belief that social media could, in fact engender sociopolitical change, and given that it was my role to defend such a belief, I consequently read the assigned chapter in search of information which affirmed this position. Those in opposition of this argument made several strong points, such as social media’s extraneousness to the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square, thus causing me to analyze social media’s effectiveness more critically. However, my overall perspective remained largely unchanged after this debate. Following the second debate regarding The Promises of Communicative Capitalism (Dean 2009) however, my perspective on social media’s ability to affect sociopolitical change shifted slightly. The Egyptian Revolution (Castells 2015) focused primarily on social media’s ability to form networks and connectivity among protesters as well its ability to provide protesters with a platform to share their uncensored opinions. While Dean concedes this is true, she addresses how merely stating one’s opinion online is not an effective means of protest. She develops this point further by stating that in the weeks prior to the invasion of Iraq, “the terabytes of commentary and information, then, did not indicate a debate”, but instead got lost in the masses of circulating content and “cultural effluvia” that fills the online space. (Dean 2009). As a result, though social media provides a platform for people to call out an issue, it does very little in the way of solving said issue. This point was made very clearly in the second debate and resonated with me greatly. Therefore, while I retain that social media is an effective tool for protest insofar as it provides the infrastructure to callout social and political issues, I now believe that social media alone cannot affect sociopolitical change.

Works cited

Castells, Manuel. “The Egyptian Revolution.” Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age, 2nd ed., Wiley, 2015.

Dean, Jodi. “Technology: The Promises of Communicative Capitalism.” Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics, Duke University Press, 2009.

To end the first semester of my Arts Studies class, we looked at two articles written by Jodi Dean and Manuel Castells. These articles argued how social media affects sociopolitical change. I was assigned to read the Dean article, which argues social media’s inability to create sociopolitical change. Before reading the article, my thoughts on social media creating sociopolitical change were on the edge as I believed there are pros and cons to this argument. I was representing as an assessor and this, therefore did not help me come to a conclusion. I had to look at evidence from both sides, which is what I ultimately have done prior to the reading. This only made it harder for me to choose a side. Although the Dean articles speaks about the lack of sociopolitical change created by social media and how it does not go beyond the social media mediums, it is easy to create arguments going against her words. She speaks about how social media cannot go beyond its medium to create a large impact our society. As the information being portrayed on platforms get lost as more and more people share it with one another. Therefore making it difficult to understand the correct information and the main purpose of some movement. Thus, after hearing the for and against side from my peers, my group and I struggled to come to a conclusion as we wanted to side with the for side as that is ultimately what the article speaks about, but the against side had much stronger evidence.

Listening to the first group arguing Castells’ article gave me a different perspective to how social media creates sociopolitical change throughout history and the impacts, reaching millions of people to raise awareness about revolutions. It opened my eyes to realize the major ways social media can bring people together to start a movement. The main difference between the two articles is that the Dean article speaks about social media only creates an online movement where people can tweet and post online but does not do anything to actually create real change in the real world, but Castell speaks about how tweets and posts raise awareness and bring people together to create a revolution. Therefore, my overall thoughts on this arguments after this debate has not changed much, it might even made it harder for me to choose a side.