After taking part in the heated discussion in ASTU class earlier last week, I feel like I gained more insight on the topic from both sides considering I was put into the assessing group. Before the debate started, I gathered information on the subject and tried to put myself in the shoes of the ‘for’ group first. I thought about which points they might argue and how they would support those ideas. As ‘for’ the ‘against’ side, I mostly focused on how they would perhaps respond to the claims of the ‘for’ side and how they would go about refuting those claims.
To my surprise, some things discussed were things that I had thought of beforehand, such as the case of reliability and social media. After partaking in the debate, I can safely say that most of my views on the Castell’s reading remained the same even after both groups displayed their own views on it. I felt like the ‘for’ group mostly addressed how the news of the revolution spread with the help of social media and that social media had most certainly allowed this sort opportunity ‘for’ the revolution to gain more followers. The ‘against’ side had some interesting things to say about this exact topic, they argued how social media was in fact incredibly alterable and vulnerable to manipulation by the government and other anti-revolutionary parties in order to help achieve their goals. Overall, I definitely think my assigned role made me see, and judge the reading through a somewhat more objective lens while trying to assess the strength and possible weaknesses of the reading.
Listening to the Dean groups argument, more than anything, helped me get a better understanding between the terms ‘inhibit’ and ‘enable’. In my opinion, the Dean debate featured more definitive claims and points when compared to Castells. The way they talked about social media and the way that it tends to miss the point and drift off the initial point struck me, given the ALS ice bucket challenge example. But considering all things, I do not believe that my view on social media and sociopolitical change a whole lot because the things that were mentioned and supported were already somewhat in my radar and therefore inspired no actual difference to the way I think on these matters.