Castells reveals the role that social media played in the Egyptian revolution, which leads to the question—does social media enables sociopolitical change? After reading his piece, I believed that social media played a vital role in the Egyptian revolution because his powerful examples showed that social media indeed had a catalytic effect on sociopolitical change. Castells mainly focused on social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc. and reveals the impact of these social media platforms had on sociopolitical change was spreading information. In other words, it increased people’s awareness of the event. However, I was in the AGAINST side and I was doing the CLOSING STATEMENT. What I supposed to do is listen carefully to what my group stated and what my opposing group’s opinion and make a conclusion. Thus, what I had to do was to read his article again from a different perspective. Finally, we found the pieces of evidence that Castells claims that the revolution was never incommunicable after the government shut down the Internet (64). Consequently, our group focused on the truth that there were still sociopolitical changes without social media in the early stage by giving the example of Tiananmen Square revolution in China which happened in an era without social media. However, the key to the debate is listening to what our opposing group’s argument and it turned out that the examples we used weren’t persuasive enough. Thus, the debate truly changed my point of view after listening to others’ opinions.

By listening to other group debate, we know that Dean stands on an opposite point of view and gives rise to another controversial question that “does social media inhibits sociopolitical change?”. Thus, the main difference between Castells and Dean is obvious that their viewpoints on social media are opposite that Dean focuses on the invalidity of the voices people made online. From my perspective, the relationship between social media and sociopolitical change depends on various standpoints and the two articles from Castells and Dean are the best evidence to prove it.

Overall, the debate gave everyone in the class a chance to speak out. Compared with other activities we had in class like group discussion, almost everyone participated in the debate. Last but not least, the debate was a reflection of teamwork that it offered us opportunities to learn how to cooperate with others.

works cited

Castells, Manuel. “The Egyptian Revolution.” Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age(2015): 54-94.