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.