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.