Dean and Castells: Debate Reflection

In the debate, I was apart of the assessing group for the Jodi Dean debate. As an assessor, my grouped and I were responsible to decide which group presented better arguments for their side of the topic “Be it resolve that social media inhibits sociopolitical change.” Previous to the debate, my group prepared notes and gathered possible points from both sides of the argument in Dean’s reading to better judge the debate from a more neutral perspective. Also, through close reading, it was easier to get a more neutral view of the article. After listening to the points from “For” and “Against”, I believe the “Against” team did a better job in explaining that social media does not inhibit sociopolitical change. The key point that they used to persuade my decision was the fact that the Dean reading was written in the early 2000s making it harder for the “For” team to rebut since the article is now out of date.

In the beginning, before the debate, I was more inclined to agree with Dean’s perspective that social media inhibits sociopolitical change since, during the 2003 Iraq invasion, the importance of the arguments were lost due to the amount of dialogue in the debate over the war. Furthermore, Dean goes on to explain that people weren’t making any fundamental changes in the issue, simply just adding to the argument. These were some key points, that wasn’t emphasized enough by the “For” team. This lead to my perspective to change and better align with the arguments made by the “Against” team.  The “Against” team brought up the argument that this article is outdated, and that social media, with the use of hashtags and verifications, facilitated the voices of minorities or activists online, which is quite powerful to change today. In all, the debate was interesting to listen to and both sides brought forwards so great arguments.

I also enjoyed listening to the other group’s debate on Castells’ article. I especially liked the “For” groups argument that shutting down the Internet because it was influential very well helped emphasize that social media enables socio-political change. But, the “Against” side did state good arguments about the fact that the past revolution better inspired the people rather than social media during the Egyptian revolution, which was a large topic of Castells’ article. After watching both debates, I gathered that the main difference between Dean’s and Castells’ articles is that they hold the opposite opinions towards whether socio-political change is enabled by social media. Dean’s article focuses more on how the Internet confuses the message implied using misinformation and cluttering of opinions, whereas Castells focuses more on the relationship of social media and revolutionaries/activists. In sum, both debates were very interesting, and all the teams did a great job overall.