While reading the Dean article in preparation for the debate, I found myself not only thinking about what was on the page, but, perhaps even more so, what was not found on the page. Being tasked the role of the assessor, I had to find valid points and arguments that both sides could use in both their opening arguments and their rebuttals. The latter proved to be more useful in regards to postulating what the against side might say; however, Dean’s arrangement within the article was very conducive to conceding some points and, immediately afterwards, refuting them. As a result, I became interested in how well the for side could defend the resolution while the against tried to poke holes in it. Even while they included multiple events not discussed in the readings (and therefore not considered), the against side made a compelling argument by discussing the concepts or practices made prevalent over the past decade that have affected sociopolitical change: fact-checking and verification on social media platforms, the use of algorithms to alter the circulation of content (skewing a concept proposed by Dean), and social media’s ability to portray what traditional media refuses to. Although the for side used some arguments laid out in the article, they were unable to rebut the point that the Dean article was plainly obsolete and did not consider new developments that have arisen as a result.
When listening to the Castells debate, I became intrigued by each side’s definition of the word “change.” While the for side highlighted the “potential to affect” change, the against side maintained that the desired change had to not only have been possible, but occurred. The latter definition unsettled me slightly, as although social media can make change more possible, it is ultimately up to the human behind the screen (or behind the algorithm behind the screen) to affect that change, and that is less a matter of the power of technology and more a matter of how humans wield said powers. This sentiment is echoed in the Dean article in its notion of “technological fetish,” in which we as a society impart an excessive amount of faith in the ability for technology to change our world. However, as seen in the Castells debate and the tangible case study of the Egyptian Revolution, technology (and the access to it) did indeed affect the course of the revolt, although political cycles ultimately swayed it back into unintended turmoil.
The outcomes of both debates favored the side that maintained that social media does enable sociopolitical change However, the extent of change made in the sociopolitical atmosphere is undeniably restrained and dampened by existing sociopolitical systems.