Social Media: dictators’ worst nightmare
How mobile technologies can educate youths to stand up for democratic values
The role of social media has been significant in driving societal changes. This becomes increasingly crucial when social media is used in a libertarian direction which in my opinion needs a dialectical and critical analysis. Thank you for viewing my website and I look forward to reading your feedback.
https://marketing-m.wixsite.com/etec523
I wonder how the recent Black Lives Matter movement would have been affected by more heavily controlled social media services. I’m curious as to what such a movement would be like if it took place twenty years ago, would it have happened at all or would one gruesome scenario have not been enough to incite such a massive movement?
Further, I think it would be interesting to see what an event like that would be like five or ten years from now, how different will our informational diet be? On a different note, how much does unregulated social media affect political polarization and the ways in which people vote? How well would a more well-informed population be able to see the biases in the information they consume? On the website design itself, I really enjoy the quotes at the top of the page, and overall, the site is stunning to browse.
Hi Miguel,
Excellent questions. I think you hit the nail on the head. #BlackLivesMatter probably would not have sparked such a massive movement, if it wasn’t for social media. PEW research center came up with some amazing statistics around the aforementioned hashtag last year. If I recall correctly, the hashtag had somewhere close to 9 million uses/mentions in a single day in May 2020. This shows how powerful social media is in spreading the word.
With regard to your second question around biases in the information, I would highly suggest that you read Sam Charles’ post titled “The Rise of Misinformation” posted September 21st in his blog. I mentioned under that thread that I honestly feel like we will never be able to clearly differentiate between misinformation, disinformation or the truth, considering that the volume and speed of information is so significant that its sometimes overwhelming.
Glad you liked the website,
Thank you,
Saeid
I find it fascinating that Silicon Valley’s concept of “move fast and break things” has been applied so viscerally in uprisings like the Arab Spring.
I’m curious where these strategies came from in the groups’ who are using social media to organize political rallies specifically when looking at the Hong Kong protests in the last year. Were they spontaneously generated in the moment as needs arose, or were they based on techniques being already used in realms such as marketing? Also, as with any adversarial relationship I have found it fascinating watching how policing authorities try to keep ahead of quickly evolving guerilla strategies.
I enjoyed perusing this site Saeid, it is visually stunning.
Hi Mitchell,
Thank you for viewing my work and glad to hear that you enjoyed it.
Great question. One classic mistake that all oppressors make in situations of unrest, is increasing the level of oppression, social media filtering, and internet censorship, thinking that they can immediately silence the protestors. However, research has shown that in these situations, filtering the internet/social media does two main things 1) it changes the pattern of civil protests and results in higher levels of violence 2) it encourages people to pour into the streets, because they no longer have internet/social-media access at home.