The impact social media has on our daily lives is significant, especially during times of turmoil. Many social movements credit social media as it facilitates their movement. The Iran Election Protests in 2009 is nicknamed the “Twitter Revolution”, as Twitter was a platform where civilians shared their stories with the world. In recent years, social movements are increasingly turning to the Internet, relying on social media platforms to spread their messages. Kony 2012 is the latest movement to become viral, with over 84 million views on YouTube. Despite gaining worldwide attention, is social media the key to mobilize social movements? Most importantly, is there truly visible change as a result of Internet activism?

The Iranian election protests started on June 12, 2009 and ended on February 11, 2010. Shortly following Iran’s tenth presidential election, it was announced that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had overwhelmingly won the the election over Mir-Hossein Mousavi in a 62/36 percent split. Civilians were immediately outraged when hearing of the news, with many claiming the polls were rigged. Some people argued that it was impossible for Ahmadinejad the election, as Mousavi had the majority of public support pre-elections. Additionally, it would have been nearly impossible to announce election results two hours after polls closed, as voter participation was high. In addition to Mousavi, two other people running for president brought forward that it is impossible to count 40 million votes by hand in the span of two hours. Outraged citizens took their anger to the streets on June 13. During this time, civilians used Twitter as their main platform as a way of reporting to the world the events in Iran, as foreign media was banned from the streets. Amateur videos were uploaded onto YouTube, showing the world what is not being televised from an insider’s perspective. Despite a ban on various websites, people used proxies to access these websites.

The Twitter Revolution clearly demonstrates the vital role social media plays in important world events. In fact, Twitter delayed its scheduled 90 minute site maintenance, in order for Iranians to report on the chain of events. However, critics argue that the importance of social media during times of urgency has been overblown. More importantly, the assumption that social media results in democracy is very delusional. In this RSA Animate, Evgeny Morozov presents his argument on what he calls “cyber-utopianism”. This is the idea that the Internet plays a large emancipatory role in global politics. In the video, Morozov points out that less than 20,000 Twitter users took part of the “Twitter Revolution”, which is roughly half of UBC’s combined student population of both undergraduates and graduates.

The assumption that the Internet is a good thing when it comes to promoting democracy is an illusion. I’m not denying that social media doesn’t play an important role in world events- it does, and it greatly assists in organizing events. However, people must be realistic about the real impact of events such as the Iranian protests. Just because the word was getting out about the scandal and subsequent protests, it doesn’t necessarily translate into action elsewhere in the world. Similarly, this was one of the biggest controversies of Kony 2012. I believe that everybody should live by Facta non Verba, Latin for “actions not words”. I firmly believe that unless real action is taken, then whatever is being spoken about is irrelevant to the situation.

-Jenny Ho

OhmyNews is a pioneer in online citizen journalism. When the Korean version launched in early 2000, founder Oh Yeon Ho would have never imagined its rivalry with mainstream news organizations. With only 4 staff members running the entire website, its success resulted in an international version in 2005, referred to as OMNI. The way OhmyNews worked was that citizens would submit articles for online publication. Employees would fact check every article, and citizen contributors would be compensated. During peak performance, website traffic went up to 2 million viewers a day.

Despite its success, it was all downhill from there. Financial issues first arose in mid 2008, when OMNI made a net loss of $625,000. OhmyNews’ 75 employees and their salaries had to be scaled down. In addition, OMNI stopped paying its contributors, opting for a monthly prize system. When founder Oh appealed for funding in an open letter to contributors and readers in January 2009, its results were feeble. OMNI’s last nail in their coffin was in September 2010 when it was announced that the site was to be closed down, converting it into a blog about citizen journalism. Despite the problems, OhmyNews Korea continues to run.

There were many areas which issues went wrong from worse. First, it became extremely unrealistic for the future of Ohmynews to run with solely 75 employees. By September 2009, there were 39000 citizen journalists contributors. With a 1:520 ratio of staff to contributors, there was no sustainable, long-term solution.

This leads to the issue of valid and bias of content. As noted by OhmyNews’ code of ethics, citizens are expected to follow the honour code by not spreading false information. Relying on the honour code and a limited employee fact check raises many skeptics. That’s like expecting people to not evade fairs on the busses, the Seabus and Skytrain– with both systems, it’s impossible to properly monitor everything.

Accounting for other pitfalls, OhmyNews’ biggest problem was that founder Oh appealed for funding to the public.  Asking for public donations is simply unrealistic in 2009. By this time, mainstream media had already established their presence on the Internet. At the same time, social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter were starting to gain momentum. From a practical point of view, why should online users pay for free content already available elsewhere? People will just simply move on to free sites for their dose of daily news.

Similarly, Wikipedia also asks for donations. Ever tried reading an article to see “a personal appeal from Jimmy Wales”? And just how many times have you closed that box, thinking “Geez, and how much money does Wales have?” Quite frankly, people don’t always think about why a website may be asking for money, but to do the simple task of asking takes many by surprise. I suppose that some people may take the phrase “freedom of information” a bit too literally.

It is simply undeniable that Ohmynews played an crucial role in shaping and challenging mainstream media to go online. Nonetheless, their monetary issues and problems with content validity has disaster written all over it, forcing Ohmynews to cut their losses.