In today's New York Times, Frank Rich weighs in on the big debate about social media that has taken place since the demonstrations in Egypt began. He argues that the emphasis on social media de-emphasizes the underlying social conditions that led to the revolt, in effect that the role of social media has been overblown. The New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell--you may know him as the author of Blink, Outliers or The Tipping Point--has made the same argument on the New Yorker blog here and here. His case is that social media build on weak ties and people will use weak ties to engage in low-risk activities (the kinds of slacktivist issues discussed on this blog last week). Real social change, he argues, requires different kinds of relationships--strong ties. Read the links they're worth your time and an engaging contrast to what I've assigned you for the week. Allison Fine, the author of our text has pushed back on this argument in her blog. Read it here. She argues that these writers mistake the core value of social media; they overstate the role social media plays.
To me, the essence of the argument is getting to a proper understanding of the role social media plays in social change. Ultimately, it's a matter of degree, with the people I've cited disagreeing about the relative importance of social media. Of course, the role social media plays in organizations is of a different and scale than the Egyptian revolt and it is important to keep that context in mind as you reflect on these issues. What do you think?
I've hyperlinked my references so that you can check them out yourself.
I think that I would have to agree with Rich and Gladwell and their sentiments about how mass media portrays social media, as a prerequisite for any sort of progressive revolution. However, I do believe that it is the MASS MEDIA (mostly TV news) that is exaggerating the need for social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, for social change or revolution. I think the real value of social media is that it provides people with a means to challenge traditional MASS media and its clearly biased presumptions and ideas on foreign and domestic events (Fox News, and even MSNBC). It gives individuals, who once had no means to evaluate a variety of news sources, a way to 'seek' information or news, rather than being supplied by subjective parties.
ReplyDeleteTo me, social media enables news to spread out immediately, earlier before anyone wants to cover it. Moreover, based on the instantaneity that social media has, a discussion around the topic can emerge at any time. And sometimes people’s rage is superimposed because of an agreement with others’ negative opinions. So rather than a cause of the revolution in Egypt, social media is a means to get together opposed opinions and make people aware of the necessity and possibility to make changes.
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ReplyDeleteThe argument here seems to be about whether to use a manual screwdriver (word of mouth) or an electric screwdriver (social media) to screw in a screw (create social change). I have to agree with Rich that the attention given to social media seems trivial in comparison with the real social issues going on.
ReplyDeleteTo address Gladwell: whether an action is high or low risk depends on how the issue is affecting the actor - not on whether social media is creating weak ties. If someone I know is being bullied I will engage in high-risk action. If someone three states away needs a bone marrow transplant, I don’t need to storm my city hall with scores of protesters demanding that a law require people to register as donors. I make a low-risk action (like a retweet or signing a register) because the situation doesn’t require anything more than informing people or taking low-risk actions. Social media doesn’t enter the decision making process.
Will the gross habits of slacktivism deter us from making strong ties and engaging in high-risk action when the stakes are high on a personal level? I don’t think so. For the strong relationships that Gladwell supports, I would argue that social media can only make the issues more personal rather than less so, through communication and education.
After looking at the articles and Fine's reaction, I continue to be surprised that it seems as though media coverage on the role of social media in the Egyptian protests is more popular than coverage of the actual protests. After discussing the protests in several classes, I have been trying to watch more news and read articles on websites such as cnn.com and am struggling to find articles that provide real information about what is happening and why. Instead, many articles go back to the social media craze and debate. I agree that these new methods for communication have, in this case, created a more expedited process for creating social change. Social change can take place without them, but as Fine pointed out in her blog, social media tools provide an avenue for getting the word out in real-time, which is more difficult by word of mouth. Additionally, I am interested in how big the role of social media really was; there seem to be very diverse sets of data about how many Egyptians really have access to these tools anyway. I watched a man interviewed by Brian Williams explain that he cannot afford food, and wondered if he can afford internet access to be able to use social media, and how representative he is of the Egyptian population.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Egyptians brought down governments before Internet came along but I cannot minimize the role of social media in mobilizing the international community around the issue. Human factor is still the strongest tool for initiating bigger changes but I believe that the success of the initiative is depending on the attention and participation of the international community. When international community is not involved in the process the crowd is usually losing and much more people are suffering. Social media for me is the quickest and effective mean for now to mobilize international community around the urgent issues and insure immediate response.
ReplyDeleteIn 2004 there was no any act to bring down the government in Bahrain but my colleague and a human rights defender Abdul Hadi Al-Khawaja was arrested and detained. His arrest came two days after he voiced criticism of government policies during the symposium, "The National Campaign to Promote Economic Rights in Bahrain", organized by the Bahrain Center for Human Rights. In 2004 the Facebook was just launched and we did not even know about any social media tool. Within 4 days we were able to develop a memorandum, gather about 400 signatures from different human rights activists from Americas, Europe, Middle East, Asia and Africa through e-mail and present it to the King of Bahrain H.M Sheikh Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa. This action released him from prison within several days. The action was very seriously taken by King of Bahrain. Each of us received an electronic letter with the explanation of the situation from the King of Bahrain. Even a simple social media tool - e-mail is so powerful in mobilizing networks.