Social Media a Force against Political Oppression Essay Help

Is Social Media a Force against Political Oppression?

Essay in light of Recent Political Incidents

Introduction:

Social Media Networking, since the last decade has started to impact individuals’ life on a macro scale. The websites are primarily directly impacting the social, economic, political and other spheres of a country. As noticed by many scholars, social networking on the internet has affected changes in the political elections and social considerations in both, developed and developing countries for instance Cook (2010) identified how social networking through mobile phones impacted political scenario in United States and Canada, Marandi et al (2010) discussed these social tools in context of changing preferences of upcoming generation in Iran. Shaheen (2008) in a similar study studied the powerful influence of social media in political activism that lead to overturning of government in Pakistan. In China, Guobin (2010) discussed how strongly social media and internet networking resulted in protests and clashes between individuals and governments. Moving forward, according to Attia et al (2011), recent political unrest in Middle Eastern countries of Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and Algeria can be attributed to social networking sites in general while Facebook, YouTube and Twitter in particular. These events have commonly been known as Arab Spring.

Social Media and Networking on the Internet – Defined:

Social Media has truly been able to change the way world communicates. The platform allows individuals to communicate effectively and quickly with others to share and gather information, topics and subjects that are of mutual interest. The term has been defined in many contexts. For instance, Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) suggested the initial definition that resulted in the formation of social networks as a group of applications based out of the World Wide Web on the technology of Web 2.0 that allows creation and exchange of user generated content. Within the ambit of social media is the category of websites suggested as social networking. The most widely used and elaborative definition of social networking was given by Boyd and Ellison in 2007. According to the them (p 211), social networking is

“web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct

a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system,

(2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share

a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of

connections and those made by others within the system.

Of course, the nature and descriptive terms applied to

these connections vary from site to site.” (p. 211)

Social Media websites can be classified into different categories based on the nature of information sharing. The most distinctive characteristic of social media is the ability to communicate both ways between the users. Table 1 has been extracted from Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) and can be considered as an exhaustive, but not complete list of social media classification:

Table 1: Classification of Social Media Websites – Kaplan and Heinlein (2010)

Due to limitation, we have discussed three widely used social media sites that have played a significant role in impacting social, political and cultural tangents of our lives. These include Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

• Facebook: Facebook was launched in 2004 as a social networking website exclusively for Harvard students. However according to the statistics, Facebook has now over 1.15 Billion active users around the world as of June, 2013 (Facebook, 2013). Less than 20% of the total users are from United States. This suggests the penetration of Facebook has been to all parts of the world. The website allows users to interact with other users by sharing information, messages, joining of communities of mutual interests, play games and subsequently a tool for marketing and promotion. In June 2013, the website had an average of 600 plus million users accessing the webpage on daily basis. 

• Twitter: Twitter was launched in 2006. The platform allows users to connect to latest information of their interest through a terminology called “Tweet” which is unique to the application. (Twitter, 2013). According to sources, the website by the end of 2012 had 200 + global users with average 340 million tweets per day. Tweets can be explained as 140 characters short posts that allow subscribed users to follow it on real time basis. Further the subscribed users can follow real time status updates.
• YouTube: YouTube was the first website that launched a platform for users to upload, share and watch videos online. The website was launched in 2007, and since then, the number of users and playback hours of videos have been increasing.  According to the statistics, more than 1 Billion users visit YouTube website each month. Another surprising statistic is that more than 6 Billion hours of videos are watched each month i.e. almost an hour for every individual on earth (YouTube, 2013)

Safranek (2012) suggested that the biggest attraction of the three social media’s discussed above is the premise that an average person with little exposure to technology can access these successfully, conveniently through a smart phone and the content on them can be entwined. For instance, videos that are posted on YouTube can simultaneously be shared on Facebook and Twitter. In other words, large number of individuals can be reached effectively at very low cost.

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Social Media and Political Oppression:

In early 2001, Ahrens contended that new information technology in the form of World Wide Web, mobile communications and other sources are transforming the way in which political activists communicate, collaborate and demonstrate their stance. Within decade since then, we have been able to witness this in many developing and developed countries.

Much of this change can be attributed to the strength of social media to remove socio-economic barriers. One does not need to be somebody to be somebody on a social networking website to make a difference. Giroux (2009) in relation to the Iranian political movement on social media argues that Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have re-formed younger generation on the ability to build social relationships and subsequently acquire understanding of producing, mediating and diffusing information. This era has resulted in creation of visual imagery through screen culture which is considered as equally spectacular. Therefore, consequently, the state power has become weaker and prone to minimal control on the circumstances. Also, Giroux suggested that these social mediums have triggered a new political energy that created new relationships between media, public, technology and politics. As agreed by Etling et al (2010), mass population protests are not a new phenomenon, but digital tools facilitating in their creation through formation of civil society groups, mobs, and civil organizations is a new and strong facet of this paradigm.  Some of the significant political events in which mass population have been able to gather and generate an impact have been detailed below:

• Moldova: The first most recognizable and powerful protest that took place to challenge a political situation was in Moldova, 2009. Activists successfully brought political unrest in the newly elected country by mobilizing individuals through Facebook and Twitter. Mungiu-Pippidi & Igor (2009) have mentioned the incidents in detail. According to them, on April 6, 2009, protests broke out on the city after disputed general elections. In a matter of 24 hours only, protestors along with opposition leaders started to gather in front of parliament office. The numbers grew from 10,000 to 30,000 in a city of only 900,000. There was no coverage on the main stream media of the protests, however, Facebook and Twitter facilitated in spreading the word, pictures and videos on real time basis. Although the participants in the protests failed to induce a change in leadership or conduct reelections, they were able to get world’s attention while digital activism gained significance as a basis of political power (Amin, 2009).
• Iran: Soon after April’s incident in Moldova, another political movement started to take place in Iran in a matter of two months only. Amin (2009) has explained the events that caused social media to again play a strong role in gathering activists for a political case. According to Amin, Neda Agha Soltan was headed to join an anti-government protest in the city of Tehran, Iran in June 2009. The protest was to condemn recent presidential elections that were being thought of as disputed. Stuck in the traffic, as soon as she got off from the car, a bullet shot was heard and Agha Sultan was killed instantly. Bystanders were able to capture video of the incident and that was soon uploaded on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. This grabbed attention of the main stream media from Iran as well as global news channels including CNN and New York Times (Amin, 2009).