I've been reading on how social media has ignited the social developments in Egypt, and also how this argument is silly, since most people in Egypt do not have access to facebook and twitter so as to organize and utilize these new media. I do not want to say that the truth is somewhere in the middle, but there is a point to be made.
During the past few days I've been watching live on Al Jazeera and reading on Blogs and twitter in trying to keep informed, I also read a very interesting article by Eric Schwartzman on "Thoughts on Social Media and Revolutions". He references Steve Coll in the New Yorker in writing:
…youthful populations, high unemployment, grotesque inequality, abusive police, reviled leaders and authoritarian systems” are to blame. So let’s give credit where credit’s due. It’s bad government that led to the situation at hand. Social media just made it impossible to ignore.
Well, it's not really easy to disagree with the above statement, however, the uprising of the people in tahrir square didn't happen over night. What Steve Coll writes in The New Yorker, are social problems, or rather social phenomena that exist or are brewing in many countries, especially in the middle east.
We should not confuse social and government issues with new media. There are people in Egypt, and abroad, that organised using facebook, twitter and Blogs, not just for the recent happenings, but well before. Like the APRIL 6 YOUTH MOVEMENT, with 90.000 facebook members!
The movement began as an Egyptian Facebook group in 2008 to support workers in the northern industrial town of Mahalla al-Kubra and called for a national strike on 6 April that year. Members, who include many young well-educated Egyptians, have shown a greater willingness than others to risk arrest and start public protests.
Participatory democracy needs people to be involved, and YES you can be involved through social media. You will also need to act in real life.
So, facebook and twitter didn't ignite tahrir square, people that wanted change, people that read and educated themselves (yes you can do that through the Internet and Social Media) learned to think different, explored all ways available to them to organize, and acted upon their beliefs.
Once again, this did not happen over night, or during the past few weeks, it happened during the past few years.
Of course people didn't go out to the streets because facebook and twitter told them to do so, facebook and twitter, I mean the Internet! gave people the opportunity to search, read, educate themselves, organize and communicate their message across.
Why all the major main stream media report on tweets and YouTube videos? because it's how people on the ground communicate their message.
Imagine someone that just recorded a video in Cairo and rushed home to upload it to YouTube and tweet about it, this person believes that he/she is making a difference. And he/she is! It gave me the opportunity to see what is happening now in Cairo because I happent to watch this video on a news Blog, and provided me with raw, uncensored information to make up my mind on the issue.
It is so easy to dismiss the role of the Internet and argue on sober arguments of social issues and government problems that are the cause of the unrest, but the Internet gave them the opportunity to learn, and gives them the opportunity to communicate. There is no denying it. Twitter didn't ignite tahrir square, people did, twitter gave them and me the opportunity to share what is happening on the ground.
So yes, Social Media (the Internet) played a role in educating people, and Social Media plays a role in sharing what people in Egypt are communicating right now.
Comments
Post a Comment