In the era where social media is rising.. so to are the ways in which it creates new applications and mediums to which we convey messages; making pages in history books. It has come that time again, where the world is ready for a new development. Facebook and Social media have become that new development.
Previously, there had been few creations which has been counted as a revolution:
- Printing press which was an innovation making printing possible with ink.
- Telegraph and the Telephone: two way convocational media
- Recordable Media and Photos
- Electro magnetic spectrum: Recordable Sound devices encoded into physical objects,allowing individuals to send sound and images through air
Social Media’s creation thus classifies itself as a revolution. Transforming the media landscape, media allows a “many-to-many” communication pattern, broadening audience spectatorship and message recipients. Its design to give the voiceless a voice and medium to speak out in, now changes the media platform to amateurs being now being the producers.Due to this transformation, we now find that society has changed dramatically due to the revolutions of social media. Ben Parr discusses this in his blog, stating that” History tends to remember only pivotal moments in time… But with social media, information is readily available and archives how we interact with others over time.” It’s scary to think that our every move can be tracked and traced to our exact location; to exactly what we’re doing.
In Michael Anti’s talk “Behind the great firewall of China,” Anti discusses China’s censorship of social networks. Before watching this talk, I thought the same thing as anybody would.. “Censorship for social media? Sucks to be China!” However, I was surprised to discover that it wasn’t so bad after all. Sure, there are limitations to the content they can post, however as the Chinese government has created copies of the main social networking sites- they are not missing out on anything really.
If you think about, all of your friends would be on the “renren” website. Ok so it’s not Facebook but if everyone who knew in your country was on the same website, being limited to the same things you are.. in a sense, it doesn’t really make that much of a difference. And ok the government is monitoring every data content posted. It’s not as if you’re “Baidu-ing” (googling) “How to make a bomb”.
Anti discusses how “the chinese social media landscape gives voiceless people a channel to make their voices heard.” Although this is usually the case for any citizen in the world; this especially is as important for the people of china. Although their media is censored, this is the one outlet where they are able to voice their opinions, with the possibility of a journo to pick up their opinion.
However, due to this only medium where individuals are able to ‘freely’ speak, this is their only stage to where threat and regime may begin. Yes, the government is censoring and monitoring all data content however, being the biggest platform for all citizens to come together and chat makes for a possible hole in the wall where the people of china can come together and perhaps one day gang up on the government.
This video, “Social Media Revolution” (which i’m sure all of you would’ve seen at some stage in your secondary education studies) reiterates how powerful social media is. Watch this, then think about the growth social media will have in the next 10 years…
estwong 