SOCIAL MEDIA AND POLITICS: STORY OF THE YOUTH
PROTEST DECEMBER 2 2013 EDITION
SOCIAL MEDIA, POLITICS & CULTURE
A SHIFT IN COMMUNICATION EXPLORING THE SHIFT IN THE DISTRIBUTION OF COMMUNICATION & POLITICAL POWER
SPECIAL REPORT:
INSIDE THE 2011 EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION
CHALLENGES TO SOCIAL MEDIA
THE DIGITAL DIVIDE, WEB 2.0 AND PRIVACY ARE JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG
HOW DO WE DEFINE ACTION? ACTION IS NOT LIMITED TO OFFLINE ACTS AS ONLINE INVOLVEMENT IS KEY TO CHANGE
ISSUE 01 / DECEMBER 2013 / $5.99
HOW TWITTER AND FACEBOOK CHANGED THE WAY CITIZENS LEARN ABOUT EVENTS AND SUSTAIN OFFLINE POLITICAL MOBILIZATIONS
001 FEATURES
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INSIDE THE 2011 EGYPTIAN RE VOLUTION
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The 2011 Egyptian Revolution demonstrated how protesters used social media and the Internet to facilitate offline political mobilizations by providing the space and tools required to sustain meaningful communication and engage in offline political action.
04 COMMUNICATION SHIFT
With the advent of social media, a communication shift has been seen where elites are losing their communication power as it shifts towards the public.
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23 CHALLENGES
Although Twitter and Facebook have the potential to act as facilitators of political mobilization and invoke citizens to use new media to form and sustain offline political movements, there are limitations that new media has as an agent of political change. These limitations include the digital divide, privacy, surveillance and socio-economic obstacles.
07 DEFINING ACTION
There are diverse definitions of political change, and part of concluding whether human actions have the ability to cause political change depends on how an individual defines political change.
17 DECISION TO PROTEST
Revolutions have been occuring prior to social media; however, Twitter and Facebook have changed the way citizens learn about events and sustain offline political mobilizations.
16 STO RY O F
T H E PO LI T I CA L YO U T H Written by Michael Tsirakis The revolutions and movements discussed in this issue of PROTEST magazine are geographically diverse, but they share several commonalities. Aside from ordinary citizens utilizing social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to their advantage, the primary group of individuals participating in political protests are young males and females. This changing age dynamic is seen in part because of the advent of technology.
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SECTIONS 05 SHIFT TO WEB 2.0
16 MEDIA CONVERGENCE
11 GROWING AWARENESS
22 POSITIVE RELATIONS
12 IS POSTING ACTION?
26 FINAL WORDS
The shift to Web 2.0 has brought many successes with it but it has also created many challenges for citizens .
A developing awareness among the masses assists in facilitating action and using tools to build online awareness .
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Whether people are posting live updates on Twitter or participating in street protests, an action is being carried out.
The visual in news has a powerful ability to index the real world and can override the accompanying linguistic message.
By enacting individuals’ offline networks online, social media can facilitate access to a large number of contacts.
Since technology experiences daily changes, and parts of human development are largely unknwon, further research is needed .
Editorial
Join us for a giant brainstorming session on social media’s role in facilitating offline political mobilizations during times of political unrest. n the last five years, social media websites have had an unprecedented impact on political and social events, with the 2011 Egyptian revolution being an excellent example. Considering both the popularity of social media platforms and the unsettling political and social landscape in North Africa and the Middle East, PROTEST magazine explores how activists use social media during times of unrest to communicate with distant individuals, in addition to generating online and offline political change. Occupy Wall Street and the 2011 Chilean student protests offer further examples of the complex relationship between social media, political activism and political action. More people are speaking out on political issues, and more individuals are active on social media websites than previous years. People are not simply reading and remaining passive consumers of information, but are responding and using the tools and space of social media to form significant responses. Examining scholarly articles provides insight into the complexity of the issue and supports the need for further investigation. Scholars such as Merlyna Lim (2012), Zeynep Tufekci (2012) and Nawaf Abdelhay (2012) dismiss technological determinism by arguing that social media itself does not cause political change, but it simply provides citizens with a space to network and build a critical mass of people who might engage in offline political mobilizations. Although there is a plethora of research on the positive relationship between social media and political action, there are several challenges that new media has as an agent of facilitating offline political activism, such as the digital divide, surveillance, privacy, open architecture, the ability to hack and several socioeconomic disparities.
Currently, the recent Turkish protests demonstrate the web’s role in mediating the relationship between state and citizen. The lack of mainstream media coverage in Turkey is a concern for Turkish citizens, and social media was used to gain insight into the daily events of the protests and also for protecting Taksim Square. With this in mind, it is crucial to conduct further research on the relationship between social media and political mobilization. Forms of protest date back to the early sixteenth century with the Protestant Reformation, and more recent examples include protests in Egypt, the United States of America, Chile and Turkey. The biggest change has been the advent of the Internet and the world’s continued technological growth towards ubiquitous digital technologies that are transparent yet complex. In addition, citizen journalism allows you to contribute to this topic, and traditional journalism maintains a technologically deterministic approach to reporting news despite evidence that negate this. With the rise of social media, contradictory scholarly research, continual socioeconomic and technological challenges and a need to distinguish what constitutes as action, PROTEST magazine provides insight concerning the extent of Facebook and Twitter’s role in facilitating offline action. PROTEST magazine suggests that although Twitter and Facebook have the potential to act as facilitators of political mobilization and inspire citizens to use new media to form and sustain offline political movements through altering the distribution of communication power, there are limitations that new media has as an agent of political change. Join me as I analyze how ordinary citizens use social media to their benefit in democracies and authoritarian states.
- Michael Tsirakis
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“Social media platforms are a tool for - rather than a cause of - political action.� - Sebastian Valenzuela