The Impact of Social Media on Social Activism

Social media are no longer just toys for the amusement of bored teenagers. Social media is now a major component of world communication, with hundreds of millions of Facebook and Twitter users and viewers of YouTube videos. Even President Obama used YouTube for his political campaign. It is also a major force in business marketing with the use of marketing apps. The democratic, egalitarian nature of this kind of communication has made social media a major conduit for social, political, and revolutionary activist movements worldwide.

The examples of this in recent years are almost too numerous to count. The various “Arab Spring” revolts of the last few years spread so quickly because of social media. Scenes from the failed 2009-2010 revolution in Iran were broadcast on YouTube, particularly the horrifying video of a young student protester gunned down in the street by government forces and filmed as she died. (This was also called the “Twitter Revolution” because the protesters were able to quickly gather in a given location based on Twitter posts.) Gerbaudo offers an interesting premise, that “Activists' use of Twitter and Facebook does not fit with the image of a "cyberspace" detached from physical reality. Instead, social media is used as part of a project of re-appropriation of public space” (Gerbaudo iv., 2-12). The author mentions in particular the “Occupy” movement in the U.S., which though its members also sought to occupy physical space, was primarily a co-opting of the channels of communication. The goal was as much to tear the control of political discourse out of the hands of the “1%” as it was to occupy physical space or to disrupt the flow of traffic with people marching and carrying signs.

There is perhaps no better illustration of the potential of social media in creating and disseminating social activism than China’s concerted efforts to squelch it. China forbids access to Facebook and monitors Twitter posts closely—many people have been arrested and imprisoned, or even more ominously, “disappeared” because of Twitter posts they made that were critical of the government. China is actively working with Google to create sophisticated censorship and user-tracking internet software. This has had an interesting effect, as noted by Yu, Asur, and Huberman: “There is a vast difference…compared to a global social network such as Twitter. In China, the trends are created almost entirely due to retweets…, whereas on Twitter, the trends tend to have more to do with current global events and news stories” (1107). People are apparently afraid to originate content because of the threat of government retaliation.

Despite the efforts of repressive regimes, however, it is almost impossible to cut everyone off from internet access and therefore, messages will be disseminated; the genie is already out of the bottle. This can only be a good thing as governments and authorities the world over are now forced to operate in an atmosphere of greater accountability. If you do something (anything!), you can’t be sure that someone won’t be recording it and that when you wake up in the morning, eighteen million people will have viewed it. This transparency can be very beneficial; as Bertot, Jaeger, and Grimes note: “Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are seen by many as a cost-effective and convenient means to promote openness and transparency and to reduce corruption” (264). Corruption is one of the most pernicious brakes on economic growth and efficiency, and any mechanism that makes government more accountable is therefore advantageous. Social media has been used to expose many instances of corruption.

Works Cited

Bertot, John C., et al. "Using ICTs to create a culture of transparency: E-government and social media as openness and anti-corruption tools for societies." Government Information Quarterly, vol. 27, no. 3, 2010, pp. 264-271.

Gerbaudo, Paolo. Tweets and the streets: Social media and contemporary activism. Pluto Press, 2012.

Yu, Louis, et al. "What trends in Chinese social media." arXiv preprint arXiv:1107.3522, 2011.