How social and digital media contribute to social/political change?
Since the advent of the internet in the 990s, the number of networked individuals has increased from a few million then to more than one billion today. Today, social media has become a way of life for ordinary, activists, software providers, governments, telecommunications firms, civil society and other stakeholders. Social and political changes accompany the transformation. Youths have used it to mobilize the overthrow of presidents from office while some politicians have used it in their campaigns to win elections. At the same time, ordinary citizens and activists have used the platforms to create social change. Thus, many stakeholders use social and digital media to pursue social and political reforms in the world with mixed results.
Social and digital media have contributed to immense political changes in the world. The use of social media has led to the fall of national leaders, starting with the impeachment of Philippines President Joseph Estrada in 2001. During his impeachment trial, citizens used messages to assemble more than one million protesters in Manila to pressurize legislators to support the removal of the president from office. This was the first that a sitting president lost his seat through the use of social and digital media. It was followed by the Arab Spring that began in Tunisia December 2010. The marches were against the presence of oppressive regimes in the Arab nations that were not responsive to the needs of the citizens. The campaigns that began in Tunisia spread to Libya, Egypt, Yemen, and Syria, among others. In most cases, the youths mobilized their campaigns using social and digital media to reach large sections of the population. These developments surprised many authoritarian leaders proving to them that they could the use of modern technology can dislodge them from power.
Political leaders also use social and digital media to their advantage to win elections. President Barack Obama is one of the leaders who used social and digital media to win the 2008 presidential elections. Before Barack Obama became president in 2008, prominent figures did not use Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat or Instagram as he did. As a result, he was compared to presidents such as John F. Kennedy adoption of the use of television and Franklin D. Roosevelt for adopting the use of radio in communication. President Obama used the social and digital media in his campaigns and to fundraise enabling to reach more audiences than his opponent, John McCain. Many leaders have adopted this strategy during their campaigns. President Barack Obama used these platforms to drive the message of change home and win the presidency.
Digital and social media are an integral part of individual citizens’ political lives as more people around the world use digital media technologies for information and communication. Digital media are essential in providing platforms for people to use to coordinate and mobilize among like-minded individuals. Today, political leaders across the world are using digital media to pass messages to their supporters and to mobilize more support bases. As a result, they facilitate socio-political conversations about political polarization, information divide, and the dissemination of disinformation.
Social and digital media is also used to organize for political or social changes. Today, people are using these platforms to organize large-scale protests across the world for environment cause and social causes. Digital media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook give the people the opportunity to interact and network. They provide people with information that allows them to exchange their opinions with others to motivate them to engage in public activities. It has the advantage of being updated within a short period without expending financial resources and physical effort. Thus, digital media makes it easy for users to pursue their communication goals through different activities online.
Advocacy groups, organizations, and political figures use social network sites to mobilize and coordinate activities for social action. Most of these groups use their profiles, group sites, and standalone networks to raise awareness about a cause and then mobilize for support. For example, some activist use what is known as hashtag activism today to raise awareness about a particular issue and make the agenda public? The hashtag, SupportIslandWomen is an example of such a campaign in Canada that was supposed to highlight the prochoice needs of women in Prince Edward Island. According to Myles, the of Anne of Green Gables (rogue Anee) was a form of organization discourse theory that uses an important figure in the history to pass a message to society (507). Although the campaign used graffiti and posters, the message did not achieve its objectives until social media users began to uplift it. It is common for people to use social and digital media to raise awareness in society as the SupportIslandWomen did.
The use of social and digital media is critical today because people decide what to do with their social network sites. The organizations such as Facebook and Twitter serve as facilitators that only guide people on how to use the platforms. Therefore, a group of people can create a profile based on offline associations and on the basis of a variety of interests. Each group encourage people to work together to achieve their objectives. The presence of such groups makes it easy for information to circulate about planned events and activities.
One of the most essential factor to consider in the process of creating social change is the cost of coordination. Coordination of programs in an offline system is an expensive affair. However, social and digital media provide inexpensive ways to organize members to arrange meetings, spread information, and gauge the opinion of members.
Digital media can nurture democracy across the world by encouraging citizen participation in governance. Today, activists are using social media to launch names, icons, and slogans that later lead to collectivities such as Occupy Wall Street, school strikes for climate change, and the Arab Spring. However, the generation of massive data by digital media offers opportunities and challenges to the political class and administrators.
However, digital media is also responsible for spreading disinformation.
Digital and social media can transform society negatively. One of the consequences of the new digital media was the radicalization of youths to participate in terrorism activities. The new technologies not only made it easy for terror groups to produce propaganda messages quickly but also spread the same messages to huge audiences across the world. Social and digital media is also a source of violence. Cyber-stalking, online misogyny, cyber-harassment, among others are forms of misuse of social and digital media that have severe consequences on victims.
The use of social and digital media can discriminate against people with divergent views. Social network sites allow their users to like political causes or candidates.
Some countries use social and digital media to harass opponents and dissidents. Governments weaponize information against activists and dissidents to direct social and political discourse of a nation. Therefore, the penetration of the internet to many regions of the world can strengthen authoritarian regimes. It gives such governments to craft certain types of messages by state-aligned actors to manipulate public opinion in favor of the state. These practices make the work of the country easier in targeting the opposition and limit freedom of expression. The use of social media is a cheaper option for most authoritarian regimes. Thus, although social and digital media are supposed to help the voice of the voiceless heard, some governments in the world use the platform to silence them further (Kargar 1507). This is one of the downsides of the use of social and digital media.
Social media is transforming the way people form and nurture interpersonal relationships. It is changing the standard mode of communication the face to face communication to many-to-many community formations. It is not necessary today to have a real place to build a community because the new means of communication are making it easy to establish communities in an online site without a corresponding physical presence. Therefore, the concept of community is changing because people connect with like-minded people in the cyberspace. The new communities are as active as traditional ones in providing people with social capital because it relies on interactions and building relationships.
Social capital is one of the reasons why people come together in communities. People seek to establish a long last relationship by finding something that brings them together to bond. Once there is a bridge for people to use to socialize, then they can get all the social capital. Social media is bridging the gap in communication. It helps in bonding by assisting people to remain in constant communication. They also make it easy for people with similar backgrounds to maintain contact. It helps like-minded people and strengthens existing relationships in families with people from similar backgrounds. However, the bridging and bonding role of the internet differ across various groups. According to Ellison, Nicole B., Cliff Lampe, and Charles Steinfield, social and digital media change the character of social lives (6). Social and digital media are responsible for changing the way people interact and create social connections among young people.
The creation of public profiles in social network sites lowers the barriers to social interactions. These interactions enable people to connect with individuals that they would not have otherwise met physically. At the community level, the features of the social network sites lower the cost of finding and connecting with members of the group. The changes are critical in society because information moves swiftly, and people can make quick decisions.
Social and digital media are critical communication channels for diaspora communities and their families in their countries of origin. In the era of globalization, people are migrating and challenging social and national identities. When people move from one country to another, they do not lose contact with their relatives in the state of origin. They remain in constant communication using social and digital media. Therefore, these channels of communication are essential in bringing people together, even when they live in different geographical areas. As a result, the diaspora community supports their relatives in their countries of origin making their remittances one of the most significant sources of income
One of the main issues regarding the use of social media is the privacy of the individual. It challenges people’s understanding of privacy and its routines. Today, the former boundaries are private, and the public is blurred. As a result, people debate a lot about whether to upload particular pieces of information on an online platform and whatnot. Most social media platforms invite people to comment on the status of other people, tag friends, and upload pictures and videos (Woo 949). These affordances allow people to interact, keep in touch, share, and network with others. At the same time, there are legal instruments that a user and the website agree about their privacy. Through such concessions, the two parties agree on who owns the data that the user uploads, who has the right to delete the information, and the company can sell it or not. These agreements determine how the relationship between friends on the platforms.
Although a breach of privacy is not something new, it creates a lot of turbulence when it takes place on a social media platform. Violation of confidentiality on social and digital media is something new because the experience of using these platforms is a new concept. Communication on the social and digital media platforms entails experiencing warmth from friends through sharing and networking (Woo 949). At the same, it is a frightening experience because one can communicate with friends and sharing sensitive information that a private company can sell it at an unknown price without consultation. These are the challenges users of social and digital media should consider before uploading sensitive information online.