Social Media for Change

Umair Vahidy

The dynamism of our cur­rent world is per­haps best exem­pli­fied by the Inter­net, with its seem­ing­ly unlim­it­ed poten­tial to present the inter­ac­tions, thoughts, ideas, move­ments and mar­vels that this world and its peo­ple offer. The ‘cyber world’ – as it has come to be known – is one of the great­est inven­tions of our time, where a kind of par­al­lel dig­i­tal uni­verse has been cre­at­ed to co-exist along­side our phys­i­cal world.

And with this has come a fun­da­men­tal shift in the way we com­mu­ni­cate. Not only have sso­cial net­work­ing sites, blogs, pod­casts, wikis, video shar­ing sites, web appli­ca­tions and their like trans­formed our com­mu­ni­ca­tion land­scape, but are now increas­ing­ly impact­ing the social and polit­i­cal dynam­ics of our coun­tries. In 2009, a series of mass protests in the East­ern Euro­pean coun­try of Moldo­va — coor­di­nat­ed through text mes­sage, Face­book and Twit­ter – result­ed in a loss of pow­er for the rul­ing Com­mu­nist Par­ty. And more recent­ly we have seen how the upris­ings in the Mid­dle East have been pro­pelled by social media inter­ac­tion and youth mobi­liza­tion. The real­ly amaz­ing thing is that nobody involved in the devel­op­ment of these var­i­ous social media appli­ca­tions could have fore­seen how these inven­tions would go on to become such ground­break­ing tools for social change.

Author­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ments repress com­mu­ni­ca­tion among their cit­i­zens because they fear (cor­rect­ly) that a well-informed and bet­ter-coor­di­nat­ed pub­lic would con­strain their abil­i­ty to act with impuni­ty and with­out over­sight. But while such regimes are busy try­ing to curb access to these tools, their influ­ence around the world is only get­ting stronger. Chi­na leads the pack when it comes to restrict­ing the func­tions of online media through mas­sive fire­walls and intru­sive soft­ware. The Chi­nese gov­ern­ment employs thou­sands of paid com­men­ta­tors who pose as ordi­nary web users and infil­trate chat rooms and oth­er online forums to counter any crit­i­cism of the gov­ern­ment. Known deri­sive­ly as “50 Cent Par­ty” mem­bers (as they are usu­al­ly paid 50 Chi­nese “cents” per post) these ‘shapers’ of pub­lic opin­ion sus­tain the government’s online pro­pa­gan­da efforts.

How­ev­er, the huge num­bers of peo­ple recruit­ed into the “50 Cent Par­ty” actu­al­ly bear tes­ta­ment to the pow­er of social media, show­ing us that even in the face of strict cen­sor­ship poli­cies, the gov­ern­ment has been unable to put an embar­go on online media and has instead had to resort to using the same social media plat­form to counter crit­i­cism. There­fore, regard­less of the most strin­gent of cen­sor­ship poli­cies, the expres­sion of hon­est pub­lic opin­ion on the inter­net can­not be curbed entire­ly, because social media appli­ca­tions are avail­able in so many dif­fer­ent forms and because they are inex­pen­sive and wide­ly acces­si­ble.

The explo­sion of new online media is also trans­form­ing jour­nal­ism. Not only is it empow­er­ing media pro­fes­sion­als but is also allow­ing ama­teur jour­nal­ists and cit­i­zen media to reach out to a large and broad audi­ence with­out the help of any sophis­ti­cat­ed resources. In Tunisia’s recent Jas­mine Rev­o­lu­tion pro­test­ers used blogs, Face­book, Twit­ter, Wik­iLeaks doc­u­ments, YouTube and oth­er meth­ods to mobi­lize and report on what was going on in the face of a media crack­down. The Inter­net was the largest source of news about the protests, and much of it has been pro­vid­ed by the demon­stra­tors them­selves, despite Tunisi­a’s strict inter­net cen­sor­ship poli­cies.

Through­out world his­to­ry, rev­o­lu­tions have bro­ken out and repres­sive regimes have been chal­lenged by the mass­es. But these dra­mat­ic events did not take place overnight; it usu­al­ly took years for pub­lic opin­ion to mobi­lize and enable pub­lic action against oppres­sion. Now the dynam­ics of “change” are chang­ing them­selves.

This mod­ern, enhanced capa­bil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate, coor­di­nate and mobi­lize mass­es towards a com­mon objec­tive has deeply impact­ed the col­lec­tive con­science of nations. A reg­u­lar teenag­er today who writes a blog, net­works on Face­book, and exchanges thoughts on Twit­ter, can actu­al­ly act as a unit for col­lec­tive change. Social media has played a huge role in the Egypt­ian upris­ing and the suc­cess­ful ouster of the 30 year-old dic­ta­to­r­i­al regime of Hos­ni Mubarak. Face­book pages record­ing inci­dents of police tor­ture and oth­er forms of oppres­sion, cou­pled with tweets and exten­sive blog cov­er­age, mobi­lized Egypt’s tech-savvy youth into a thor­ough­ly mod­ern form of polit­i­cal action nev­er before wit­nessed by the world. The rever­ber­a­tions of Egypt’s Rev­o­lu­tion 2.0 are now being felt in neigh­bor­ing coun­tries with auto­crat­ic regimes, such as Yemen, Bahrain and Libya.

But even before the “Face­book Rev­o­lu­tions” of 2011, social media has been used very effec­tive­ly to engage the mass­es in aware­ness pro­grams and mobi­liza­tion towards peace­ful change. On Feb­ru­ary 4, 2008 hun­dreds of thou­sands of pro­test­ers gath­ered in Columbian cities and around the world to decry the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Armed Forces of Colum­bia (FARC), an ultra-left­ist rebel group. The main source which sparked this upris­ing was a sim­ple Face­book page called “One Mil­lion Voic­es Against FARC” set up by Oscar Morales, a well-known activist and web devel­op­er. Morales also helped mobi­lize the largest-ever glob­al anti-ter­ror­ism demon­stra­tion, with over 12 mil­lion par­tic­i­pants in 200 cities. In his recent vis­it to Pak­istan for the launch of Khu­di, a counter-extrem­ism social move­ment, Morales told the audi­ence that he can relate to Pakistan’s dilem­ma of being per­ceived as a dan­ger­ous and prob­lem-rid­den coun­try but that despite all these issues, Pak­istani youth can still voice their opin­ions very effec­tive­ly through social media.

Dur­ing Pakistan’s State of Emer­gency in Novem­ber-Decem­ber 2007, Pres­i­dent Mushar­raf cracked down on major news chan­nels such as Geo TV, ARY and even inter­na­tion­al out­lets such as BBC. The ban on tra­di­tion­al media out­lets allowed for the rise of social media as a viable alter­na­tive for infor­ma­tion dis­sem­i­na­tion and mobi­liza­tion of pro­tes­tors. Stu­dents turned to the Inter­net to reg­is­ter their oppo­si­tion to the Emer­gency, pre­dom­i­nant­ly using blogs and Face­book to denounce Musharraf’s action and to orga­nize flash protests.

It has also been argued that social media can con­tribute to the spread of neg­a­tive ideas and hate speech due its inher­ent­ly uncon­trolled and glob­al nature. While reg­u­la­tions and restric­tions do exist with regards to hate speech, incite­ment to vio­lence and tar­get­ed attacks on indi­vid­u­als in cyber media, the issue is murki­er when it comes to cul­tur­al sen­si­tiv­i­ties. Susan Gor­don from Face­book Caus­es dis­cussed this issue at the Inter­na­tion­al Youth Con­fer­ence & Fes­ti­val 2010 in Islam­abad, where she argued that cen­sor­ship won’t work in any case. It is impor­tant to real­ize that a pol­i­cy of free speech in the social media sphere can only lead to a bet­ter under­stand­ing of dif­fer­ent, com­plex sit­u­a­tions. More­over, the issues relat­ed to cul­tur­al sen­si­tiv­i­ties are quite rel­a­tive in nature and we should nev­er try to stream­line such dif­fi­cult top­ics through strict, wide-sweep­ing cen­sor­ship poli­cies.

Despite the chal­lenges men­tioned above, it is clear that the dynam­ic and resource­ful tools of today’s online media help us cope with the mul­ti­far­i­ous chal­lenges of the 21st cen­tu­ry. Through the grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of social media, the com­mu­ni­ca­tion land­scape is becom­ing more par­tic­i­pa­to­ry: the net­worked pop­u­la­tion of today con­tin­ues to acquire greater access to infor­ma­tion, more oppor­tu­ni­ties to engage in pub­lic speech, and an enhanced abil­i­ty to under­take col­lec­tive action. It is high time that we, as the youth of a devel­op­ing coun­try, keep our­selves updat­ed on these new devel­op­ments which can be used to fur­ther empow­er our­selves.

SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS FOR YOU:
Blog­ging:

“Blog is an abbre­vi­at­ed ver­sion of the term ‘weblog’ which is a term used to describe web­sites than main­tain an ongo­ing chron­i­cle of infor­ma­tion. A blog fea­tures diary-type com­men­tary and links to arti­cles on oth­er Web sites, usu­al­ly pre­sent­ed as a list of entries in reverse chrono­log­i­cal order. Blogs range from the per­son­al to the polit­i­cal, and can focus on one nar­row sub­ject – such as web design, sports or mobile tech­nol­o­gy — or a whole range of eclec­tic issues. And oth­ers are more like per­son­al jour­nals, pre­sent­ing the author’s dai­ly life and thoughts.”
— WordPress.org.

Blog­ging can be con­sid­ered as one of the eas­i­est ways to express one­self on online media. To be a blog­ger, you don’t need to be tech-savvy since Word­Press, Blogspot and many oth­er web­sites not only pro­vide free host­ing ser­vices but also pro­vide con­ve­nient tools to help new blog­gers design their entire blog with­out have to learn com­plex html cod­ing. A great num­ber of blog­gers have become opin­ion-mak­ers for their inter­net audi­ence, often fos­ter­ing debate on taboo top­ics. Blog­gers have var­i­ous tools which allow them to con­nect with each oth­er and help reach out to their tar­get audi­ence.
Pod­cast­ing

Pod­cast­ing is a very sim­ple alter­na­tive to radio broad­cast­ing, which basi­cal­ly involves mak­ing audio con­tent avail­able online using RSS Feed. Pod­cast­ers give lis­ten­ers more con­trol over what they lis­ten to and when, as they can down­load con­tent on demand, deter­mine what they want to lis­ten to and save archives to access at a lat­er stage. Pod­cast­ing also gives far more options in terms of con­tent and pro­gram­ming than radio does. Pod­cast­ing can cov­er just about any top­ic and is par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful for pro­mot­ing or shar­ing music, edu­ca­tion­al and infor­ma­tion­al mate­ri­als, dis­cus­sions and com­men­taries and for gen­er­al­ly shar­ing a per­son­al opin­ion with a large audi­ence. As some­one described, “While blogs have turned many blog­gers into jour­nal­ists, pod­cast­ing has the poten­tial to turn pod­cast­ers into radio per­son­al­i­ties.” It is easy to get start­ed on pod­cast­ing your­self as all it involves is record­ing your con­tent and pro­duc­ing audio files and then pub­lish­ing them online using RSS feeds, all of which can be done using free soft­ware. These pod­casts can then be uploaded to a web­site and down­loaded onto lis­ten­ers’ com­put­ers, iPods and mp3 play­ers.

Vlog­ging:

Video blog­ging (or Vlog­ging) is a form of blog­ging for which the medi­um is video. Entries often com­bine embed­ded video or a video link with sup­port­ing text, images, and oth­er meta­da­ta. These videos can be record­ed in one take or cut into mul­ti­ple parts. Youtube is a very pow­er­ful tool for Vlog­ging as it allows indi­vid­u­als to share their video con­tent on the main web­site as well as embed videos on blogs and web­sites. Vlog­ging is now becom­ing a major tool for shar­ing infor­ma­tion and is play­ing a sig­nif­i­cant role in cit­i­zen media. Many ama­teur jour­nal­ists, doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ers, human rights activists, NGOs, and social com­men­ta­tors have their own chan­nels on Youtube and oth­er video upload­ing web­sites. Not only do they have a fol­low­ing of mil­lions of peo­ple but they have the abil­i­ty to reach a very diverse audi­ence all over the world with almost zero resources. As Susan Gor­don from Face­book Caus­es said dur­ing the Inter­na­tion­al Youth Con­fer­ence and Fes­ti­val 2010, “If every human rights activist had a video cam­era, it would have changed the world.”

To have your own video blog all you need is a cam­corder and a com­put­er with video edit­ing soft­ware. Pop­u­lar video edit­ing pro­grams for Vlog­gers include iMovie, Final Cut Pro, and Win­dows Movie Mak­er. Once you have made your Vlog, you will need to host it on a site (such as Youtube or Vimeo) and share it with the world.

Twit­ter:

Twit­ter offers free social net­work­ing and microblog­ging ser­vices, allow­ing its users to send and read mes­sages called tweets. Each tweet is a short burst of infor­ma­tion, up to 140 char­ac­ters dis­played. Users can choose which tweets to sub­scribe to (referred to as ‘fol­low­ing’ in the Twit­ter lin­go). Tweets are pub­licly vis­i­ble by default but senders can restrict mes­sage deliv­ery to just their fol­low­ers. Twit­ter is a very effi­cient, real-time infor­ma­tion shar­ing tool in the social media sphere. Its sim­plic­i­ty and acces­si­bil­i­ty have made it a pow­er­ful tool for protests and cam­paigns, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Egypt, Tunisia and Iran.