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The affect of the internet on society
The impact of the internet on a society
The affect of the internet on society
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Humans’ advancement in technology has developed greatly over the years. From child to adult, much of the population in the U.S. has access to the Internet. For many people, the Internet is used to connect socially through sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. But while individuals are using the Internet for a social stomping ground, many activists are using it to expand their cause. Technology can bring about small amounts of social change; however, high risk and traditional activism are still needed to fabricate large amounts of social change. Activism via social media creates weak ties and sets the stage for low risk activism. Weak ties are defined in Malcolm Gladwell’s article “Small Change” (234) as an impersonal relationship …show more content…
The “Help Sameer Campaign”(Gladwell 235) is one example of how low risk activism via social media, can be accomplished. In the case of Bhatia, a man that contracted acute myelogenous leukemia, Bhatia’s business partner reached out to acquaintances via e-mail to locate a bone marrow donor for his colleague (Gladwell 235). As a result a match was found due to the “Help Sameer Campaign” growing rapidly through social media. The goal of the campaign was achieved through low risk activism and weak ties, yet people took the time to get involved. “By not asking too much of them. That’s the only way you can get someone you don’t really know to do something on your behalf. (Gladwell, 235)” That quote from Gladwell’s article is, to me the very definition of low risk …show more content…
For example, Gladwell wrote about the Greensboro sit-ins, which was a protest carried out by a group of friends who were refused service because they sat at a white only lunch counter. Eventually the protest/sit-in grew and expanded to other states (231). During the 1960’s segregation was a large struggle for non-whites, especially in southern states across the United States. For these four black college students to sit down at this lunch table in the first place was a big deal. This protest that grew into a major historical event happened through traditional activism. No one liked this protest on Facebook or Re-tweeted it on Tweeter. “It happened without e-mail, texting, Facebook, or Twitter. (Gladwell 231)” Personally, the use of traditional activism is more personal and passionate than “liking” or “sharing” via social media. “New technology has made greater openness possible, but has this openness made us better off? (Singer 463)” In terms of activism, the openness has made it more convenient for a person to have access to information about a cause. The only downside about this access via Internet is that an individual is going towards a weak tie rather than a strong tie because that person is not going out into the field do research that cause. Which is why social media or the Internet can only be so beneficial to a
In Stephens article, he tells how “Social media could serve as a source of live, raw information. It could summon people to the streets and coordinate their movements in real time. And it could swiftly push back against spurious media narratives with the force of a few thousand retweets”. He explains how technology can be used to push to change problems in our society and encourage us to get up and do something about it. Being able to use our capabilities if technology to fullest is “A huge reason for all this success is that, perhaps more than any other modern American protest movement, they’ve figured out how to marshal today’s tools”. In McKinnon’s explanation, she states how “To their credit, some companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook have joined forces with civil liberties groups in an attempt to persuade the Obama administration not to push anti-encryption measures that would enable government and law enforcement officials to access our secure communications”. This is goes with how technology can be used to make a difference just like what Stephen was saying in order to inform people on what’s going on. McKinnon explains how our social media servers have also taken a disagreement on invading our private lives. As it stands, any individual or
Malcolm Gladwell, a published author and staffed writer for The New Yorker since 1996, argues in his article “Small Change” that social media will not have a great impact on social change, and might even be demolishing the necessary tools that high-action activism has always been reliant on. Gladwell attempts to speak out to warn our current technological society, specifically to the young adults who frequent social media more than other ages. Gladwell highlights an event from 1960 when four college women from North Carolina A. & T. were denied service because of their race, and turned to protest as they sat at the lunch counter, refusing to move. The movement of sit-ins spread and grew until eventually seventy thousand students across the South were united in protest, without the use of technological communication. He focuses on the idea that this protest, like many others before the use of social media, was formed on the idea of strong bonds between real friendships, and not just loose relationships between acquaintances. But if we were to combine the key concepts Gladwell highlights that are needed within protests
Malcolm Gladwell in his article “Small Change”, published in The New Yorker in 2010, identifies our present time as a long sequence of revolutions, in which the new instruments of mass media have changed the nature of social activism. I think it is possible to agree and disagree with his position at the same time. Obviously, Facebook and Twitter and the like have modulated the existing links between the authorities and the public. They have altered kinds of activism, and the organizations with so-called “strong-ties” gave way to a weak-tie gatherings somewhere on-line. I support Gladwell's claim that “friends” on Facebook, in spite of their assistance in providing their interlocutors with new ideas and news, can't be regarded true friends, ready to back you up in a dangerous, politically unstable situation.
Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are essential parts of every individual in todays day and age. The article Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted declares that people do not need social media to unfurl peoples quarrels around a large group. for example when the students ordered sit ins during the war against segregation. The world now is not how it used to be in the past, were individuals did not have TV or computers to rely on for news. Malcolm Gladwell asserts that all of the new technology is unnecessary to keep people informed of a certain subjects. For example when Hitler was killing the jewish religion in Germany. Not only was that something of extreme importance, but if we did not have technology or social media could one have ever known about it. Malcolm makes comments about Facebook, MTV, and Google assuming that people could write whatever they want and consider it as news. Nevertheless if one ignores things that individuals alleges on the web and you think it’s a rip-off, could we be able to help anyone?.
In conclusion, Carr and Gladwell’s essays have proven that the internet positive effects are outweighed by its negative effects. Carr has found he is unable to finish a full text anymore or concentrate. He thinks that the internet has taken our natural intelligence and turned it into artificial intelligence. Gladwell discusses how nowadays, social activism doesn’t have the same risk or impact as former revolutions such as the Civil Rights Movement. The internet is mostly based on weak ties based among people who do not truly know each other and would not risk their lives for their
While many people throughout the world see social media as a trendy new application in the service of personal amusement, the political upheavals in the Arab world have shown how it can change the dynamics of modern day activism. The Arab Spring Uprising interlaced social unrest with a technological revolution. Blogs, news websites, twitter feeds, and political list servers became avenues for communication, information flow and solidarity. Being capable of sharing an immense amount of uncensored information through social media sites has contributed to the success of many Arab Spring activists. Social media played a role in facilitating the events of the Arab Spring, but the main issues are rooted in a broader set of economic, political, and social factors. This paper will examine how social media impacted the Arab Spring Uprising. Specifically, I will look at how social media introduced a novel resource that helped to created internet activist communities, changed the dynamics of social mobilization and revolutionized interactions between protesters and the rest of the world.
In an article captioned “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted” Malcolm Gladwell, a writer for the New Yorker, and crowned one of Time magazine’s top 100 greatest influential people in 2005, argues that, social media is effective in uniting a large group for a cause, but ineffective in promoting high-risk activism.
In my opinion, social media is a way to bring the world closer and an assertion of consumer choice can be used for promoting issues that matter. A human rights activist can make an unknown story reach hundreds of thousands of people by the ‘simple click of a button’.
Today’s young adults live a life caught between two worlds: the physical realm of human interaction and the digital universe that sits just a mouse click away. This is an age in which entire relationships are formed over online digital platforms, and a single person’s opinion can be broadcasted worldwide in a matter of milliseconds. Lately, the freedom of expression that social media has given young adults has provoked interesting behavior among users of such social media platforms as Facebook and Twitter. The term “slacktivism” was coined as far back as 1995 by Dwight Ozard and Fred Clark as an expression of doing something in support of an issue or cause that requires minimal personal effort (Kain, 2012), and is now used to describe this new behavior; where everyday activists have taken their causes to the Web in search of exposure and support, and users have found a passive way to support the causes that they claim to believe in. Every day, hundreds of new slacktivist-oriented pages and videos sprout up across Facebook and Twitter, and slacktivist supporters rush to “like” the cause and pass it along to other friends in their network. This, however, is not the only form of slacktivism. It is also evidenced in the statuses of the numerous members of the Facebook and Twitter community. The role of the “status update” and the “tweet” has evolved from reporting a person’s physical activities, into a platform for launching whatever propaganda a user deems worthy of sharing with his or her social media community. It would seem that social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are providing users with a false sense of ego, and that this – in turn – has contributed to the monumental rise of slacktivism and consequential degradat...
In order to use social media to promote your advocacy, online activist need to know the effects social media has on activism. The first effect of communication is audience engagement is needed. Many of the issues that went viral like the ALS ice bucket challenge had some sort of audience appeal. The supporters were doing an action and challenging their friends to do it also. By doing that, it was raising awareness and gaining donations. On the word of an article about the ice bucket challenge stated, its playing on what you know young people do, and you are using that to create this awareness and raise money (Madison). This generation is always trying to outdo themselves, who is going to be the next big youtube sensation. The winners of this knowledge monopoly is all the groups whose activism worked and got recognition. The losers are the advocates whose issues got "liked" by slacktivist, maybe someone shared a post but it did not go viral. Secondly, putting activism on social media is a given, it is a place where the supporters are already at. In an article in Psychology Today, Pamela Rutledge, PH.D. says social media is changing public awareness by the word of mouth persuasion (Rutledge). Social media users often connect to those who have their same views, finding supporters of an issue or cause on social media should amplify the advocacy. For example, according to the article in the Sentinel, since the ice bucket challenge went viral, the ALS Association has seen more than one million new donors and received more than 80 million dollars in donations as of August 2014 (Madison). Even though the ALS ice bucket challenge was a success and proves activism on social media can work it can set up some advocates for failure. The unexpected consequences of the effects on social media activism is that people are thinking that they can do the next ice
Although social media has only been around for the past two decades it has changed the way the world runs today. Social media is a new form of communication, entertainment, campaigning, and activism that helps to spread news or information more broadly and faster than before. A recent way social media has been used to spread awareness of an issue was in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. With the use of Facebook and YouTube the Ice Bucket Challenge had unbelievable results.
It is through the implementation of advocacy strategies through technology integration that have allowed practice to evolve. According to Edwards and Hoefer (2010), communication technology that allows real-time updates and expansive reach include social networking sites, online journals or blogs, and video sharing technology, like YouTube. Social networking sites are online communities that built on social interactions and relationships. In these environments there are opportunities to share ideas that can lead to large scale changes. Similarly, online journals or blogs present idea sharing for those subscribing or interested in the topic selections. Video sharing adds a facet of sharing information that can complement or strengthen a perspective. According to Tetloff, Hitchcock, Battista, and Lowry (2014), videos can encourage partnership, engage a community, and inspire thinking that is not sculpted by a preconceived notion or faculty of negative influence. The use of these technologies provide a social media venue to share messages and connect people to advocate for change and ultimately affect how and what policies are adopted for local and large scale
Since its creation, social media has caused considerable changes in society. It allows people to connect, create, and learn. Since social media allows people from all over the world to connect, it allows people to share different ideas and promote important causes; social media has become a platform for activism. By sharing, liking, and tweeting all people have become activist for all sorts of causes. In recent years, scholars compared activism of this type to the activism that has occurred during the Civil Rights Movement. Recent debate has quite different views regarding activism through social media as an influential factor in publicizing causes. According to Malcolm Gladwell, social media may aid people in becoming aware of certain issues, but activism through social media does not solve any of the problems they try to fix. He also argues that social media create weak ties between people. I am of two minds regarding Gladwell’s claim regarding social media activism and the ties it creates. On the one hand, activism
In mere minutes, any active user can access information and associations regarding various causes, such as the riots happening in Egypt and the Middle East. Teenagers, in the Middle East, used their Facebook accounts to campaign the “Day of Rage” in Saudi Arabia. Helping to set the Arab riots in motion, the event demanded elections, freedom for women, and the liberation of political prisoners. The activists’ goals to bring democracy to Egypt and removing Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s fourth president from 1981 to 2011, still continue and perhaps with the assistance of Facebook they will accomplish these ambitions. The causes campaigned through Facebook have served as a fundraise...
Human beings are social entities that require to satisfy their need for connection from time to time. Thankfully, there are natural platforms readily available that people can use to enhance connections and build new ones to satisfy their need for companionship and support. This is evident in undertakings such as activism, which bring people together and allow them to fight for a common goal. Today, there are multiple ways available to pursue activism and the creation of relationships, among them is technology and social media. While they prove to be effective to a certain extent, there is no way that they compare with classical and natural modes of human interaction. Physical interactions and family represent a mode of interaction