When technology truly shines, people around the world tend to notice. With new information sharing sites and access to blogs, people of the world have taken to the World Wide Web in order to combat tyranny and fight for individual freedom. Gilad Lotan, Erhardt Graeff, Mike Ananny, Devin Gaffney, Ian Pearce and Danah Boyd all combined their resources and expertise to write “The Revolutions were Tweeted: Information Flows During the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions” in which they point out that technology not only helped the revolution happen in the first place, but allowed people to sustain their fight and sustain a constant flow of information to the world. Today, we are faced with many over bearing and controlling governments, who make it their duty to block the flow of information and crush any revolution. It is no longer that easy, now mainstream media has taken a back seat to amateur reporting, and even with national media shutdown or controlled; we the people still have a way to report our struggles and get the world to notice and help.
I agree that Twitter and other information sites helped sustain the revolution, just as it has helped the Occupy movement. When traditional news media refused to cover the issue and tried to hush hush it, the people took to Twitter and other blog sites to tell the world that the US of Free was becoming a police state who caters to the ultra rich. One recent problem with Twitter is the fact that they recently took in a huge sum of money from the Saudi family, which is turn has influenced Twitter and now they are going to sensor tweets from certain countries. Is it the begging of the end? Only time can tell.
Here is a Washington Post article, “Five Myths about the Arab Spring” that takes the opposite stance and claims that the revolution had nothing to do with social media along with other myths. I don’t agree with it all, but it is worth a read and gives another important perspective.
Homemade anti-aircraft gun
While the creation of social media was key in the sustaining and spreading of information that could be seen as beneficial to the cause of the common man. I found it interesting that you believe that it has taken over the traditional forms of media that are owned by large corporations. Generally i have found this to be untrue, usually when i ask someone where they receive their news they only feel new sites owned by large companies and are somewhat ashamed to mention blogs twitter accounts that they follow.
When it comes to events and movements that mainstream media don’t agree with or get funding for, they don’t cover it. That is where smaller social media sites like Twitter come into light. Mainstream media didn’t bother covering OccupyWallStreet or the Arab Spring. Media is more worried about hyping the next war with Iran or China; not facilitating change at home through a grassroots movement. I agree that we still get our daily news from major media, but when shit hits the fan, we cannot depend on them; mainstream media follows the money. Just like our politicians.