Friday 4 November 2011

Facebook and Twitter are just places revolutionaries go

Week 11 posting is “Facebook and Twitter are just places revolutionaries go” by Morozov, from http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/07/facebook-twitter-revolutionaries-cyber-utopians


There are many social networking like My Space, Friendster but the popular social networks are Facebook and Twitter. It is a must to have Facebook and Twitter account, especially Facebook. Almost everyone has a Facebook account. There are less people in Malaysia has Twitter account compare to Facebook. Facebook had become a trend and a person without a Facebook account can be consider as outdated because people can get the latest news thru Facebook. For example, people start sharing the video that the China girl hit by the trucks and everyone started to discuss about it. We can get the latest news on Facebook compare to the news in newspaper or television.

Back to the topic, the author had stated that “the internet can be an effective tool for political change when used by grassroots organizations”.  Why the author said so? It is because that there are many people using internet for all kind of purpose like socialize, working, doing assignment, study and so on. So, internet is a media that can easily reach everyone and it is a useful and effective tools for political change, inform the citizen and so on. The author also stated that internet was used to publicize, and even organize protests in the Middle East does nothing to counter his argument. 
How addicted are you towards Facebook?

Internet is a very powerful media to influence people, especially social network. It is because that people spend most of the time on social network while they on internet. There are people on Facebook 24/7 and check the Facebook all the time with their smart phone. Facebook is very influential and it brings up many social issues and becomes a piece of news. For example, there are a lot of people sharing a video that show a bunch of students’ gang up and bully a female students in the secondary schools.  After this incident, there are a few similar cases is discover too and people started to pay attention in this issue. It becomes a big hit in our country and it is about the school policy, school rules and it is against the moral value. This shows that Facebook is an effective and powerful tool.

It is very easy to start a protest using a social network especially Facebook and Twitter. People can create an event or a page about the protest and share it. People can simply share it by click on the share button and the protester can share other information, pictures and even videos to make people join their protest. As for Twitter, the protester can use hash tag “#” and when there are a lot of people talking about the issue or protest, it will become a popular topic and it will be put at the right hand side if twitter page. It is easier for people to notice it can talk about it. It is even easier for people that are famous and influential to make a protest. It is because that there will be many people will follow them (in twitter) or like their page on Facebook and their message can be easily spread around. People will also pay attention to their action and words too. Therefore, the famous people should not simply said things that are not true or start a protest for fun. It will affect the society.

4 comments:

  1. Hello Jia Jing!

    Ineed, words can now easily spread to everyone. Just like what you say, with just a page in Facebook or the hash tag, everyone can get to certain topic easily. But personally, I think that Internet is the only media left that practices freedom of speech. If we can't even tell what we wanna say on Internet, don't you think our topic will be limited?

    Besides, from what I think, the users themselves should know the limit to everything. Knowing that Internet is a virtual world, they should know what should be taken seriously which should not. Not that whenever there are provocative words posted on social networking sites there will be revolutionary right? At the end of the day, it's still depends on the reader themselves. That's what I think! =)

    Anyway nice post!

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  2. Hey Jia Jing

    I agree that social networking site are extremely powerful tools that has recently made a lot of impact in society. If it wasn't for Facebook the case of the poor girl in China would never be known and the culprit would just get away with it. Thus, it is a great tool for voicing out opinions and a great tool to practice what's life of our freedom of speech.

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  3. Before Facebook and Twitter this kind of social networking launch, people can knows very less international news from the broadcasting medium. However, Facebook really helps a lot in our lifetime as the news from anywhere can be updated very soon if the news is related to go against the norm. Besides that, Facebook and Twitter can help me build a good communication and relationship among peoples as we can know the updates of our friends in any places as Facebook and Twitter is the most famous social network in these days. So, I agreed with you as internet is really a powerful tool that can change people even the world.

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  4. Facebook had reveal a numbers of politic scandal in Malaysia. Citizens has the right to know all about that and Facebook are the tools for us.

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