The Emerging Role of Social Media in Political and Regime Change By Rita Safranek “New media can have an impact by helping to transform individuals and give them new com- petencies that empower them in politics. This can be something as simple as taking a picture or a video with a smartphone, uploading that image of that footage to YouTube” (“The United States Institute of Peace”). A second impact is “the way that new media draws external attention from citizens and governments outside the country or the region to that country or region to the place that is experiencing protest or conflict” (“The United States Institute of Peace”). In this sense, the new media are a megaphone. “It is difficult to prove that communication via new media or social media is actually what brings people to the streets, especially in societies which have relatively low degrees of Internet penetration and Internet access. Perhaps the best illustration of the threat this information poses to authoritarian governments is their reaction to it. States have made a number of efforts to rein in Internet speech, including Internet” (“The United States Institute of Peace”). Conclusion For all that it does, social media is no “silver bullet” when it comes to political change. “The use of social media tools – text messaging, e-mail, photo-sharing, social network, and the like – does not have a single preordained outcome. Therefore attempts to outline their effects on political action are too often reduced to dueling anecdotes” (Shirky). Factors that seem to impact its successful use include the size, ethnic diversity, and education levels of the population, the existence of a modern telecommunications infrastructure, and the amount of censorship used by the exist- ing regime. Social media has limited impact at best on an important factor affecting nascent rev- olutions – a regime’s willingness to use force to squelch protests. Egyptian protests grew because the Army would not turn against citizens engaged in peaceful protest. Iranian protests petered out when leaders used force to crack down on those speaking out, both in public and in the cybersphere.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 12:06:45 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015