IT IS common knowledge to all that social media can be powerful in influencing other people. These TED Talks gives us a glimpse of the power of social media:
How One Tweet Can Ruin Your Life | Jon Ronson
Length: 17 minutes and 11 seconds
“The great thing about social media is how it gave a voice to voiceless people but now we are creating a surveillance society where the smartest way to survive is to go back to being voiceless. Let’s not do that.”
Jon Ronson shares the story of how Justine Sacco’s life was ruined by the internet with just one tweet; a tweet she thought was funny. As her tweet began to go viral, “Twitter took control of her life and dismantled it piece by piece.” The tweet cost her job and reputation. This video shows the harsh reality of how social media has become a platform for public shaming. It presented how people on the internet can get away from saying inappropriate and hurtful things against Sacco as long as she gets “annihilated.”
Zeynep Tufekci: How the internet has made social change easy to organize, hard to win
Length: 16:15
“Easier to mobilize does not always mean easier to achieve things.”
Tufekci presents to us how the social media allowed positive movements in Turkey like exposing the mass media for censoring and mobilizing protests. However, she said that though the internet provided the platform to easily launch movements through social media; this has not translated to something of a “successful outcome.”
Tufekci compared the successes of movements in the past and present. She showed to us that movements before, which had a hard time mobilizing, were able to reach success since the people are able to work, think, and innovate along the way. However, the faster mobilization of movement nowadays has somehow decreased the ability of the group to work, innovate, and think collectively.
At the same time, she presents groups or movements who are able to use the power of internet while allowing people to work, think, and innovate at a greater scale and more collectively.
James Surowiecki: The power and the danger of online crowds
Length: 18:40
“It is very easy to think…that being linked from one place to another to being tightly linked to a group is a very good thing. Much of the time, it is. But there is also a downside to this, the more tightly linked we become to each other; the harder it is for each of us to remain independent.”
In this talk, Surowiecki explains to us how the internet has allowed people to work together without the least amount of capital needed but at the same time, gather information and provide materials for the public.
He also discussed how the internet allowed citizen journalism to develop.
He also pointed out that as people get together on the internet, they tend to depend with each other.
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