How Social Networking bought down a Government.
It will be no surprise to any of you who have seen the news in the last two months that President Hosni Mubarak has stepped down from his 30 year rule of Egypt. How is it though that a nation as vast a Egypt were able to organize these fierce riots at such short notice ... well it seems that social networks aren't just for playing Farmville and sharing photos. Facebook, Twitter, You Tube and many other social networking sites all played their part in the events that unfolded.
As we saw last year in London, Riots can be organized within a couple of days an have devastating effects. In the first student protest, 25,000 school children and University students acted out on the proposed increase in fees. Protests went on into the night and caused millions of pounds worth of damage. This all started from a Facebook group calling for an organized walkout and peaceful protest in demonstration against the proposal however in truth it resulted in scenes like these.
The revolution in Egypt was much the same. Deciding that they had had enough of Mubaraks 30 year dictatorship, rose up and stood their ground calling for the current leader to stand down. It took 17 days of constant protesting to get rid of man who had been in power for three decades, millions of people campaigned through the night breaking curfew laws put in place. After just seven days of protests, mobile phone signal was cut and the internet blocked in an attempt to disrupt the protesters organization. Twitter was still accessible for some though, Twitpic and YouTube were used by those that had a connection to send evidence of the events to International news stations. After a while houses around the main squares opened their WiFi networks to allow Facebook and other networks proved vital tools in the organization of both of these events. .
Marshall McLuhan once talked about the "Global village", a world bought together by electric technologies. Free and instant movement of information between quarters with no practical restrictions. It is this facilitation of communication between social groups with similar opinions that has changed the face of society as we know it. Where it would have once taken several weeks to organize such public uprisings, and even then may not have come to fruition, now only takes days, possibly even hours.
Social networking is all the rage, it's where the people are and where businesses want to be but does it have a darker side? Yes it can be used to do great things like help find lost relatives in the devastating situation in Japan, you can broad cast yourself like Justin Bieber or rebel against commercialism by backing "rage against the machine" for Christmas number one. Social networking is such a powerful tool though that I worry it may be misused by those looking to cause trouble. Both of the examples that we have looked at in this blog just go to show how you can rally thousands of people in a common cause from your back bedroom. Provided they all share your view on a given matter who knows what is possible, that is the brilliance/terror of digital activism.
As we saw last year in London, Riots can be organized within a couple of days an have devastating effects. In the first student protest, 25,000 school children and University students acted out on the proposed increase in fees. Protests went on into the night and caused millions of pounds worth of damage. This all started from a Facebook group calling for an organized walkout and peaceful protest in demonstration against the proposal however in truth it resulted in scenes like these.
The revolution in Egypt was much the same. Deciding that they had had enough of Mubaraks 30 year dictatorship, rose up and stood their ground calling for the current leader to stand down. It took 17 days of constant protesting to get rid of man who had been in power for three decades, millions of people campaigned through the night breaking curfew laws put in place. After just seven days of protests, mobile phone signal was cut and the internet blocked in an attempt to disrupt the protesters organization. Twitter was still accessible for some though, Twitpic and YouTube were used by those that had a connection to send evidence of the events to International news stations. After a while houses around the main squares opened their WiFi networks to allow Facebook and other networks proved vital tools in the organization of both of these events. .
Marshall McLuhan once talked about the "Global village", a world bought together by electric technologies. Free and instant movement of information between quarters with no practical restrictions. It is this facilitation of communication between social groups with similar opinions that has changed the face of society as we know it. Where it would have once taken several weeks to organize such public uprisings, and even then may not have come to fruition, now only takes days, possibly even hours.
Social networking is all the rage, it's where the people are and where businesses want to be but does it have a darker side? Yes it can be used to do great things like help find lost relatives in the devastating situation in Japan, you can broad cast yourself like Justin Bieber or rebel against commercialism by backing "rage against the machine" for Christmas number one. Social networking is such a powerful tool though that I worry it may be misused by those looking to cause trouble. Both of the examples that we have looked at in this blog just go to show how you can rally thousands of people in a common cause from your back bedroom. Provided they all share your view on a given matter who knows what is possible, that is the brilliance/terror of digital activism.
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