social change or social laziness?

I realize I am late to the social party, but I usually am.  You might have notice that many of your friends on Facebook have replaced their profile photo with the equal sign, as a way to show support for gay marriage.  Showing your support for a cause is nothing new to Facebook, but are you really doing anything simply by changing your Facebook photo?  What social change are you really bringing about?  Susan Kohn had a most apt point when she said “Internet activism is individualistic.  It’s great for a sense of interconnectedness  but the Internet does not bind individuals in shared struggle the same as the the face-to-face activism of the 1960s and 70s did.  It allows us to channel our individual power for good, but it stops there… real challenges in our society… won’t politely go away with a few clicks of the mouse.”  Social media can bring about change, but there needs to be organization, and real action behind it. Swapping a photo, or signing an online petition is often meaningless, because there is little effort behind it.  Whereas when the Arab Spring burned through Egypt they used it to organize, and mobilize the opposition to the streets.  Even when the police tried to clamp down on the opposition they had no idea even how to go about it.  This media was new to them, and efforts at intimidation only backfired.  When organizers were beaten they uploaded their wounds to Facebook and Twitter, when the police beat protesters, they had their phones out to capture it and put in online.  This is the new social activism, and the way social media can help the world.

ColleenBurke85

Discussion Post 11

@stansberry_dtcv

In the “Power of Sharing”, Deanna Zandt used the analogy of bubbles to portray our social connection to others: “Picture billions of soap bubbles in a sink. Each bubble represents a different person, and the bubble size reflects that person’s sphere of influence. Where bubbles connect and intersect represents our relationships with people around us” (7). Keeping this analogy in mind, it’s easy to see how social media is such a successful way to mobilize people in seeking social change. It’s long been understood that the first step towards solving a societal conflict is raising awareness, which today is often done using such mediums such as Facebook and Twitter. When we post, “share” or “like” a video such as the Kony 2012 viral video Facebook allows all of our all of our virtual friends to see. Next, our friends can choose if they also want to share or like it, and if the post is interesting enough the outreach can be exponential as the awareness spread through the “bubbles” and “empathy” builds (1). Naturally when large groups of people become aware of a pressing issue, the normal course of action is to seek change. Social media often is a place where real life events and protests are organized, allowing users to set a date, provide a description and invite their friends to join. Prior to social media, events like these were took time and were difficult to set up as they relied on heavy word of mouth, print media, and if possible sometimes television. Social media has allowed for us to stay connected and unify quickly if necessary.

Social Media=power

@RachaelS_DTC

Deanna Zandt reveals that social media effects society in a few different ways. The greatest example she gives is the uprising in the Middle East and North Africa. She says that social media “propels ideas of resistance and mass defiance across the Middle East and North Africa (pg. 3).” Social media, such as Facebook and Youtube, connected people around the world to show brutality in many countries. This is crucial when people are seeking for a social change. Unity in ideas also aids in dispersing information that people can easily access to begin a social movement. The Civil Rights movement in the 1950’s and 60’s did not have the internet but they still used the media through news reports to gain supporters. The media was a crucial aspect in the power of both of these movements. This is because media is available to almost everyone and the information can be presented in a way that gains supporters. For example, world hunger is a social problem that nearly everyone agrees exists. To raise money for starving children, activists can set up a website with images and videos of people dying from starvation. These images and videos can also be shared to other supporters around the world. Images and video with strong emotional quality tend to gain more attention for a social problem. Zandt also emphasizes the unity in social media, which also gains power for social change. On the internet, people are connected and can share information and evidence for social change.

blog #11

People turn to social media for different reasons. Simon Cottle believes that people use social Medias such as Facebook, YouTube and twitter to “propel images and ideas of resistance and mass defiance across the Middle East and North Africa. “ (p.3) In the other hand cooper & Dzara argue that people use social media to join groups.  The point is that we always turn to social media for our benefit.

Social media environments are able to mobilize people to seek change as Dzara and cooper suggest in the reading. Facebook has limited relationship statuses which make people want to seek a change in that. “Some users of the site have recently started a group to complain that Facebook does not allow “civil union” as a relationship”.  (p.189) People seek changes in gender, relationships, friending, and tagging. People seek changes in these areas because they don’t give the user enough options to choose from. Tagging is a big issue on Facebook and some people would like to change the use of tagging. Cooper and dzara explain how people can tag you in pictures and although you can untag yourself the person that tagged you can still have the picture.  There are many changes users of Facebook would like to see but maybe if they want to be more conservative they should not have a social media like Facebook.

Social Networks

@TannerSturza

Social media websites are changing the way people interact in our society. Now some one can get to know you and even meet you on a social media website. People now can get to know each other by what they share online. On a social network site a person can pick and choose what that want to share with people, but it is difficult to get to know a person if they don’t share or even try to hide things about them when in person they can’t hide who they are. These websites allow people to appear how they want, when in reality they might be different. “The trust we create on social networks fuels the empathetic response we have to one another, even if we don’t know each other that well” (Zandt 153). We trust that the relationship that has been created on a social network is real and and wouldn’t be different in person, but if we ever meet the person that we know online we find out what they didn’t share on the social network. “We can all hide behind the giant curtain of technology” (Zandt 170). You can create a different identity online, changing small characteristics about yourself or even creating a completely different identity and pretending to be someone you’re not. This can make it difficult to judge the people we meet online and if you get the chance to meet the person that you know online, they might not be who you originally thought they were.

Blog post #11

@chrisdtc101

Deanna Zandt gives us two quotes that sum up why social media is so powerful today. First, she says that, “Storytelling has been the most powerful building block for social change” (1). Later on in her book, “Share This! How You Will Change The World With Social Networking”, she claims, “Social networking gives us unprecedented power to share our stories with more people than we ever imagined” (159). Social media can mobilize people because it is easily available to anyone with internet access, and because it is far easier to reach out to masses of people through social media than in the real world. It has given us greater connection to the rest of the world than ever before. No longer are we limited to sharing our stories and looking for change from just the small number of people we see face to face, but now I can post something online, and people from Japan or China can see it just as easily as people living down the street from me. Not only do we have access to more people, but we, as participants of this social media movement, have access to more stories than ever before as well.

Social media has mobilized us by simply giving us a place to share our stories and interact. Facebook, where we can share anything we want and voice our thoughts and opinions, is one of the most popular places for this social media movement. Even right now, as we write our blog posts for this class, we are taking part in the social media movement. Social media has made itself nearly inescapable these days. It is everywhere we look. For anyone who uses the internet, social media is a part of their lives. Social media gives us a place to interact, and that’s all we need to get started.

The characteristics and qualities of the social media movement include connectivity, which contains a broad range of other characteristics such as being available to large numbers of people, being easily available, allowing people to contact each other at any given moment, and allowing people to converse even if they are not face to face. Characteristics also include the ability for the movement to easily adapt to changes and new technology and the inclusion of new popular technologies like personal blogs, Google+, and smartphones.

Social Media Environment

quy_luu

Social media environment has completely changed the society nowadays. For the last years, it has gradually become the public place where people can actually seek for new friends or update their friends’ status. By creating numerous social network websites, the social media has pulled people closer to each other by sharing their online story and status.  That way, the media environment has connected people and helped people understanding more about the others, “Social network gives us unprecedented power share our stories with more people than we ever imagined” (Zandt 159).  Besides, the social media has create the credibility among people by their day by day personal stories and people can absolutely feel same way with these status, “You build trust with other people in your network, and from there you build empathy” (Zandt 159). Facebook and MySpace are two great examples for the social environment; whenever we caught some bad or good stories, we definitely acknowledged what going on what these people and we normally commented and liked on their status to show our empathy. Additionally, there are two types of people who connected to the social media environment; there are strong ties and week ties groups (Zandt 165). Obviously, the strong ties group refers to regular participators for the social websites. They are normally your friends, your family members and your colleague. Oppositely, the weak ties group refers to seldom connectors, who are not interested in these websites. They connect to social network when they have a lot of spare times and they don’t really get addicted like the strong ties group. By connecting to the social media environment, there were a lot of visual positive outcomes that has changed the society in the better ways.

Blog #10dtcv

@JaredAbrahamWSU

One of the most groundbreaking creations of the last fifteen years, is the creation of the social media website. These social media sites have been able to connect the world in a way that has never before been witnessed. One could even say that the social impact of these sites rivals that of the telephone when Alexander Graham Bell invented it. just as the telephone is able to connect people from distances far apart, social media can do the same, but is more instantaneous.

Facebook and Twitter are the most popular of these sites at the moment. Not only is Facebook used to find long lost friends and family, but it is also the primary source of news for many of its users. Deanna Zandt says that “Social Networking gives us unprecedented power to share our stories with more people than we ever imagined.” (p. 159) Perhaps the best example of social media’s impact on our world, and its “power to share our stories” (p,159), is its use in the middle east. There are many instances of twitter being used, in the middle east, as the only form of communication with the out side world when a country is in the middle of a coup most of the communication is cut of from the surrounding countries. However, we are still able to communicate with the citizens of these countries through Twitter.  This could warn of an uprising, or even get information to the different government agencies that could end up helping the people of these war torn countries.

Social media

When we look back in history, we see that some of the greatest social changes were brought about by stories. Many times it was done through novels, short stories or even film. Zandt even proposes that, “storytelling has been the most powerful building block for social change”(1). But now we have been given a new medium through which to tell our story and that medium is social media. According to Zandt, “social networking gives us unprecedented power to share our stories” (1). We have seen this truth occur over and over again. What once took getting published in a newspaper or a novel to have your ideas seen by the masses now can be done instantly through social networking. Social media offers many advantages over previous media when it comes to sharing stories. The first advantage social media has is accessibility. A blog or a Facebook group can be accessed by anyone with an internet connection which latest statistics show to be about 2.4 billion people. Even the most popular and world changing stories in the past could never be available to this many people. Social media also groups people by their interests making them more engaged in whatever story is being told. There are an endless variety of forums and groups that all specialize in a different idea or activity. So instead of only getting ideas by means of publishing houses, newspapers, or what the small amount of people we know told us, we can now go and seek out our own information and stories that perfectly match up with our interests. This is great because when people hear an idea by means of a story they like, they are more likely to actually do something to promote it. Finally, social media is a much better way of spreading a message because most of the time social networking is free to the reader, making them much more likely to read the story than if they would have had to pay money to see it.

Social Media.

Social networking is what we are today. Social networking is where you can do anything good or bad at your fingertips. “Social networking gives us unprecedented power to share our stories with more people we ever imagined.” (Zandt, 159) Social media has grown so much over the years. For myself it used to be all about MySpace, changing the HTML codes to have the coolest background, and having the newest songs on your playlist. Now it’s all about blogging and Facebook. Some people blog to tell their stories, whether they want a response back, to let others know they’re not alone in a situation or just to simply talk about what they think, and have seen. For Facebook, it’s everything. People vent, update their statuses on the weather create groups for clubs and activities. Some even send out invitations via Facebook rather than sending a card. When reading this weekly prompt, I instantly thought of how this is so true, especially with the new thing being where kids, grownups are holding a sign saying “like this and we will get a puppy” Or “If you like and Share this picture we will donate a dollar to this charity” The one I’ve seen the latest is where a man in a seems to be 30’s is holding up a sign asking if anyone knows his real parents, I personally couldn’t help but share this because I’m hoping that this story is true and not some way of becoming  famous over Facebook.