Web Bonding and Physical Bonding - Literature review Example

A. Amirrezvani Web Bonding and Physical Bonding (Literature in the Middle East) 10 October (estimated word count = 2,123) Introduction The power of an idea whose time has come is something that cannot be prevented by anyone or any government. This is the essence of what was said by the famous French poet and writer Victor M. Hugo (1802-1885) who observed that one can resist an invading army but not an invasion of ideas, especially progressive ideas to replace the old ideas. The Internet today has done a lot to propagate new ideas, thanks to which the borders of a country are now porous. This was what happened during the so-called Arab Spring, in which some Arab nations underwent radical social and political changes to achieve genuine reforms in their systems. Much of this was achieved through Web support in activism, which is just as powerful as any actual physical bonding. It is simply amazing how repressive and totalitarian governments do fall once the masses band together to achieve a common goal, a triumph of the people. New and vast advances in communication technologies have allowed people to get in touch with others more easily, much faster and in a more dispersed way than ever before. It is the Internet (or the World Wide Web) which made this possible, and this has continued even to this day with the advent of new social media networks. People resort to the new social sites to get themselves updated on what is happening within their immediate circle of friends and a lot of family members who may be near or far away (it does not matter much anyway as new ways of getting in touch with each other such as mobile phones and social media sites have practically shrank the geographical distance and even compressed the time element too as the people who use these technologies have access to these modes of communication 24 hours). A bond is forged among netizens (Internet citizens) just as powerfully as any physical bonding. Discussion Any advocacy or protest movement can usually start small and quite innocent. There are many examples of mass movements that initially started out involving only a few people, but soon grew big enough to be able to affect change on a large, nationwide scale. This is the pattern that can be observed as more and more people join the movement, whatever its cause is or whatever it advocates for. This had been shown in several movements in the past which eventually became successful to some extent and achieved their stated aims. Examples of the movements were the early advocacies for the right of women to vote (suffrage) which gained momentum and eventually resulted into women becoming politically enfranchised. This was the same pattern during the Civil Rights Movement when the blacks were agitating for equal rights and acquired enough mass to effect change in the social and political arena as well as in the economic sphere, to be free from any racial discrimination. In the same way, this had been the route taken by the womens liberation movement (feminism) in which gender discrimination has been essentially abolished, resulting into equal pay for equal work. There are many similar movements or advocacies which sought to accomplish some ends and which were eventually successful to some extent, such as equal rights for gays and lesbians or movements to save the environment like what was started by the late Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai (1940-2011) in Kenya, which became a worldwide phenomenon under the banner of the Greenbelt Movement and still continues strong today for its advocacies. The so-called Arab Spring, which is a revolutionary movement in the Arab world, is a similar event which consisted of demonstrations, civil uprisings, street protests and in some cases, resulting into full-fledged civil wars. It began as a peaceful protest to seek government reforms against totalitarian or oppressive governments under either a monarchy or a dictator, to effect changes in the political, economic, social or even religious lives of the citizens. People power revolutions are usually spontaneous political events which eventually snowball into a mass movement that acquire a critical mass of people, which the police and military of the government can no longer handle due to the sheer number of people it gets involved in. This big number overwhelms the capacity of state institutions to handle protests peacefully and then usually turns violent, which in turn further angers more people to join the movement. This was the case in the Philippines, although it was a peaceful revolution, in which no lives were lost and which was copied elsewhere, primarily in the Eastern and Central Europe countries, which overthrew their oppressive communist governments. This was known as the Velvet Revolution as it was also non-violent; it caused the downfall of the former USSR, or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and effectively ended the Cold War. Previously, political protests were just by a few people. This is because the people in these protests had a hard time disseminating their ideas and advocacies; very few people had heard of what they aimed to achieve. Before the advent of social media networks, it was quite easy for the government authorities to control these crowds and arrest protesters, and movements of people were likewise restricted to contain the protests from further flaring up. In most cases, these movements die out unless the authorities do something really egregious to agitate the people to rise up spontaneously in a mass protest, which seldom happened in history because without a galvanizing cause for action, people tend to lose interest. The rise of new communications technologies like the Internet and mobile devices in a way changed the political equation of crowd control quite considerably. It is a paradigm shift which many politicians had not foreseen, and so they were unprepared to deal with it in a way that would have them retain political control of their countries. Social media originally was just intended for people to keep in touch with each other, updating about their lives and what is happening in the immediate circle of families and friends, mainly to communicate (Benioff 1). The uses of social media soon evolved into the world of business, where firms had to stay connected and get engaged with their client base in order to promote customer loyalty. The intent was to develop a long-term relationship with a customer, as business firms scramble to shift to becoming social enterprises that can stay dedicated to a client for the long haul, which is considered as a key factor for success and longevity in the competitive markets of today (Benioff 1). The customers of today are not merely just consumers but activists as well; they want to help shape the companies they patronize through feedback, suggestions and comments. They want to have a voice and influence in company policies that will affect them. It was not long before social media found other uses in society. One of its primary or basic uses has been applied in the world of protest movements and politics to mobilize people into taking collective actions that will pressure their governments to meet their demands. It is now an accepted fact that social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube had been used to promote political agendas that will result in democratic governments in previous totalitarian countries, as people now mobilize themselves more easily and much faster as the spread of information and ideas can be quite fast (Bishara 1), as the speed of light. Social sites had become centers of political and social forces to rally around and demand for political reforms and social justice because people now congregate on these social sites for news. More than anything else, the Arab Spring is really a social media revolution because it is the first time that social networking sites have been extensively used in political actions. It had been used successfully to effect regime change in countries such as Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. The people who aspired for political reforms saw an excellent opportunity to utilize all the social networking sites available to them to gain the greater freedom and more democratic rights they had long sought and fought for because these sites allowed a fragmented political opposition to find common ground, promote a single agenda and achieve unity (Taylor 1). In line with the previous discussion, people who embark on starting a political, social or some other kind of mass movement need to have moral support. In the cases of both Egypt and Tunisia, the people in those countries were initially intimidated by government forces but persevered in their struggles due to the encouragement they got from other people in nearby or even faraway countries. The various Facebook updates, tweets and re-tweets, blog posts or other postings such as video clips to YouTube had created a huge buzz of cascading messages. It helped their cause to be noticed by other people who also shared the same vested interest of achieving democracy in mostly totalitarian or dictatorial regimes (Taylor 1) such that government had no other choice but to concede to their demands. It is people power using social media. This on-line community created strong bonds on the Web, despite the anonymity we usually associate with the digital media. Comments and digital content being generated by the intense political discussions drew more people into the loop, creating a self-supporting cycle of feedback mechanisms which encouraged these groups of people to continue with the fight. In the literal and figurative sense, these movements created a conversation about the political revolution and social uprising that soon acquired a life of its own, difficult to stop as the ideas keep coming in even from other places, ideas whose time has come, as mentioned earlier. This characteristic of social media having the capability to evolve rapidly into the mass uprisings that toppled long-running and well-entrenched governments is an example of the power of social media networks to generate strong bonds on the Web. People whom others hardly know give support, encouragement, new ideas and even the will to continue their fights despite the odds against them. When people band together and further strengthened by people they only knew on social networking sites as appreciative of their efforts, then there is nothing a government can do. This is the very essence of the power of the crowds, when people will gather together to demand change, using on-line methods like social media (Ghonim 82). On the Web, people today express their ideas, opinions and whatever else crosses their minds. This attitude of expressing themselves on on-line sites includes political viewpoints and their frustrations with their own governments. This, in turn, encourages people to likewise voice out loud their own sentiments, creating a never-ending cycle of comments or social commentaries on various social networking sites. It is just normal for them to do so, and it does not even require that people should identify themselves who they are. The kind of Web bond can be considered as even stronger than actual physical bonding, as people who do not see or talk to each other directly perfectly understand what the other side is saying (Ghonim 75). Conclusion The kind of Web anonymity does not prevent people from getting to know each other and may in fact even foster a stronger bond because there is only acceptance of these people; it does not involve any judgmental conclusions on who or what that particular person is. This is exemplified by the blog of an anonymous Iraqi girl going by the name of Riverbend, but in a significant way, her posts resonate with the people who had read her blog posts because this also represented the views and hopes of most of her readers. Riverbend had initially worried no one will be interested in her Web log (blog) posts, but the way she wrote of a days events was quite compelling. What is even more important is that people today who are Internet savvy read their news and other information on the Internet and do not give much attention whether the information is accurate or not. The people now do not care too much about who wrote this or that; as Riverbend herself admitted, only the barest information about her will suffice in writing her blog: that she is female, Iraqi, 24 years old, and managed to survive the war which President Bush had started by invading Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein (Riverbend 5). Surely, a lot of people who have read her blog posts feel a strong affinity with her, in effect validating a thesis statement that Web bonding is sometimes even much stronger than physical bonding. Works Cited Benioff, Marc. “Welcome to the Social Media Revolution.” BBC. 10 May 2012. Web. 08 Nov. 2012. . Bishara, Marwan. “Social networks, Social revolution.” Aljazeera. 21 Feb. 2011. Web. 09 Nov. 2012. . Ghonim, Wael. Revolution 2.0: The Power of the People is Greater than the People in Power. New York, NY, USA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2012. Print. Riverbend. Baghdad Burning: Girl blog from Iraq. New York, NY, USA: Feminist Press, 2005. Print. Taylor, Kate. “Arab Spring really was Social Media Revolution.” TGDaily, 13 Sept. 2011. Web. 07 Nov. 2012. . Read More