Influence of Social Media on Political Movements - Term Paper Example

Political Movements This is a collective action of like-minded people towards one given political goal. Social organizations come together to form movements and protests on a matter against their satisfaction. Clay Shirky, a writer and a blogger argues that these movements are highly associated with social media. The development and liberalization of social media has fueled political uprising and ensured that their voices are heard. In this article I will discuss different political movements where social media has greatly influenced their outcomes. Political movements have been experienced in almost all aspects of day to day activities mainly involving resources. Shirky argues that most movements seek to ensure openness and democracy. In The Political Power of Social Media, Shirky states the essentiality of social media to the life of society which is rapidly growing globally. People are getting more networked with easier access to information. This seems to be equipping them with their rights improving their fighting grounds (Shirky 1). Anti-government movements Shirky uses an example of Philippine President Joseph Estrada’s impeachment trial on January 17, 2001. His loyalists hid key evidence which didn’t favor him. After almost two hours of his announcement as the president, thousands of angry Filipinos grouped at the main crossroads of Epifanio de los Santos Avenue in Manila. The protesters were reached through texts which read, “Go 2 EDSA wear blk.” In few days, over a million people had crowded making it hard for the flow of traffic in downtown Manila. Over seven million texts were sent in a week’s time forcing the country’s legislators to allow the hidden evidence to be presented, the president was forced out. This marked the first case of a national leader to be removed out of power. (Shirky 1) In Spain 2004, a movement was organized by text messaging to remove the Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar who falsely blamed the Basque separatists for the Madrid transit bombings. In Moldova, Shirky quotes the loss of power by The Communist Party after protests arranged by text, Facebook and Twitter broke out against a fraudulent election which had occurred (Shirky 2).Lately, we have noticed the Arab countries uprising against their governments. Tunisia was the first to undergo the uprising in late 2010 to bring down President Ben Ali had no option but to seek refuge outside the country in January 14, 2011. The protest first erupted in the regions of Sidi Bouzid and Gafseen, after a young man in his twenties set himself on fire due to humiliation by the local police authorities. The protest was heavily spread through social media and within a short span of time it had reached the capital city Tunis, where activists took to the streets to demand answers to high unemployment and the high cost of food and basic requirements. The government primarily countered with the suppressive ways of its security machinery. A big number of activists were arrested and 20 to 30 had been killed by the time Ben Ali fled the country. Despite these suppressive tactics, the protests continued to regroup and increased in number as activists from the labor unions, professional syndicates, young political bloggers, and journalists joined in. (Sarah 157) In spite of the stern restrictions put up on the usage of social media facilities by the government, it helped the protest to spread with Facebook and twitter being the widely used means. In the last few days before Ben Ali’s elimination, mass protests were conducted in Tunis and the requests of the protestors altered from socioeconomic to political ones, including removing corruption and allowing political freedoms. Eventually, the protesters demanded the stepping down of the president. Caught off balance, the authoritarian government of Ben Ali responded by promising concessions, including full-fledged democratization, but as the protests continued, Ben Ali was forced by the Tunisian army to leave the country and a transitional unity government was formed. (Sarah 157). Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan and the Gulf countries (Kuwait and Bahrain) followed suit in the political unrest with same or slightly different problems. Also, the social media was majorly being used to spread and unite the protesters. Currently Syria is undergoing the uprising which only started with roughly twenty Syrian exiles scattered around the globe using media to ensure that what is going on in the government attacking harmless unarmed protestors is made aware to the public (Sarah 154). Finally, the current access of the vital information with the emergence of WikiLeaks commonly referred to as “whistleblower” site in the year 2010 and 2011 has continuously jeopardized the functioning of different governments and mainly U.S government. WikiLeaks received vital information from important people in governments, organizations and corporations and with the help of social media, posted the original documents online. This information will obviously evolve and be replicated by the society scrutinizing the functioning of the government, posing a threat to the governments, corporates or even individual secret information (Sarah 155). Anti-slavery movements This is also known as abolitionism, an attempt to stop slave trade. In Western Europe and America, movements were formed against African slave trade and to set them free. The Passion 2003 was a conference held called “End-it” anti-slavery movement which inspired students to raise money and join the campaign. Garrison, in the early 1831, started publishing his well-known newspaper, the Liberator, which gained much support from free African-Americans, who were the major players in the anti-slavery campaign. This shows that media also played a role in anti-slavery movements. Garrison and Tappans were among the sixty two representatives who met in Philadelphia in December 1833 to come up with the American Anti-Slavery Society, which condemned slavery as a sin that must be stopped immediately, sanctioned nonviolence, and rebuked racial prejudice. By 1835, the society had received much moral and financial aid from African-American communities in the North and had created hundreds of branches all over the Free states, filling the North with antislavery writings, representatives, and petitions requiring that Congress stops all federal aid for slavery. The society, which drew significant participation by women, also condemned the American Colonization Society’s agenda of willingly gradual liberation and black emigration. The society continued even with much difficulties and attempts of dissolution demanding land and education for the freed slaves. It declared mission complete when the Fifteenth Amendment extending male suffrage to African-Americans was passed (Sarah 168). Women movements Women’s struggle for their vote in the United States precedes Jeannette Rankin’s entry into Congress by nearly 70 years and emerged out of a larger women rights movement. That reform struggle grew during the 19th century, initially stressing a broad range of goals before concentrating solely on obtaining the permit for women. Women’s suffrage leaders, furthermore, often differed about the ways for and the emphasis (federal versus state) of their reform efforts. Eventually, the suffrage movement offered political training for some of the early women initiates in Congress, but its interior divisions suggested the persistent differences internally in the women’s congress and also the women’s rights advocates immediately the 19th Amendment was passed. In 1963, Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, inciting the modern women's movement. This new movement failed to attain one of its biggest objectives: approval of the Equal Rights Amendment. Still, it made huge progress by combating employment discrimination, enhancing educational opportunities, and safeguarding reproductive rights. Nevertheless, stimulated by the constitutional triumph of suffrage reformers in 1920, the minority of new women in Congress boarded on what would develop into a century-long journey to widen women’s participation in running the government hence benefiting from their functioning. Social Media Cynicism Not always has social media served its purpose in the political movement arena. Shirky has given two ways in which social media can fail in making a difference in national politics. These may be: a) Tools being ineffective b) The social media seems to be undermining democracy as authoritarian governments use them to minimize people’s power politically. Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker bases this ineffectiveness on “slacktivism” where participants involve in low cost activities to enhance social change. These activities can include joining Facebook’s “Save Darfur” group, which cannot bring any change because it is no longer in bumper-sticker sentiment. This argument is highly opposed by Shirky. The other skepticism is where the government uses the media to suppress dissent. Shirky has given the example of Chinese government, which discouraged access to information by censoring and surveillance disrupting the political synchronizing effects of social media (Shirky 7). Shirky analyses the long run effect of social media in political movements and concludes that the U.S government should ensure freedom of access to information by its citizens. Short-term flexible tactics should be used, if need be, in regulating how this information flows and how it is anticipated by the society. With this, “United States will be able to take advantage of the long-term benefits of these tools promise- even though that may mean accepting short-term disappointments” (Shirky 9).According to my argument, social media has been the main pillar in the political movements experienced worldwide. Mobilization of protesters from a few individuals to millions of like-minded protesters couldn’t be possible without media. Knowing personal rights has also been influenced by media, making movements have solid basis of their arguments. Works Cited Shirky, Clay . The Political Power of Social Media. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Print Sarah, Joseph. Social Media, Political Change, and Human Rights. London: Monash University, 2012. Print Read More