A Reflection of How Social Media Can Make History

    As watching a video of “How social media can make history” by Clay Shirky on TED, I was again surprising at the power of the social media and digital devices. Shirky said there are only 4 periods in the last 500 years where media has changed enough to qualify for the label “revolution.”: the printing press, the telegraph and telephone, the recorded media and the radio and television. (Clay Shirky, 2009) But moreover, I think that the internet can be counted as the fifth period of media revolution. The technology is so advanced that everybody can tweeter anything they want to share online in several seconds. I use cellphone the same way as most of the cellphone users in the world. When I came across something interesting, I would take a picture by my phone and post it online to the tweeter and Sina Weibo (a public service in China, just like tweeter); when I saw a sales promotion in the street, I would normally announce my friends on tweeter by “@” them; and when I was in trouble of getting lost, I would send my location onto the tweeter and ask for help. I believe that most of you are just doing things like that. It is the great convenience brought to us by social media.

 

    There is not much point in introducing the latest cellphones or interesting websites, because almost everybody is really familiar with them. And what I really want to talk about is the social media and the digital activism itself. Internet is only a platform for the public. Today, the internet is easily available for most of us and the information it brings is of a great abundance. We can easily be noticed of the latest news by keeping our cellphones online. Thus, there is more chance for us to become an activist. Take the “Earth Hour” activity starting in 2007, Australia, for example. The activity received great attention from the world approving it as the largest campaign in reaction of the global climate change just in the second year of its existence. What’s more, in 2008, the campaign was supported by more than 50’000’000 people from 35 countries. (Earth Hour, 2008) The spread of such a large-scale activity is mainly done on the internet. It is quite unbelievable in the old time that millions of online visiting records were made just in several days. An unaware glance at the title or picture of this activity in the web page can lead to the curiosity to that. To some extents, with the great help of some large websites’ generous propaganda, people are informed of that activity from any digital devices they could reach during their visiting to other social media websites. The digital activism comes of the curiosity, interest, sympathy, morals and justice.

 

Reference List

Shirky C., How social media can make history, viewed April 15, 2013, <http://embed.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_cellphones_twitter_facebook_can_make_history.html>

Earth Hour, Earth Hour History, viewed April 15, 2013 <http://www.earthhour.org>