Social Media Anti-Corruption Is Overwhelming

Social media is a newly born concept which indicates a new type media along with interactions. For example, if effective participations are not done, this new media platform would be almost blank and useless. Modern social media takes the place of traditional media changing the old one-way dissemination style with multi-way conversational style. In term of social media, there are two key words: UGC (User Generated Contact) and CGM (Customer Generated Media). (SCL, 2008; Hudson, John, 2012)

In term of anti-corruption, social media has its own advantages. Firstly, due to the popular participation, the information, UGC, can be dedicated by anyone whom the internet is available to. So there could be a great deal of information and the source of the information, CGM, will never die out until corruption itself one day is no longer being. This can surely contribute to the dissemination of anti-corruption information.

Secondly, the registers are not required to provide their real names. That means people can choose whether or not to provide their personal information when they are revealing something which could draw revenge from the exposed organization or persons. (John C. B., Paul T. J., Justin M. G., 2010) In this way, the security of the information providers can be largely guaranteed.

According to the two advantages, social media is actually an information exposing platform which can punish corruption morally and provide people with information and call on the public to take actions to fight against corruption. However, it will not bring any material punishment to related corrupt people and organization. Basically, the validity of the information that is spread on this platform is unknown.

Wikileaks, a famous publicly trusted website which aims at revealing corruption for the global justice and humanity, is constantly discussed and focused by the society, commercial organizations and governments. (Alan Knight, 2010) According to Henry Jenkins, the power of fans is undeniable. Under the support of millions of fans around the globe, Wikileaks gets a great deal of donations to keep running through the pressure of charges and account freezes. Till now, it has revealed an unbelievable number of corruption cases of several significant international co-operations and governments. And dealt with related authorities, most of these cases brought significant changes to the local market and politics.

In my opinion, Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, is a great and respectable activist. Because of his effort to build the website, the world justice is developed and the humanity is protected. What’s more, he has set up a great example and found a powerful and professional tool for the world to fight against corruption.

As Julian Assange is drawing more and more revenge from infuriated substances, the future of Wikileaks itself may seem dull and dim, because it would be possibly facing more severe problems or even collapse. But if it dies out, there will be more Wikileaks coming out. And the trend is that the industry of online anti-corruption will be long-live and prosperous. (Anderson, T. B., 2009)

 

References

John C. B., Paul T. J., Justin M. G., 2010, Using ICTs to create a culture of transparency: E-government and social media as openness and anti-corruption tools for societies, Government Information Quarterly, viewed April 21, 2013, <www.elsevier.com/locate/govinf>
Hudson, John, 2012, ‘Social media’, New Scientist, Vol.214(2865), pp.32-33 viewed April 21, 2013, <http://www.ebsco.com/>SCL, 2008, ‘Web Site Operators & Liability for UGC – Facing up to Reality?’, Society for Computers and Law, viewed April 21, 2013 < http://www.scl.org/site.aspx?i=ed9981>Alan Knight, 2010, Wikileaks and investigative journalism, viewed April 21, 2013, <http://alanknight.wordpress.com/2010/12/10/wikileaks-and-investigative-journalism/>
Anderson, T. B., 2009, ‘E-government as an anti-corruption strategy’, Information Economics and Policy, 21, pp.201-210, viewed April 21, 2013, <http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.lib.swin.edu.au/science/article/pii/S0167624509000110>

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>

Cellphone - Helpful Partner but Mask Producer

(Just for fun!)

    Communication is getting more and more important to our lives, mobile phones must be the most influential among all the communication products. According to Amber Case, nowadays, we are all half cyborgs due to the reliance to the digital equipment, especially the cellphones (Amber Case, 2012). A report from the International Telecommunications Union indicated that cellphone is the fastest accepted high technological product since the dawn of human nature. In the end of 2010, the total number of mobile phones has reached around 5 billion (International Telecommunication Union, 2010). And the global popularity rate of cellphones increased to 70% from 12% between 2000 and 2010.

    Over the past 30 years, the fundamental functions of cellphones has not only been making phone calls or messages, but also been integrated with picturing, video/audio playing, internet-surfing, GPS navigator, wireless connection etc. And the revolution of cellphone is gradually becoming realized. It seems really predictable that the functions and applications are still rapidly evolving.

    Most importantly, the future of cellphones will be more intelligent. And cellphone is becoming an indispensible intelligent partner. With the combination of internet service and the development of hardware and software, cellphone users could get online to read news, watch TV programs, post Twitters; they could publish their own videos on Facebook sharing with friends and receiving comments; they could control household electrical appliances through cellphone command. In the future, under the support of developing internet and operation systems, more and more virtualized and humanized services will be available to cellphone users.

    What’s more, cellphone will become mobile sensors scattering around the world. When all cellphones get online, every user could become a publisher of its local news. When all information is gathered, a full-view picture of the real-time world. At that moment, hundreds of weather detectors will not be retired and replaced by millions of cellphone temperature and light sensors. Meanwhile, the real-time transportation condition will be updated according to the analysis based on the number of congested cellphone signals and their moving speed and direction instead of helicopters and roadbed sensors which require large amount of commercial or governmental investments.


   However, as Turkle has mentioned in her lecture “Connected, but alone?” on TED, we are unprecedentedly largely isolated by our cellphones (Turkle, 2012). Though people are connected to the internet almost all time, the time of face to face conversation is constantly decreasing. Nevertheless, the preference to chat by typing indicates the mental obstacle in interpersonal communications (Lorente, 2002). And it is really harmful for both individual and human development, because it cripples people’s ability of real talk and cooperation allowing the existences of more misunderstandings. People begin to stay behind the mask produced by cellphone screens. Thus, the trust between people is dying and that is what actually leads to the loneliness. For young people, they seem more likely to get into troubles with their phones by, for example, cyber bullying, sexting, distracted driving, cheating and so on (Common Sense Media, 2010). Parents should pay enough attention to that.

    So, more properly, cellphones has been making things convenient, but it was also simplifying, crippling and fading our lives. And individuals should be cautious about their cellphones.

  

Reference

Amber Case, 2012, We Are All Cyborgs Now, viewed April 8, 2013,
 < http://www.ted.com/talks/amber_case_we_are_all_cyborgs_now.html>

International Telecommunication Union, 2010, ICT Facts Figures 2010, viewed April 8, 2013, <http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Documents/facts/ICTFactsFigures2010.pdf>

Turkle, S 2012, Connected, but Alone?, viewed April 8, 2013, < http://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together.html>

Lorente, S 2002, Youth and Mobile Phones: Something More Than a Fashion, viewed April 8, 2013, <http://www.itu.int/osg/spuold/ni/ubiquitous/Papers/Paper_Youth_and_mobile.pdf>

Common Sense Media, 2010, Do Smart Phones = Smart Kids?  viewed April 8, 2013, 

<http://www.itu.int/council/groups/wg-cop/second-meeting-june-

2010/CommonSenseSmartPhCommonSenseSmartPhonesS.pdf>

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