I definitely believe that social media has the potential to bring about real change in society. There are so many different things that it has allowed us to do. Social media allows us to get in touch with people that are all over the world. An incredible example of this comes from the disaster that just occurred last week in Japan. A female student is studying at an university in California and was very worried about her family back in Japan, she had no way to get a hold of anyone. She later found out that there was a video posted on Youtube that showed her sister on the balcony in her family home with a sign saying "we are all ok." http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/03/15/california.student.japan/index.html?hpt=C1#
Another great example of social media contributing to a big change in society also relates to the disaster in Japan. Lady Gaga is known across the world and many people are ridiculously huge fans so they will go to great lengths to follow what she does, regarding the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Lady Gaga created a Japan bracelet where the $5 will go towards relief. In just under 48 hours, $250 000 had already been raised for Japan. That is incredible, and all just because of someone's social media influence. http://blog.muchmusic.com/monsters-raise-250k-for-japan/
These two examples are of course the good side to social change. A few examples of social media having bad influences include decrease in personal face-to-face contact. You hear about people in offices and how they no longer get up from their desks anymore to deliver a message, all you have to do now is send it through an e-mail or other social media source because it is so much quicker.
My sister is 17 years old and she does not even like to call people, she would just choose to Facebook them or text.
Of course the question was not the negative and positive aspects of social media and real change, it was whether there was the potential to bring about real social change. And I believe that including the positive and negative aspects, it has brought about real social change.
:)
With social media, we've also been able to use it to help others in need. You gave a good example about Japan. It certainly has impacted the way we communicate, but there are negative and positive things that come with social media as with most things. We see it more and more where celebrities are using their status to gain support for a cause they believe in. Lady Gaga's effort shows exactly that. Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher have used their social media platforms more recently to raise awareness against child sex traffickers. Even though there may be some bad things like privacy issues that come up against social media, there seems to be more positive results that can and do come from social media. As with most things, the results that will come, will come because that's where the energy is placed and it seems more people want to use this great tool to perform good deeds. One thing we know is these social changes will keep coming through social media outlets and they can go far.
ReplyDeleteI definitely believed that social media make real changes in society. It changes the people all over the world. This will give opportunity to improve our knowledge and communicate with the people. People work day and night and weekend no time to reserved for family so It give the power to submit social media give a chance communicate. Thank to social media
ReplyDeleteYou are so right, if we did not have these outlets of social media change such as helping all these disaster relief funds. Would we have been able to raise such funds when we didnt have facebook or twitter? Also face to face time may have slightly decreased but it has also facilitated much more facetime with people who do not live near us anymore through sites such as skype. I believe it is all about balance, facebook and twitter took the facetime out of spending real time with someone, now there is another site that has added it back in. What is next!
ReplyDelete