Week 11: Musing on uprisings

I once heard singer Regina Spektor talk about her newest album, ‘Far’. She said she had been debating in herself whether to make some of the themes relating to spirituality more salient. She said something along these lines that I thought was very interesting:

“People are smart. They know when you’re feeding them a line and they know when you’re making stuff up. It’s better to be transparent and treat them as equals.”

I think the protests in Egypt and Tunisia, which were orchestrated largely using social networking sites, demonstrate this more powerfully than ever. We discussed the role of social networks in regards to the Egyptian uprising and Khalid Said’s death. I thought it was a particularly powerful demonstration of the power of social networks and how they can force democracy on a government. Pictures of Said’s body, were, according to the Week 11 DIGC202 lecture, circulated on the internet. These flat-chat contradicted the government line that he had “choked” to death. As a result, protest groups were created on Facebook and protests were incited using sites like YouTube, which led to the Egyptian uprising and the eventual resignation of the country’s president.  Basically, it seems that social networking sites, which are a virtual community, created change in the real world. With what Ted called “monologic media” being the main or only input of information, this would have been impossible, as a line differing from the Egyptian government’s official take on Said’s death would have likely been quashed. Thanks to “dialogic” social media, as provided by social networking sites on the internet, real-world change can happen thanks to ‘virtual communities.’