Super Bowl. Check. Curation? Yep. Beard nonsense? Just a little. Also: social media, Egypt, and changing the world for the better.
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Super Bowl. Check. Curation? Yep. Beard nonsense? Just a little. Also: social media, Egypt, and changing the world for the better.
Chris Cocca 
You have probably already read The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted, but what is your opinion of it? Regardless of whether or not Egyptian citizens use web-based tools to communicate, I have a difficult time seeing how anything I can do using Facebook could have the slightest effect on the situation.
I haven’t read it yet.
Of course, what Egyptians do with social media and what you do with it are two different questions. We saw in a very real way in Iran that Twitter became the defacto cable service of the uprising, and also the way protesters spread the word about the government’s movements. Thank God we don’t need to use these tools in the same way in our immediate political context.
That said, I do believe that doing simple things like sharing the news from Egypt across your social networks can help set consensus among people you may influence. And it can also keep them informed. I do believe that social media and 24-hour news make us constant witnesses to what’s going on in the world, and we have to do something with that. Social media is not the be all and end all of what we do, but it’s something, and it’s in solidarity with people who may be using it as a matter of life and death.
I like your “agents of change” argument. The “official” media feeds the desire for celebrity worship. It’s easy in the “free world” to be comfortable and to stay that way. (Sorry, lots of “”….but you know what I mean.) I think that, unfortunately, it’s difficult to whip up enthusiasm for a cause that doesn’t ostensibly touch you, particularly in the UK, where we have a population that I have always thought is basically acquiescent. However, now we have demos against the government cuts / students and ordinary people taking to the streets over corporate tax dodgers / and a Facebook petition against the rising price of petrol (gas, to you :) ). But, how many people do you think I could whip into a frenzy over freeing the Miami 5 or Liu Xiaobo or Shaker Aamer in Guatanamo Bay. You are right in that here is the tool to put pressure upon the authorities and gain support…………..if only we could get past the Daily Diary aspect. Schools should teach kids to read between the lines of the popular press – explain who owns what and what their politics are – and then leave them to use their own social media to change things for a better world. (Maybe I should start a polical blog seperate from my creative one……I’ll think about it.)
I think the most powerful thing I’ve witnessed and learned while watching the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia in the past few weeks is how powerful our voices, as well as our silence, truly are. You were correct in your assertion that we are agents of (fill in the blank). And I’d much rather be an agent of humanity, whether it be justice, observation, change, or a funny joke than an agent of silence, an agent of nothing. Great post.