This week I encountered an interesting article on the power
of social media to enact political change. The author discusses two views on
how social media can be used in the public sphere. The first is the
instrumental view. This view suggests that social media can be utilized as an expedient
public organization tool to enact swift and extreme social and political change.
While the author is critical of this view, he provides examples of political
movements that began this way. Protests in the Philippines, Spain and Moldova
are a few of the examples provided, but for each example of success, there is
an example of failure. The Occupy movement, which began in New York in 2011, is
a recent example of an American-borne protest movement that attempted to utilize
social media in this way, and fizzled before accomplishing any substantive
reform.
The author argues instead for an environmental view of
social media use. According to this view “pro-democratic regime change, follow,
rather than precede, the development of a strong public sphere.” (p. 5) Social
media should be used to garner communication between individuals and not simply
for eliciting action. This view calls for slow political change on the basis of
public dialogue, rather than swift crowd-based protest that seek to obtain immediate
results.
This article is useful for the consideration of my tracing
topic, because I aim to explore the public spaces that are available to publics
interested in education reform. No doubt social media will be a huge part of
the online landscape. According to Shirky, it is social media, and not
internet-based information storehouses, that provide the greatest opportunity
for public engagement in social issues. In this article the author describes a
two-step process for changing public opinion. Step one is the distribution of
information by media outlets, and the second is the resulting conversation and
debate among family, friends, and acquaintances (p. 6). Social media allows for
a broader range of participants in the conversation step, and this, according
to Shirky, is where social media’s real power rests.
Shirky goes on to assert that the information step is less important
than the resulting conversation when it comes to producing social action. This
conclusion seems problematic to me given my understanding of how social
movements occur. The need for information and conversation seem to be
symbiotic. The populace needs the information to inform their discourse, and
they need their discourse to inform which outlets they trust to provide their
information. In relation to education reform, this translates to a need for the
citizenry to be informed on the issues affecting education (information) and a
place for conversation to occur online (social media). My exploration into the
online landscape of education reform will need to encompass both the
informational outlets, and the online forums for discourse.
In my opinion, the environmental view of social media use
has far reaching implications that extend beyond the need to provide open
access to chat rooms, blogs, or twitter feeds. In order for these social media tools to be
put to their full potential, the populace must be educated on their use. Here I
am afraid that my thinking takes a cyclical turn. I am arguing that we need
education reform in order to create an informed populace, but we may need a
pre-existing informed populace to enact education reform.
Shirky, Clay. "The Political Power of Social Media
Technology, the Public Sphere, and Political Change." The Council on
Foreign Affairs (2011): n. pag. Web. 6 July 2013.
<http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67038/clay-shirky/the-political-power-of-social-media>
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