Group items tagged

Either way, the internet, not to mention Twitter feeds, are abuzz with news that President Obama doesn't use the popular social media application after he admitted to a group of Chinese students in Shanghai that he's "too clumsy to type on the phone". The question came about after he was asked by one of the students, "Should we be able to use Twitter freely?" In a country where the internet is heavily censored and online dissent clamped down upon, it was a critical question for the President. "Well, first of all, let me say that I have never used Twitter. My thumbs are too clumsy to type in things on the phone," Obama replied. (However, it was widely reported that upon entering the White House, the new President refused to give up his Blackberry much to the chagrin of the Secret Service.)

But because in the United States, information is free, and I have a lot of critics in the United States who can say all kinds of things about me, I actually think that that makes our democracy stronger and it makes me a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don't want to hear."

Project Vote, which describes itself as a nonpartisan organization that promotes higher voter registration rates in low-income and minority communities, announced last week that they are working on a mobile-device-friendly voter registration application, according to a press release, that will work on anything from the BlackBerry to the magical iPad.

herefore, attempts to outline their effects on political action are too often reduced to dueling anecdotes

two perspectives on the role of social media in non-permissive environments, the instrumentalist versus environmental schools of thought.

Throughout the Cold War, the United States invested in a variety of communications tools, including broadcasting the Voice of America radio station, hosting an American pavilion in Moscow  [...], and smuggling Xerox machines behind the Iron Curtain to aid the underground press, or samizdat.”

What Ethan is saying in his piece is that social media facilitated the events in ways that were crucial (material cause), but the revolution was made by the people of Tunisia at great human cost (the efficient cause) and it was aimed at overthrowing to corruption, unemployment and tyranny (the final cause).

I find it hard to believe that the ability to disseminate news, videos, tidbits, information, links, outside messages that easily, transparently and without censorship reached one in five persons (and thus their immediate social networks) within a country that otherwise suffered from heavy censorship was without a significant impact.

Social media helps strengthen communities as it is the antidote to isolating technologies (like suburbs and like televison)

Instead, the rebels lugged a 100-pound radio transmitter. For years, there was massive soldier who carried it on his back through the rugged trails, Gusmao recalled. When they reached a point high enough, they would transmit the latest developments, and then quickly flee before the Indonesians tracked them down.

Historically, new technologies have consistently shaped collective action