Today, technology is a part of our life that is always within our reach and it able users to be producers. With the integration of technology, social media have been use on a widespread for promoting democracy as mainstream media that is controlled by government no longer take control. Social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube among others have been the backbone of the protests spanning across the Middle East, North Africa and Asia (Krishnappa, 2011).
As reported by Mediashift (2011), Egypt has fully utilized social media to push revolution a step further by using user generated features of the web to help a campaign against military trials for civilian. The closing of Tahrir Square from demonstration by the military is the main catalyst as to why citizens of Cairo are using social media to voice out and protest.
Activists created a Facebook page, Khaleed Said as a platform for everyone to post information to keep the social movement on-going. It causes crowdsourcing to happen whereby it helps to people achieve a shared, usually significant, and large goal by working collaboratively together as a group (Churco, 2011). Furthermore, online event was used for crowd funding for humanitarian projects in Cairo.
Citizen journalism is now playing a part as a watchdog role as it uses transparency as a key against corruption. What could not achieve in the past could be done now through social media. Over the past six decades, citizens are forbidden to criticize Egypt’s military causing people to have no knowledge of their wrong-doings. However, with the introduction of social media it is all now achievable for the betterment of the citizen. The campaign ended in success in 18 days.
The movement in Egypt have set an example for many other countries proving that social media can make a change in democracy. According to Sedra (2011) there are 500 million Facebook and 200 million Twitter members in the world today. There will be more demonstration across the globe in effort to strive democracy due to mainstream media control rest assured with the features of social web to make it a success.
Reference list
- Krishnappa, S 201, Social Media sites like Twitter deserve Nobel for pro-democracy protests in Egypt, Libya & China?, viewed on 12th November 2011, <http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/114814/20110222/social-media-nobel-peace-prize-internet-pro-democracy-protests-iran-egypt-tunisia-china-government-j.htm>
- Sedra, M 2011, Revolution 2.0: democracy promotion in the age of social media, viewed on 12th November 2011, <http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/revolution-20-democracy-promotion-in-the-age-of-social-media/article1891015/>
- Churco, E 2011, Crowdsourcing: creating information and knowledge resources by members of a community, viewed on 12th November 2011, <http://www.crowdsourcing.org/document/crowdsourcing-creating-information-and-knowledge-resources-by-members-of-a-community/5216>
- Aitamurto, T 2011, How Social Media is Keeping the Egyptian Revolution Alive, viewed on 12th November 2011, <http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2011/09/how-social-media-is-keeping-the-egyptian-revolution-alive256.html>
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