Democracy Through Facebook & Twitter

From the past up until today, everyone crave for the right to have freedom, and most often spokes of today would the issue in relation to freedom of speech in few countries. Everyone wants to have able to voice opinion regarding issues ongoing in individuals own country such as subjects in relation to democracy issues within a country or country's income or even tax payments. The people have no one to turn to, in the case of media usage as well certain countries media are being governed by officials to ensure no news in relation to the goverment officials which are bad are displayed in front of millions of people via Broadcast, print, interactive and any other types of media out there today. In the past, it seems so believable that everything especially in television media are all so believable especially in news, and also if one have discomforts about a particular news especially in relation to politics, it can become really controversial in one's words.

Today, is different with the emergence of the internet media and the two major social networking sites Twitter & Facebook. Anyone can just post up a status in their own wall telling everyone in his/her social circle of friends. Any discomfort can be just post up on Facebook or Twitter. These two platforms of the internet has given many people the need of individuals to voice out their opinions and thoughts without having too much trouble with officials authority. It has given people a possible loophole in expressing one's inner thoughts or dissatisfaction towards the higher authorities. The need to voice out is very important to people especially in having a fully democratic country, where govern officials can take a look into the public needs and work upon having satisfying the needs and wants of the people. Having to filter or disallowing comments of the public but claiming one country as a democratic society, one could say the main core of democracy is not even there to begin with, without people there wont be a country, without a country there will be no government or without the people there will be no king.

The Word of mouth, is a definite more stronger effect compared to the ones seen on official media such as television, radio, newspaper, magazines, govern internet sites and etc, people will believe their own friends and relatives more rather than the media. Thus, with Facebook and Twitter, any latest news, trend, fashion, event, activity people will have access to this information on these social networking sites which friends and relatives of each individuals 1 out of 10 people will very least post up few of the latest scoop of news on their wall which thus can be seen on the Wall of each individuals allowing comments to be made. Looking into Twitter as well, similarly it has trends which have "#" for trend setting which will give people to know what are the in topics in today's society throughout the whole world, and people can just type in whatever each of them wants to into their Twitter Tweet box status and then posting it up. These 2 platforms have greatly served the need of the people in the position of freedom of speech which allow anyone to just post anything up on the internet.

The internet especially major sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube have really change the perception of keeping people updated with latest stories around the world also gives room for people in public to voice out their opinion upon anything which are posted up upon the internet or anything which is happening in world today. With just one comment box and a topic, anything can happen especially between the users which will open up to sometimes more to a reproductive stage of allowing govern officials to work on satisfying the wants and needs of the people, for example: X says "Hey! this group of people are stupid, then another user comes, Y says "You think you very smart? Chinese ****?" thus racial conflict will happen with never ending comments by more and more users adding oil to the flame which sometimes can actually benefit the government officials by analyzing the problems faced by their people then helping them in return of helping themselves to develop into a better country.

With the simple mechanism of freedom of speech such as Facebook and Twitter, it definitely has a larger impact then the previous media in the past history of media usage which has actually revolutionize every manner of activity of how work, entertainment, information gathering is done.

Readings are based on
"Facebook and Twitter are just places revolutionaries go" by Evgeny Morozov

Free Flow of Information!

The internet is a place which contains and produces lots of information by the prosumers or produsers of the internet. Internet offers a place which everything is decentralized meaning no one has control over this particular platform which make it a place that promotes freedom. However, freedom may seems like a nice or wonderful term to think of, sometimes freedom which may be a good thing to many people it also can be bad towards the people (everyone). Anything people need today in particular to information, most people will refer to the internet to get the latest scoop of the real news, what does one means by real news? fairly because news on television, newspaper, radio or any media except the internet is filtered. One of it is because is governed by the government to ensure the news that is delivered to the public will not cause panic or chaos to the public. 

It seems to be a fairly rigid reason one may assume to say, however as much as an organization wants to filter a particular news, somehow or another people will tend to know the truth behind a particular news even if is filtered in a way which might make a person seem powerful or glamorous but in actual fact the person may be a corrupted person in nature, which uses the media towards his advantage to gain popularity. People will know the truth behind every single detail regarding a particular news as time goes by. However, there are times such as things which people should not need to know is posted on the internet such as a particular platform organization Wikileaks.  

Sometimes, does people really need to know on details such as diary of the wars from people who was participating in war of America against Iraq, or on prisoner details in Guantanamo, are all these necessary one must mention. Firstly, these information may not affect any ordinary people's life but after publishing certain materials in the internet, it starts to become a factor and takes major impact upon people's life for example details of prisoners in Guantanamo, definitely there are reason why officials doesn't want details on prisoners to go public, first of all some of the prisoners could be leaders of a notorious gang leaders which could spark chaos towards the gang to start a rebel in helping to break the leader out of the jail, why not right? This could also cause, people to start wondering who are exactly all these people and why are they jail'd inside Guantanamo prison causing public to want to just visit the prison for entertainment purposes. Anything could happen which could endanger people's life having the free flow of information. 

Information, sometimes has to be controlled, a balance would be nice to be seen, easy to say but hard to do definitely putting one self into government officials sit, but also people want to know more of everything happening around the world. What would be the best solution to this? Regulating news then having people to find out the actual fact which is actually very different from officials point of view, or having people to not know whats happening around them, then suddenly hit them hard in life which could endanger them. 

 

Citizen Journalism

As technology improve throughout each second of our daily life, media sort to evolve as well and follows the flow of technological advancement. Thus, due to this fact one of the greatest media industry of all time has been affected greatly which is the under the journalism category. Today, most with internet access gets their news from the online platform due to journalism timeliness, whereby most news has to be up to date which will give the latest scoop of the dirt. Compared to the traditional media newspaper, is slower and by the time a reader gets to read a particular news, is old story as the ones with online access can retrieve the news way earlier compared to those waiting for the newspaper to publish the particular news. This is great news to everybody, but with growing platforms such as Facebook, lots of people instead of heading to the official news website, they just read it of people's wall in Facebook or status update which seem to be faster and more convenient and best part of all the news of a particular event is done by that person's friend or contact in Facebook personally. What does this means? Due to the fact of convergence, is so easy to bring along a camera, a writing tool, or even better just recording a whole particular incident. Lots of this case had happen, which have been posted on social networking sites such as Facebook which will gives the story more direct compared to the news agency which have sometimes distort the news value due to filtering & gatekeeping by the Editors of a particular news central. People would rather have the dirt than having something which is distort that blurs the view of news reporting, and capturing a particular event just through usage of mobile phones like Nokia N8, Apple iPhone, Samsung Galaxy SII, or any other phone that could act as a multi platform for news capturing and reporting. In short, even normal people can be journalist today and not needing a particular official journalist to work to give the inside scoop of an event, but the users themselves. Main highlight towards citizen journalism is credibility of a particular news, anyone can just come up with their own news today, with many different softwares online today which allows people to create their own particular videos and can insert many filters and effects to make a particular video seem real thus lying to many people just to get visitors to their own particular online page. Users of the internet has to watch out as well and be the editor the same time, meaning ensure that whatever news which one got can be measured whether a particular news is credible. How may one do so? simple just check in other online sources and official news page website, whether that particular news is broadcasted or shown in their website also with the information along it.