Academic Writing and Critical Thinking
The issue this paper will be discussing is the new attributes of information and, particularly, of the way the information moves around from individual to individual. It will look at different perspectives and different practical situation to argue that communication and information exchange is nowadays different. It will also seek to understand in more details the factors that have led to all these informational changes and how communication flows influenced by information technology are affected by particular elements.
One of the observations about recent events was that information moves much quicker with the use of information technology and of instruments such as Twitter. The Egyptian Revolution of 2011 is one of the most used examples to show that people were able to gather quicker in a certain place and that they shared information more efficiently.
Kavanaugh et al. (2012) use innovation diffusion theory to analyze how Twitter was adopted in Egypt and what factors favored this, comparing Egypt with similar trends in Tunisia and Iran. Their research was triggered by an interesting paradox: despite the fact that social media adoption rates were low in all these countries, Twitter was highly used during these revolutions. Kavanaugh et al. conclude that this was in fact due to a multitude of concurrent factors.
Their conclusions were interested in relation to the type of users that Twitter had during the revolutions. They showed that Twitter users generally used information technology instruments much more than other groups and that this was because Twitter allowed information to move quicker. The Twitter user group was thus more avid for news and information, but they were also identified as opinion leaders who aimed to create and move information around. So, their...
Egyptians of all classes and ages took part in the protests, united in demands and ambitions such as improved wages, improved conditions of working, and political freedom. However, it was the surprising figures of young individuals who took part in the demonstrations that provided drive to the revolt. The young individuals were also key to maintaining the uprising given that numerous meet in Tahrir (Liberation) Square in Cairo as well
Social Media and the Red Shirt Revolution Most scholars are in conflict with regard to the subject of revolution in the age of social media. Until now, revolution has been considered a top-down process. In Thai situation, things might have been different. The Red Shirt Revolution in Thailand was one of the first of the "Twitter" revolutions, that is one that was fueled by social media and Web 2.0 technology. Since
Affecting the Rest of the World The Arab Spring can and will affect the rest of the world for the foreseeable future by acting as a representation of the will of the people over the tyranny of unpopular dictatorships. This spirit can already be seen in the populism sweeping through Europe and even in the U.S. Donald Trump (the billionaire candidate who embraced his “outsider” status by pledging to “drain the
Mubarak instated sweeping reforms that liberalized Egyptian economic policy within a neoliberal framework, but those reforms came at the price of repression, oppression, and corruption leading to widespread income disparity and disenfranchisement especially among the male youth population. Inspired in part by a similar revolution in Tunisia, the protesters in Cairo successfully toppled the Mubarak regime and became part of what has been dubbed the Arab Spring. Critical to the
As recent events in the Middle East have clearly demonstrated, Facebook is more on the side of the politically disadvantaged and the poor as they have increasingly embraced Facebook and other social media while the governments in the region tried to ban them. Many governments such as that of China do not allow Facebook primarily because they want to avert scenarios they have seen in the Middle East. Facebook revolutions It
And many spiritual leaders would argue that a life without commitments is a life without meaning. So what do Americans do to fill that void? They take on another addiction -- which leaves them feeling even emptier -- and the vicious cycle begins. Some activists even claim the result of living in such a morally-vacuous, alienating, consumer-driven culture is an entire nation suffering from "a collective wounding" (Shaw, 2008).
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