The Next Step

This TED talk, from Clay Shirky, provides some interesting points on social media. He talks about the technological evolution of media, and the effects it has had. The Internet, through its unique construction, allows for the Internet to overtake certain other media and integrate them into itself, as through streaming TV shows, VOIP telephone, and online magazines. It also allows for conversation and broadcast at the same time. This is a shift from the typical top-down or one-to-one conversation models from previous forms of media. The Internet allows lateral conversation with large groups of people, either by a person sending their blog out to people, and then those readers can discuss with each other. Thus, the group is conversing and broadcasting at the same time.

One example used by Shirky is an earthquake in China, and its relation to the Great Firewall of China. The Great Firewall is a term for the intensive suppression and censorship of the Internet which takes place in China. When the earthquake happened, people instantly began posting photos, video and text describing what was happening to sites like Twitter, and Chinese analogues of it. As a result, the Chinese government had to take immediate action to provide aid to the people in order to keep from losing standing on the international stage. In previous events, the Chinese government had tried to keep events like this as covered up as possible in order to be able to neglect the needs of the people while still maintaining its reputation. The crowdsourced news from China actually was the first information on the earthquake, beating even the American Geological Survey’s reports.

In response to this event, the Chinese government actually blocked all access to Twitter, because there was simply no effective way to filter the content coming out of China. They had taken every precaution to keep outside information out of China, but they had no plan for keeping information inside China.