Social Networks and Social Change

All during 2011, there were dramatic changes wrought in many regions thanks to massive protests. And it was thanks to various social media that much of this occurred.

Protests and the resulting changes they may bring about have a deep historical background. Though the people didn't have social media back during the French Revolution in 1789 or the Russian Revolution in 1917, the word still got out. For an example in this country, the Boston Tea Party was one of the best known protests near the beginning of the American Revolution in 1773.

Indeed, the colonies declaring their independence in 1776 was the first time a colony did such a thing, especially against such overwhelming odds as the impressive British military force.

There have been many protests over the centuries, as well as many coups, and untold people have lost their lives protesting a cause they hold dear. Depending on the reason for the protest, and the passion of the people involved, the word would get out through the people themselves.

These days, social media, including Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and Google+ among others, provide an opportunity to get a message, just about any message, out to lots of people in a fast manner.

Take for instance the birthday party in Germany that was supposed to be a small affair. However, the girl who was celebrating messed up on her privacy settings on Facebook, which meant the message got out to way more people than she wanted. So the police were called in when more than 1,500 people showed up! To see a YouTube video of the party run amok, click here.

In just a few short years, social media have become a daily, or even hourly, ritual for many people. These include teens, college students, young professionals, journalists and so many more. Even older people, the ones who may have once had problems even using a keyboard, are venturing into the realm of social media (by 2009, reports were coming out about more people over the age of 55 turning to Facebook).

I have already discussed some views on social media, specifically if they are helpful or harmful for news organizations.

In this instance, there are both benefits and banes, and there has been bloodshed in many areas.

Massive uprisings and resulting changes erupted first in northern Africa and the Middle East.

The "Arab Spring" as it came to be called, also known as the "Arab Awakening" as well as other similar names, began in Tunisia, which just marked the first anniversary of its change in government brought about by the protests. This first uprising actually began in mid-December 2010 following the self-immolation of a man protesting police corruption.

According to a story I found on NPR, Mohamed Bouazizi was trying to earn some money for his mother and siblings but he lacked a permit to sell goods and was "publicly humiliated" by the police.

By the time the uprising in Tunisia started to wind down, the country's government had been overthrown and it's president forced to flee.

But it didn't stop there. Protests began in other countries throughout the region including Libya, Sudan, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, Algeria and Oman.

In Egypt, social media played a huge role.

It was partially because of a social media page dedicated to an Egyptian man beaten to death by police that the protests spread and gathered momentum. And a Google executive ran the page. For more about this man, his role and the upheaval that overthrew another government, here is a a blog post on the Arab Awakening.

Perhaps the most scandalous thing that occurred during this phase of the Arab Spring was the various attempts of the Egyptian government to stop the spread of the protests by shutting off access to the Internet. The whole idea was to keep the protesters off social media! Didn't work very well though...

In Egypt, and later in Libya, the governments were overthrown. Should ongoing protests in Syria hit that sort of level, then similar may happen there as well. Indeed, Syria is well on its way to following in the footsteps of Libya where an all-out civil war erupted. Many died in that and many have also paid a high price in Syria.

Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of these various protests across the mainly Islamic region is the role women have played. Women in many of these cultures seem to be placed on a much lower rung of society than they are here in the United States. This includes views on marriage, clothing, property, even prayer. I saw a news report inside a mosque in which the leader of that mosque commented that women could pray, they just had to do it in a "special corner" away from the men.

I truly hope that the new rights the women are gaining in the region will not fade again! Though stories like this one I found on NPR out of Saudi Arabia show that "progress" is still limited. I feel Islamic women shouldn't have to hide themselves away and be reclusive wall flowers. They think, they feel and they should have choices in their lives. If they choose to continue living as they always have, that is different from being made to live that way.

Women in Egypt are continuing to protest because of abuse of women by military personnel. I am glad to say they are standing up for themselves. Here is a story from The Telegraph from January 8 about it.

Even today, uprisings continue to occur in several countries in the region. A lot of attention is currently focused on Syria, which has seen some of the most virulent response to those protests from the current regime. Here is a BBC video talking about the violence involved in these protests.

The Middle East is by no means settling down. In this BBC article, there are details regarding some of the protesting in Yemen. This is another situation that is still underway, so it is hard to say just what will happen.

These protests haven't been the only ones. The Occupy Wall Street protests across the United States, and even internationally, gained quite a bit of news coverage, especially concerning police actions against some of the protesters.

These protests specifically used social media to get the message out and to get more people to gather in different cities across the country.

This whole series of protests wasn't even an American idea when it first began. It actually started with a Vancouver-based company. Here's an article about how a single blog post started a wildfire, partially based on the protests occurring in Egypt.

I have to admit, I'm not really sure what the OWS protesters exact reasons were behind their gatherings. I have heard so many conflicting ideas, though I believe one of their driving forces was wrapped up with the bailouts so many huge financial organizations received that did absolutely nothing for the "little people" who really needed the help during the recession. This article from CBS talks a little about the beginnings of the movement.

There are articles out there about the demands of these protesters, including this one from CNN Money. But there are many conflicting messages, perhaps because the protests are so spread out, reaching across the entire country.

However, all of this huge movement occurred thanks to social media. I know Wikipedia isn't the best, or most reliable, resource for information, but sometimes even I will turn to it to look things up. In its article on the OWS movement, there are references to an an online specific group, Anonymous, calling for action as well as a specific Facebook page and many Twitter tags that helped spread the word.

I found it especially fascinating when similar protests broke out in Italy, England and a few other places in Europe. These protests were obviously not as well covered here in the U.S. as one might wish, but the simple fact that they did occur and that they were specifically modeled on the OWS protests drew my attention, even as the OWS protests were initially modeled on the protests of the Arab Spring.

These protests gathered in many areas, from city parks, including smaller places like Lee Park in Charlottesville, Virginia, to in front of St. Paul's Cathedral in London. They even protested in front of political campaign headquarters.

It seems like many of OWS protests have been disbanded, but it may simply be that they are not in the news as much now. As far as I know, the movement is still active.

However, these are still not the last protests that occurred in the last year.

Though less covered in the U.S., there have also been protests, or at least incidents, in Latin America, Russia and China. These may develop even further as time passes, though they are again calling for changes in the status quo.

By the time 2011 came to an end, Time magazine went so far as to honor protesters by making them its Persons of the Year. Many of these protests are ongoing or the situations through which they were precipitated are still developing.

However, there are still concerns. Take a look at this article talking about how repression is expected to continue in the Middle East in 2012. Even the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, has spoken up about the protests, specifically violence in Syria.

And all of this can be placed upon the shoulders of social media. It is possible these protests would have occurred either way, but I can't help but wonder if some may have failed because they didn't get enough support or enough people didn't come out to rally.

It was also though the auspices of social media that the news organizations around the world were able to get as much information about the protests as they did, from on-the-scene imagery to inside information.

However, as any social media network is set up by a person or an organization, that perforce means any information on that network will be slanted toward said individual or organization. Thus, should a news organization wish to use any of that information, it must consider that bias.

It shall be interesting to watch as these things progress into the future.

Polling the Populace...

No this isn't one of those random phone calls from some anonymous person who wants to ask you a series of questions on some topic or about a person... The good old "Can I ask you about this issue?" or the "What do you think of this person's decisions?" or the classic "Have you decided who you're going to vote for?"

Definitely not. Usually I don't answer the caller's questions. I simply tell them I'm not interested, it's none of their business and/or please take me off your calling list.

The polls I'm talking about here are the ones where a news outlet asks viewers or readers one specific question on a certain topic.

This can be done on the organization's Webpage or on a social media page like Facebook.

When it's an actual poll, you want the question to be fairly simple, something with a yes/no/maybe or agree/disagree/neutral sort of answer.

Something people need to remember is that polls posed by a news organization are not scientific, unless it's done in association with a research center like Pew or Gallup. Even then, I probably wouldn't count them as all that reliable.

Most news polls are not somebody wearing a lab coat gathering data from a massive sampling of the population to reach some conclusion about a medicine or an idea of how the wind is blowing with regards to a given issue.

Not at all. These kinds of polls often have a very low response rate because it is not only voluntary, but the person looking to respond must seek out the question to answer it. That means going to the news organization's Webpage or social media page in order to vote.

Thus, only the most passionate people or the ones who really feel strongly about the topic of the question will go through that effort. For a lot of such polls on smaller market station Websites, 200 responses is a lot!

So a lot of these questions are about things that get people's ire up: abortion, gay marriage, the economy, debt, etc.

News organizations want to know what local people think about a given issue, so they ask a question.

However, because of the low response rate, these kinds of things are about as reliable as a broken gyroscope.

Only those who are genuinely interested in, or very passionate about the topic, will respond and they will most likely be very much for or against a given issue, especially when dealing with ones that cause such powerful responses as gay marriage or abortion.

These "hot button" issues are called that because of the vehemence with which people respond to them. And they have very vocal sides, for and against.

Like the more scientific polls, there are limitations to what kind of information can be gathered through such questions. The wording is one of the most important factors because the question may roil people's opinions, depending on the words used to ask it.

Something simple like "Are you for or against gay marriage?" may or may not get much of a response. It's pretty straight forward with responses limited to for, against and undecided.

But if you reword the question, you might get flack for it. Even writing it "Do you support gay marriage?" can completely change the kind of response a poll can get. While the choices would be yes, no or undecided, the simple fact that it's asking if you "support" something may mean the response will be slanted.

People may read the second version of the question to mean that the organization itself supports the issue involved. That may anger people and send more to vote, but it may also backlash in that people won't vote at all. They may also call or e-mail to complain.

There are some less scrupulous pollsters out there who seem to specifically word questions to get a certain answer.

There was even a political cartoon about that a while back, when George W. Bush was still in office, showing a poll taker asking questions at a person's door. The potential answers were Bush as president or some very weird, very extreme and nasty scenario. That's an outlier as an example, but they do seem to want certain answers, which is why I rarely take polls, especially political ones.

So the questions have to be very carefully worded to aim for that journalistic ideal: objectivity. No matter how impossible that ideal is to reach.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to write these questions in such a way that they do not show any slant on the part of the news organization?

From experience... It's nuts!

Even when you spend a long time working on the wording, it's still possible people will respond to it negatively based on a presumed bias. This may not be a fault of the poll at all, but a fault of the story to which the poll to tied.

To continue with the potential poll involving gay marriage, say the story is talking about a state that has just voted to allow it. Then ask the poll. Because of the story, potential voters may assume the news organization supports gay marriage because it's asking the question with a story in support of it.

I know that sounds somewhat confusing, but some decisions made by people are confusing and not even made consciously. It just clicks somewhere in the mind. Explainable or not, people may react and vote with their guts, not their conscious minds.

Sometimes questions asked by a news organization involve how a person would handle a given situation. Think of the sometimes controversial show "What Would You Do?" That's basically what it's doing.

The show creates a situation in which people who don't know the scenario is fake must decide how to react. They can take action, do nothing, wait until they feel safe enough to do something or any other number of potential reactions.

While it may not be necessarily good to compare this show to a poll, it is in essence a poll of emotions. Will people be mad enough, brave enough, crazy enough to do something to fix a given situation?

And they often pick things that are bound to get at least a few people's gorge, such as polygamy, child abuse, drunk driving, racism and many others.

Like the unconscious connection between the news organization's question and support for a controversial issue, it all plays on the emotions of the potential voter or actor. And emotions have never been called rational.

In these kinds of situations, and especially when asking a question on social media, you will get opinions.

On occasion, a news organization will want to run some of those comments, in print or on air. However, the organization has to be careful in doing so.

It has happened when someone will actually take offense at having his or her comment used without "asking permission" first, even if the comment is positive. However, the news organization will most likely respond that the person made the comment in a public forum (on the organization's Website or Facebook page), which means it can be used without specifically contacting the commentator and asking permission.

Or perhaps a viewer posted a very long, in-depth comment that is too much for the entirety to be republished. So the news organization will use part of it. This may result in complaints of taking something out of context by the person who made the comment.

Commentators, like people who vote in the polls, tend to be very passionate about a topic, and if they feel they have been slighted in any way, they will react just as quickly to protect themselves from any "taint," even if that taint is only perceived.

All in all, when you hear about a poll and a news organization, you simply cannot take that poll to be a cross-section of the general population. Only those who feel they have to respond will do so, which will probably slant the results in one direction or another.

It all depends on the poll, the topic, the wording, the passion of the responders.

In the end, a poll is a slice of the whole. Just not a perfect slice.