General Thoughts
My general response to this article is met with little surprise. The article’s main driving point is that social media has become a major tool for less empowered countries to speak out and let their voices be heard around the world. For me, this was already common knowledge and growing up in a boom of the internet, I suppose this isn’t new to me. For me I agree entirely with this article but one thing that the author posts that I thought was very true was that often times on twitter, facebook, and other platforms, the people tweeting aren’t even from these countries, and instead they might just be tweeting to tweet as it’s the newest craze. I think one point I’d like to make is that people’s eye might not be open to what’s actually going on, and instead are having news fed to them by these same social media platforms. Regardless, I don’t think one can argue that the explosion of social media has opened doors for these countries.
Analysis
I think in the article the author shows an effective use of logos to present the the argument. Throughout the entire article, the author uses pieces of evidence of events that actually occurred to showcase the certain problem that was happening and then he proceeds to show the solution that usually involved social media or the internet coming in to help. Certain examples of this could be found in the book (e)dentity by Stephanie Vie on pages 77-78. The author includes an actual story about 4 black students who sit in’s to speak out against racism. Eventually, without any sort of internet to help, nearly 78,000 students across the nation were sitting in racially abusive establishments. The author even points out that “the lack of the internet” didn’t stop this message spreading. He then continues on by providing another example in 2009 in Maldova when twitter was taken over by thousands of tweets from protestors and people who saw on twitter speaking out against their country’s communist government. As we see in both case, the authors use of logic to explain his claim that how mass messages are sent is changing is prevalent. He shows that without the internet, mass messages still spread to a large group, but not as quick and not to as many people. He then provides an example where another protest that was spread across not just Maldova, but the entire world. It’s because the author uses logical facts and real life events that helps me, the reader, really believe that the internet and social media has actually made a big impact.