A live and interactive visualization of CIPE’s social media network on Twitter. Hover over to zoom in; click and drag to move around. Relative connection thickness represents hashtag or re-tweet frequency.
It can’t be denied that social media has exploded in the past few years. With its seemingly unlimited marketing potential, Facebook and Twitter have taken up much of the technology spotlight and have shared ups and downs in the “privacy versus access to information” debate. But with recent events, social media seems to have involuntarily expanded its role towards facilitating democratic reform.
Communication itself is inherently democratic. Even the earliest forms of ancient democracy involved face-to-face conversation to circulate ideas, while the stirrings of American and European political revolutions circulated information by way of underground meetings and pamphlets. But as the world has witnessed in the Middle East and North Africa, social media has accelerated the rate at which ideas are exchanged and has revolutionized how events are organized and ideas transformed into actions (though it’s also done the same for those who oppose new ideas).
The exponential growth of social media has created widespread accessibility and an ease of use, making active participation much easier for citizens, whether someone ‘likes’ a product on Facebook or a person is texting a 140-character event update to his or her Twitter feed. Ease and brevity have helped transform internet use into an important aspect of democratic society: politically and socially active citizenship.
While repressive governments aim to restrict the public’s access to information, their democratic counterparts fully depend on public input for effective policy. Government-controlled media censorship is becoming less frequent, and rarely ends without a call for reform. Modern governments are presented with the opportunity to strengthen relationships with citizens in harnessing these tools to bring transparency and accountability into the public sphere.
Social media’s foundation as a forum for discussion is already changing the way the world speaks. Will it change the way that government leaders listen to public concerns? Perhaps not at first, but the role of Facebook and Twitter in political events in Iran, Tunisia, and Egypt provides a promising forecast that should be understood by world leaders as an unprecedented opportunity to make democratic governance the living, breathing system it was always meant to be.
Published Date: February 04, 2011