HOW SOCIAL MEDIA CAN MAKE A HISTORY Kar

“HOW SOCIAL MEDIA CAN MAKE A HISTORY?
A talk by Clay Shirky
Clay Shirky is an American writer, consultant and teacher on the social and economic effects of internet
technologies and journalism. He started his Technology, Entertainment and Design or TED Talk mentioning
the transformed media landscape and illustrated an example of this transformation with telling a first
story about the Presidential Election last November wherein there is some concern about voters’
depression in some parts of the country. And a plan came up to video devote and the idea was every
individual citizens with phones capable of taking photos, making videos, with document their phone and
place it on the lookout on any kind of voters’ depression techniques and would upload this to a central
place and this would operate of a kind of citizen observation to help to ensure the sanctity of the vote
over all. “Media is increasingly social, innovation can happen anywhere that people can take for granted
the idea that we’re all in this together. And so we’re starting to see a media landscape in which innovation
is happening everywhere and moving from one spot to another. That is a huge transformation.” He then
said that the moment we’re living through, the expressive capability in human history has a largest
increase that there are only four periods in the last 500 years where media’s changed enough to qualify
for the label revolution. The first period, this is the famous one, the printing press. This is the moveable
type, oil-based inks that made printing possible. Then a couple of hundred years ago, there was innovation
in two-way communication which is the conversational media. First are the telegraph, and then the
telephone. Slow text-based conversations, then real-time voice-based conversation. The third one was
about 150 years ago, where there was a revolution in recorded media other than print. First, photos; and
then recorded sound, and movies, that was all encoded in physical objects. And then the last period
happened about 100 years ago, the harnessing of electro-magnetic spectrum to send sound and images
through the air which are the radio and television. These are the media landscape that most of our certain
age grew up with and used to. He then said that there is a curious asymmetry wherein there was a big
change where media that is good at creating conversations is no good at creating groups and the media
that is good at creating groups is no good at creating conversations.
Then he gave his example which is the second story about the 7.9 magnitude earthquake that happened
in Sichuan province in China last May. This earthquake caused a massive destruction in a wide area and it
was reported as it was happening. People were texting from their phones, taking photos and videos of
the buildings shaking and uploaded it on QQ, China’s largest internet service. They were twitting about
this on twitter announcing the existence of the quake several minutes before the US Geological Survey
had anything up online for anybody to view. The last time China had a quake of that magnitude, it took
them three months to admit that it had happened but because of the internet, they have given the chance
to see it by viewing the pictures and videos that had been uploaded online. Even the government learned
of the earthquake from their citizens, rather than the News Agencies. And because of the tweets, within
a half day, donation sites were up and donations were pouring in from all-around the world.
His last story was about the imaginative use of social media during the Obama campaign where they
famously put up mybarackobama.com, mybo.com where millions of citizens rushed in to participate and
to try and figure out how to help. Obama announced that he was going to change his vote on FISA, the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He then said in January that he would not sign a bill that granted
telecom immunity for possibly warrant-less spying on American persons. But later on he said that he have
thought about the issue more and changed his mind and voted for the Bill. Within days of this group being
created, it was the fastest-growing group on mybo.com. Obama stated that he has considered the issue
and he understand where they’re coming from but he would still going to vote. Through this, he wanted
to reach out for his fellowmen although they disagree with this matter. This didn’t please anybody but the
funny thing that happened in the conversation, people realized that Obama had never shut them down.
Nobody in the Obama campaign had ever tried to hide the group or make it harder to join and they’d
understand that the rule of this site was to convene their supporters and not to control them. And this is
the kind of discipline that takes to make really mature use of this media. The media landscape that we
knew, as familiar as it are increasingly slipping away.
Clay Shirky said, “In a world where media is global, social, ubiquitous and cheap, in a world of media where
the former audience are now increasingly full participants, media is less and less often about crafting a
single message to be consumed by individuals and is more and more often a way of creating an
environment for convening and supporting groups.” And he ended his speech with, “The question we all
face now is how we can make best use of this medium, even though it means changing the way we’ve
always done it?”
This idea that I got from Clay Shirky’s speech in TED Talk about the big changes in media is so
interesting. I’ve learned how media landscape transformed from printing press in 20th century to internet.
If before, it will take days, weeks or even months to receive the message through telegram, now it will
only take seconds or minutes to send and receive it at the same time depending on the internet
connection. The internet are said to be the first medium in history that has native support for groups and
conversation at the same time. The internet gives us the many-to-many pattern that for the first time,
media is natively good at supporting these kinds of conversations. Internet became a big part of our lives
wherein in just a click; we can find the information we need, we can share whatever we want to share,
and we can talk to whoever we want to have a conversation. For example, as a future teacher, we will be
given the responsibility to teach the students. And since we are in the 21st century where people
especially the students are mostly inclined with the technology, internet will have a big role in terms of
learning new knowledge. Internet will be use to search for the topics and lessons in every class discussion
we will have and it would be more easier to connect with each other through online in case of sudden
announcements to the class by using group message or e-mails.

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“HOW SOCIAL MEDIA CAN MAKE A HISTORY?

A talk by Clay Shirky

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