Does social and political action through online media make deep, lasting and revolutionary change?

When I saw this question, at beginning I think it’s really hard to answer, however, after watching KONY 2012, I was so chocked and I think I got the answer.

KONY 2012 is a short film produced by Invisible Children, Inc. (authors of Invisible Children). It was released on March 5, 2012. The film's purpose was to promote the charity's "Stop Kony" movement to make African cult and militia leader, indicted war criminal and the International Criminal Court fugitive Joseph Kony globally known in order to have him arrested by the end of 2012.(Wikipedia)

This is an amazing film also it’s an inspired organization. At 2012, because I was in China and we don’t have Facebook or other social media can connect to the world (how sad is thatL), I have no idea about this program until now. What amazing example of how deep our social media, our “Facebook life” change the world! If I can know this at two years ago, definitely I will try my best to help and I will help to spread to the world.

It is a good program because they have such a nice plan to motive all the people, no matter you are a student or a politician, even Obama sign the letter to approve that America government will help the people on Uganda.

However, Since the video's release, Invisible Children has come under criticism for oversimplification of events in the region( Musa,2012) and has been accused of engaging in "slacktivism", in which one donates or takes actions that have little to no effect beyond making one feel like one contributed(Bailyn,2012).

In my opinion, as long as this program makes people pay attention to the invisible kids in Uganda, it is a success revolution. A lot of organization like Invisible Kids trying to change the world by using social media, such as Freerice.com, it is another amazing website for donate the rice to World Food Program to help the hunger. I hope more and more organization can make program like this and make our society moving forward.

 Reference

"Evan Bailyn: The Difference Between Slacktivism And Activism: How 'Kony 2012' Is Narrowing The Gap". Huffington Post. March 19, 2012. Retrieved April 22, 2012.

Free rice.com. http://freerice.com/#/english-vocabulary/1476

Kony 2012. http://invisiblechildren.com/kony-2012/

Kony 2012 Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kony_2012

Okwonga, Musa (March 7, 2012). "Stop Kony, yes. But don’t stop asking questions". The Independent (UK). Retrieved March 7, 2012.

Dose Social Media increase the quality of news?

Before social media, the way that we get news are only from TV, radio or newspaper. In this way, people are receiver because they didn’t transmit the news. With the development of social media, we got more approach to find news and information. Everyone become the transmitter and receiver. We can make news by posting online. So here is the question, dose social media has increased the quality of news and information or decreased it?

                                                         

At the beginning, I thought social media decrease the quality of news because too many people make junk online and make fake news and it is hard for us to find the truth. However, when I think about the news of this girl in China, I realized that actually social media do improve the quality of the news.

In 2011, Chinese girl Meimei Guo is connected with the Red Cross Society of China. She claimed on her Weibo(Chinese Twitter) that she is the "commercial general manager" of the Red Cross Society of China. This was a false claim. The money she raised from donations were used to buy luxury cars and designer handbags (Li 1.). Because of this happened, the Red Cross of China and the whole Chinese charity system now facing a credibility crisis. This news shocked the whole country and money in China does not trust charity organization anymore. This woman in our country would be referred to as a concubine.

Imaging if there are no Weibo, people won't know there is a girl who use the money supposed for charity to improve her luxury life. If she didn't show off that she is the "commercial general manager" of the Red Cross Society of China, we won’t know that there is a huge problem in the management of the Red Cross Society.

Three years later, Guo was arrested for illegal betting on the World Cup. The interesting thing is the evidence of this crime was her post on Weibo that she bet Brazil will win and she said she spent a lot of money on this wager.

Because of social media, we really dig huge news and it won't find out without social media because too many things happened every day. However, it is true that there a lot of worthless news on social media, but as long as we try to select the true news, we will get the benefit from that. Also even before social media, we can't trust the news from traditional media either, so we can’t say that social media made the quality of news become bad.

About how news and information are being disseminated in countries with closed or restrictive governments, I have a lot of experience base on my home country of China. In China, we don't have a lot of freedom of media, such as we don't have Facebook, YouTube even Google, so basically government control media. For instance, China Central Television (CCTV), is the predominant state television broadcaster in mainland China. CCTV has a network of 45 channels broadcasting different programs and is accessible to more than one billion viewers. CCTV produces its own news broadcasts three times a day and is the country’s most powerful and prolific television program producer.

 Xinwen Lianbo ("CCTV Network News"), goes on the air daily at 7:00 pm Beijing time. All local stations have an obligation to carry CCTV's news broadcast. An internal CCTV survey indicates that nearly 500 million people countrywide regularly watch this program.The activities of the President of the People's Republic of China are almost always the first item, then will have some news about the political meeting, in the end will be worldwide news. The people in the news are always happy and it seems other countries always have accidents. There are a lot of news were hide so basically I got news from internet, such as Weibo. It is so sad to realize that there are a lot of fake useless news on TV until I go to Canada.

It is true that more and more pop culture, celebrities news instead of investigative reporting on important topics, however, consider the age population on the internet, most of people are around 20 to 30 years old and people more interesting on the news are not really profound. Overall, with time goes by, more and more investigative reporting on important topics will come out and social media will be more important in our life.

 Reference:

l  CCTV. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Central_Television

l  Li, Raymond. How can Red Cross Society of China regain public trust?. South China Morning Post, 25 Apr. 2013.web. 16 Sep 2013.

l  Xinwenlianbo. Wikipedia.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinwen_Lianbo

Social Media Diet Journal

Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube…… normally my day starts with these social media. However, since I got a project about social media diet plus midterm is coming, so I decided to try the diet.

Here is my normal routine during weekends: Wake up around 10 am, lay on the bed and browse all the social media that I use: Wechat(a Chinese social media), Chinese Twitter(I don’t use the original Twitter), Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest esc. Basically I just check one by one until I got all the new things which can take a LONG time (around 4 hours!). After that, I finally leave my lovely bed and get dressed, eat breakfast and get out to work. During work time I won’t get any chance to check my phone due to the policy, but as long as I go back home, the process of checking social media starts again……. Actually it’s pretty boring.

Base on the article Everything You Need to Know About a Digital Sabbatical, here are the things that I won’t do during this weekend:

◾Surfing the web.

◾Checking email.

◾Updating twitter or Facebook.

◾Moderating blog comments.

In fact, because I want to be success of this diet, I uninstalled almost all the social media app on my phone (I kept Wechat in case my parents in China couldn't find me)

So, here we go:

On Saturday morning, because I had a meeting at school, so I skipped the morning social media /lay on the bed routine which is a good start. After meeting I decided to study in the computer room to study for midterm. However, my first reaction when I waiting for turn on the computer (the computer in the lab is pretty slow to turn on) was check Facebook, and then I realized that I am on the diet so I tell myself “no”. At the same time computer are finished preparing. I started to review the PowerPoint from blackboard and prepare for the time. During the time when I review the PowerPoint, again I tried to check Facebook on the computer. When I type Facebook on Google, the voice in my head said: What are you doing dude?! I realized I am on the diet. After that I going to work and when I go home, I tried to avoid using computer or cellphone because as long as I use computer or cellphone, I gonna check all my social media, so I decided to listen to the music and watching movie with my girlfriend which is pretty good.

On Sunday morning, I felt it’s been so long that I didn't dance anymore. I used to be a bboy(break dance dancer) when I was in China, but because I have work and school at the same time, I feel like I forget my habit. However, since I am on social media diet and I have nothing to do, I decided to practice dance a bit. I was so happy that I can find my interest again as well as find myself. After dancing, I spent my afternoon to clean my car. I love my car so much. But during the time I clean my car, I was trying to check my social work because I was tired and I tried to have a break, normally I would check my phone so… actually I checked for about 10 minutes we chat and then I realized that I was on the diet. I failed in the end.

Unfortunately there was no people contact with me which is pretty sad. Everyone has a phone and computer and everyone enjoy social media which is crazy. The way used to be communicated was talking face to face or write a letter or phone, but now it’s so hard to see each other face to face especially I am in Canada and I have a lot of friends and family member in China. Sometimes I feel so lonely because I am the only person in my family who is in Canada. I really appreciate my girlfriend spends a lot of time with me and that makes me feel like home. But when she went to work and  only me at home, I really feel lonely and boring. I guess in the future, I will spend more time to communicate with people face to face instead of on social media because that’s really who I am and I want to have more friends. Also, I will keep my habit dance because that really makes feel alive.

Welcome to my blog!

Hi! I am LJ(Yunzhe Luo),I come from China and now I live in Welland, Canada(eh?!). I am a student in Niagara College Motive Power Technician-Automotive(Co-op) Program. I am a car guy:) I wish I can make some new friends here!