What are the phenomenon of the 21st century that the world has observed? We have seen the nine eleven terrorist attack in America, America and its western alliance engaged in a war against Afghanistan and Iraq to take revenge of the attack, we have seen the US government as well as the developed countries of Europe and Asia suffering from severe financial crisis, Revolutionary Arab spring in Middle east Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, Occupy wall street protest pioneered in New York and later all across the US. The first two events were political but the later mentioned events are social. They all took place regarding social movement to ensure social justice and equality for the masses. As society is not a remote island and social contract involves politics, these social movements were influenced by political forces as well they brought dynamic political reforms in many parts of the world. With these social movements the world has also experienced the evolution of a new media that fastened these movements to take place and spread the message about the motives of these movement to the rest of the world. Different from the traditional media these social Medias interconnect people from all over the world and enable them to share and receive information between each other through the use of Internet.
If we call these new kind of Medias as to be Social Media then the traditional Medias can be tagged as Commercial Media. Social Medias were introduced to enable the common people to share their thoughts and ideas with others through blogging (Twitter, Blogger, Tumblr), to share information and knowledge (Wikipedia), to foster and publish creativity (You Tube) or just to communicate with each other (Facebook, Instagram). The motives of the social networking Medias are to create a strong relationship among its users without creating any hierarchy and structured relationship. They enable anyone with internet connection and a valid identification to join in the network (unless there is no restriction from the government agencies like China and North Korea). And the amazing part is, it is Free of cost. On the other hand traditional Medias are completely different from these kind of social Medias. Their broadcasting policy is completely static and it is always influenced by commercial and political interest. Entry to these Medias is extremely restricted to the public. The structured and hierarchical relationship between media creators and media consumers restricts the audience, who are at the receiving end of a one way relationship, to create, publish, share or collaborate anything. It is one of the prime reasons why social networking Medias are gaining popularity all over the world. According to Michael Mandiberg which is as follows:
“Beginning with the printing press, technological innovations have enabled the dissemination of more and more media forms over broader and broader audiences. This mass media built and maintained a unidirectional relationship between a few trained professional media producers and many untrained media consumers. This model, which reached its peak in the middle to late twentieth century, began to shift in the 1980s with the widespread use of photocopiers, home video cameras, and mixtapes and evolved further with desktop publishing, home computing, and increased Internet access. By the early 2000s, the cost of computers, software, and Internet access decreased, allowing individuals access to the same tools used by professionals. In this period, new media forms such as blogs and social networking sites have focused squarely on active audience participation, uprooting the established relationship between media producer and media consumer.”(Mandiberg, P1)
The purpose of this blog or project or web page whatever it may be called in this era of Internet is to demonstrate the effect of social Medias on the social democratic movement described earlier. A case study will be carefully examined to see the impact. The motto of the case study will be to examine how the social media has democratized the social movement and influenced it to gain attention of the global community. It will also be observed throughout the entire project to see if the new social Medias are going to bring positive change in the society to make it a better democratic institution.