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REACTION PAPER
As watching a video of “How social media can make history” by Clay Shirky on
TED, I was again surprising at the power of the social media and digital devices. Shirky
said there are only 4 periods in the last 500 years where media has changed enough to
qualify for the label “revolution.”: the printing press, the telegraph and telephone, the
recorded media and the radio and television. (Clay Shirky, 2009) But moreover, I think
that the internet can be counted as the fifth period of media revolution. The technology is
so advanced that everybody can tweeter anything they want to share online in several
seconds. I use cellphone the same way as most of the cellphone users in the world. When
I came across something interesting, I would take a picture by my phone and post it online
to the tweeter when I saw a sales promotion in the street, I would normally announce my
friends on tweeter by “@” them; and when I was in trouble of getting lost, I would send
my location onto the tweeter and ask for help. I believe that most of you are just doing
things like that. It is the great convenience brought to us by social media. There is not
much point in introducing the latest cellphones or interesting websites, because almost
everybody is really familiar with them. And what I really want to talk about is the social
media and the digital activism itself. Internet is only a platform for the public. Today, the
internet is easily available for most of us and the information it brings is of a great
abundance. We can easily be noticed of the latest news by keeping our cellphones online.
Thus, there is more chance for us to become an activist. Take the “Earth Hour” activity
starting in 2007, Australia, for example. The activity received great attention from the
world approving it as the largest campaign in reaction of the global climate change just in
the second year of its existence. What’s more, in 2008, the campaign was supported by
more than 50’000’000 people from 35 countries. (Earth Hour, 2008) The spread of such
a large-scale activity is mainly done on the internet. It is quite unbelievable in the old time
that millions of online visiting records were made just in several days. An unaware glance
at the title or picture of this activity in the web page can lead to the curiosity to that. To
some extents, with the great help of some large websites’ generous propaganda, people
are informed of that activity from any digital devices they could reach during their visiting
to other social media websites. The digital activism comes of the curiosity, interest,