I wrote this
write-up for a research journal during May 2012. I am now publishing it on my
blog in parts.
2011 MASS UPRISINGS: SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS - PART-XI
THE NEW MASS
MEDIA
The
Internet is the modern mass media and is bound to become the dominant mode of
communication with rapidly advancing technologies that make convergence of electronic
media, print media and mobile communication on Internet platforms a ‘viable to
masses’ option in the near future. A simple corollary of 2011 protests puts it
in the right perspective:
Protests
grew rapidly in countries and precipitated in significantly large mass
mobilization where Internet was free or somewhat beyond regulation to work as
the mass media giving, in-turn, free run to the social media platforms. The
borderless world of the technological communication helped build the global
audience as the domestic news spread through the conveniently porous borders.
In
case of Tunisia, Egypt, Russia and India, the feeling of unrest or betrayal by
the rulers was there among the masses. Social media fueled that feeling to
become large protest movements.
In,
Libya, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain, the potential of social media to fuel the
unrest was either absent owing to poor technology infrastructure or was almost
suppressed.
Yes,
the Internet has its own negatives and its increasing use is bound to bring
many issues of concern with it, but at the moment, it is being used as the foreground
where some of the biggest mass uprisings are taking place. And Internet is
doing it by bringing the prominence of the public sphere back again.
Citizens
are discussing the problems that affect them. They are getting feedbacks in
real time. They are connecting to the like-minded ones in the pursuit of the
speedy grievance redressal giving rise to the group formation trends.
And when
there is something endemic affecting a vast stretch of the population, such
discussions are giving way to the mass uprisings. It might be the return of the
public sphere as Jürgen Habermas had once expected.
It
is premature to write whether the current mass-uprisings would lead the
‘representative democracy-reliant nation-states’ to give way to ‘deliberative
democracy-reliant political setup’ with an activist public sphere as Tunisia,
Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Bahrain, Russia, India and the global economic
village, all are in the first stage of the upheaval and no one knows what shape
the rehabilitation would take; how participatory would it be?
©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/
