At the beginning of the lecture this week, Ted stresses that the focus of this week’s topic is on social media rather than analysing the political aspect of revolutions around the world. This is important as if you are considering the differing political stances and their contribution to the circumstance, you fail to see social media as a factor in itself.
The majority of the world’s population is connected in some way. Social media has facilitated the erasing of boundaries in terms of social revolutions and activism. Protests are being organised and shared on social media platforms and this makes regulating and controlling these demonstrations extremely difficult and almost impossible.
Opposition leaders and activists in Moldova, for instance, have been using text messages, blogs and social networking sites to draw thousands of people to antigovernment demonstrations in the capital.
I created the following info graphic to visually display the popularity of Facebook in regards to other social media platforms being used in Moldova.
The use of hashtags and Facebook events means that people stay updated and can participate in these acts of protest if they wish to do so.
The following article is an interesting read about how Moldovan protesters use social media and texting to spread the word and continue to do so despite government action preventing this.
Statistics from:
https://www.statsmonkey.com/table/21415-moldova-mobile-social-media-usage-statistics-2015.php
THIS DIGITAL AGE 