Does social media have the power to change the world?

Watch the video as many times as you want, make pauses if necessary and discover the power of social media.

 

1-What words are underlined in the questions? Why? What does it focus on then?

SOCIAL MEDIA and POWER are underlined to show they are the keywords of the question. It then focusses on the word WORLD and the world / earth is shown to us.

2-What first figure is given? How many people use social media in the world?

26% of the world’s population is using social media.

3-What examples are given. Fill the chart.

Number…	Social media…	Where…
41.2 million people	Twitter	Brazil
90 million people	Facebook	India
3.6 million people	Facebook	Kenya
6.5 million people	Mxit (instant messaging app)	South Africa
600 million people	Weibo	China
46 million	Vkontakte	Russia

4-What is the conclusion after such figures?

SOCIAL MEDIA has helped to create a digital global village.

5-What other social media are presented? What are they associated to?

Facebook => enabling democracy and mobilizing activism

Wikipedia => increasing access to information and improving education

WikiLeaks => encouraging transparency and accountability

Any social media => influencing the media through citizen journalism

6-How has social media helped social change? List the countries and the changes that were brought about.

In Jamaica => health workers distribute information about HIV via social media.

In Mexico => Citizens are using social media to report information about drug wars and cartels.

In India => There is a website (I paid a bribe) for reporting acts of corruption via social media channels.

In Syria => a fundraising video made by SAVE THE CHILDREN was viewed by over 30 million people.

Everywhere in the world => The USHAHIDI platform uses social media to locate people in the aftermath of natural disasters or conflict

examples of a tsunami in Japan, a typhoon in the Philippines, elections in Kenya, an earthquake in Hawaii)

7-What other power is mentioned about social media?

Social media can help create revolutions (to topple governments around the world)

8-Give some examples of the hashtags which have become symbols of such revolutions.

#arabspring / #egypt / #occupywallstreet, etc… 

9-About censorship, inequality and digital divide: how is it symbolized?

The word censorship is blurred to show that it is unreadable.

The letters of word inequality are all separated to show differences between people.

The words in “digital divide” are separated to show the separation it creates.

10-What figure is given to prove that censorship exists?

In 2011, the internet was censored in more than 40 different countries, affecting over a half-billion users.

11-What examples of censorship are mentioned? Fill the chart with the information.

 

Where…	Example of censorship
China	Words are censored on Weibo: “sex”, “18+”, “Muslim”, “Marijuana”, “conflict”.
Uganda	A social media monitoring centre was created by the government
Vietnam	anyone who criticizes the government on social media has to pay a $5000 fine.
Turkey	YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are all banned. the Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan said: “Social media are the worst menace to society”.

12-What global figures are given ?

Three-fifth (3/5^th) of the population remains unconnected, that is to say 4.4 million people. They cannot send or receive emails, connect via social media, chat on Skype with friends and family, or watch humorous videos of cats.

13-What about Europe? Africa?

75% of the population are online in Europe.

16% of the population are online in Africa.

14-How do unconnected people react to not being connected?

They think Internet is not useful / is useless to their lives because lack of relevance, costs, infrastructure, local language content, skills training and illiteracy.

15-What is changing though?

Access to the internet and social media is changing rapidly. For example, in china, there were 17.6 million mobile netizens in 2008 and it increased to 464 million mobile netizens in 2013.

16-What is a “netizen”? Give a definition.

A netizen is a citizen of the net: net + citizen = an internet user.

17-What comparison is brought forward? What does it show?

There are now more mobile phones in the world than toothbrushes… It shows that people are more and more concerned about being connected… and maybe that less and less people are concerned about their health…

18-How will new technologies help in the future?  

They will help the diffusion of the internet (Solar power laptops, Google Loon, $50 smartphones, the BRCK)

19-What final question is raised?

“Who controls the power of social media????”