Monday 13 June 2011

Cellphone Videos Fuel Arabs!!!


Technology advancement has accelerated the growth of social medias, allowing faster spread of information via different media vehicles, especially the cellphones. Cellphones and their in-built cameras have given people the ability to publicise videos and pictures as information faster than before. This then could be dangerous as they will be purely free from media and public relations manipulation.


 The article “Social Media, cellphone video fuel arabs,” displays how cellphone videos lead to the removal of Muhammad Hosni Sayyid Mubarak’s of his presidency. Murbarak is the fourth president of Egypt and due to the Egyptian revolution which took place earlier this year. Footage from camera phones, displaying harsh crackdowns by security forces on crowds of protestors, were uploaded to Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and other sites, leading to international condemnation for the Bahrain and Libya government and increased anger in the streets. Once these footages were posted on media vehicles like Facebook and Youtube, the event was blown up and already spread like wildfire.



The older form of media took longer to have an effect on the viewers’ emotions. Newspapers and other print media had a limit to providing a full depiction of an event. But with the invention of television and, now, the internet and other social media vehicles, full pictures or videos could be easily seen and understood. All these can lead to changes in behaviour and thoughts, especially from observing models in the world around us like our parents, peers, or other role models, such as those provided by mass media (Murray 2008). The videos were able to fuel the anger of the people because there was no media manipulation involved, meaning there was no bias selection or press selection (Parenti 2001) on what should be shown to the viewers, thus allowing them to have a full ‘down to earth’ (Gunther & Van Leeuwen 1998) representation of the event from the eyes of the people there. These footages also do not fall under media ownership, meaning that the media does not possess ownership or power to select, edit, or choose the manner of its presentation (Armijo 2009), thus it is free to be shown via media vehicles like Youtube, Flickr, or Facebook.


 In conclusion, technology has advanced and improved our freedom within social media networks. These advances has allowed us to practice a whole new means of freedom of speech as well as accelerated the spread of news globally.


References

Armijo, 2009, 'Media ownership regulation: a comparative perspective', The Georgia journal of international and comparative law,

vol. 37, no. 3, p 422 – 467, viewed on 11 June 2011,

<http://heinonline.org.ezlibproxy.unisa.edu.au/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/gjicl37&collection=journals&page=421>

 

Kress, G & Van Leeuwen, T 1998, ‘Front pages: (the critical) analysis of newspaper layout,’ Approaches to media discourse, Blackwell, Oxford

 

Murray, JP 2008, ‘Media Violence: the effects are both real and strong,’ American Behavioural Scientist, vol.51, no.8, pp.1212-1230, viewed on 11 June 2011,

<http://abs.sagepub.com.ezlibproxy.unisa.edu.au/content/51/8/1212.full.pdf+html> 

 

Parenti, M 2002, ‘Monoply Media Manipulation,’ Mediterranean Quarterly, vol.13, pp.53-66, viewed on 11 June 2011,

<http://stopnwo.com/docs2/michael_parenti_monopoly_media_manipulation.pdf>

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