The session on technology was extremely interesting and made me think about how the advent of social media is extremely relevant and an important issue in today’s political world. Primarily, social media has become extremely effective platforms of awareness spreading and mobilization to increase support and empathy for humanitarian crisis and conflict victims. Such social media spaces are now filled with newspaper articles, pictures, videos, first-hand accounts and debates about such intervention creating traction that is measurable and more tangible in comparison to the effect of traditional media sources. In addition, the rise of social media alongside technology, primarily with the portable phone, has increased information dissemination and gathering significantly, with citizens on the ground serving as constant sources of information and graphic media. While before the public was extremely dependent on print and electronic media as the source of information and perspectives on world events, today, our social media serves as a constant barrage of ground level reporting and first-hand accounts from people all over the world experiencing and witnessing the crisis.
Particularly, social media has proved its value in helping put forward the viewpoints and experiences of the victims of such crisis themselves, holding aid agencies and intervening governments more accountable to their actions and its consequences in foreign soil. With interventions easily falling into hero-victim narratives, the advent of social media has allowed for a more nuanced understanding of both the hero and the victim. This was notably seen in the Libyan civil war where social media played an extremely crucial role, both in mobilizing people for the rebellion, but also once the rebellion was underway, in shaping how international media portrayed the Libyan movement and its people. Rather than painting Libyans as traditional aid recipients that are vulnerable and weak, western media, that followed Libyan twitter presence and interacted with such people in these platforms, portrayed them as politically engaged and dynamic. Libyan distrust of NATO and distaste for its bureaucracy was also picked up and reflected in western coverage of the intervention. Therefore, technology in today’s world has really empowered people from being the audience to being the reporters. Something, the world is better for.
