The Political Power of Social Media

Ok, I stole this great title from an article Clay Shirky wrote in Foreign Policy that I thought was both insightful and innovative - he took a fresh look at what social media's role is in politics and made some recommendations to governments, particularly the U.S. government, on how it can use social media to foster democratic change and transition.

This article was written in 2010 - but it came in handy just in time for the unprecedented Arab Spring revolutions spreading across the Middle East in the early part of 2011. Also lucky timing for me, since I am in the process of writing my masters thesis on social media's role in this revolution. Did you hear that an Egyptian man named his newborn daughter "Facebook" in deference to the role Facebook played in helping to organize the revolutions that ousted Hosni Mubarak?

While we know that social media had SOMETHING to do with these revolutions - everybody is talking about it, including the media - we don't actually have any evidence to prove its impact. This is the challenge I am encountering as I write my thesis. Nobody has yet qualitatively or quantitatively looked at the impact of social media on political events, on civic action, or political change. There is scant research on the power and in the influence of the Internet as a new form of communication, and other research available on the similarities between traditional media and new media in terms of their agenda-setting effect and their power to shape public perception and opinion, but nothing on how, or most importantly WHY social media has the power to influence politics. Is it because humans understand that information on social media is peer to peer and not filitered by gatekeepers or other forms of state, government or corporate controls as social media is? Is it because the Internet and digital world has increased our consumption of information and social media provides a way to aggregate a lot of information quickly, and tailored to one's needs?

All very interesting and the current analysis and research are just the tip of the iceberg....