Social media and the freedom of speech.

Last week, we discussed about the event of Obama twitter town hall. This reminds me the great antigovernment movement, which happened in Egypt few months ago. In the United State, the President takes the advantage of social media as a great channel to listen to the opinion from the public; in the Egypt, the public uses social media to against their government.

Who has the greater power? The government or the public?

From the Egypt protests happened recently, it tells the truth that if the government still refuses to listen to the voice from the public, the pub

lic might show that discontent in an aggressive way. Protesters in the movement mainly call for greater democratic rights and solving the unemployment problems. [1] When a 28-year –old Egyptian man, Khale Said was witnessed that the Egyptian police killed him because he had the evidence of the police corruption, the anger of the Egyptian people was to the extreme. [2]

Therefore, people form a variety of social-economic they created a Facebook page, “We are all Khale Said” [3], and the protesters use this Facebook page as a tool to connect with others who also have discontent with the Mubarak government. When the Mubarak government was aware of the powerful role that social media were playing in Egypt, some supporters of the Mubarak government popped to the Facebook page and tried to speak for the government.

Overwhelming power of social media

The Japanese government is famous for a calm style when handling a big devastate. In the 8.9 magnitude earthquake that rocked Japan this march, the Japanese Government tended to release the earthquake news in a “bright” way. However, from the social media, Japanese people could understand the deeper earthquake information.

Apart from being another resource to know the latest news in the earthquake, the social media also plays another vital role this time. At very first time when the earthquake happened, the internet, telephone, mobile phone were temporary out of order, people used the Facebook or Twitter to send a message to their families or friends and let them know they were fine.

In the past days, people usually connected to the world by reading news. Now, people tend to get information form social media. However, with the exploding information everyday, how does audience choose their information? Or what the role does the government should play when protect the public’s freedom of speech? From my point of view, there are two answers to these questions.

1. Policy. In class, we discussed about there should be a social media in each company. However, when it comes to a whole society, there should be a complete social media law to regulate the public while using the social media, such as protecting users’ policy, punishing inappropriate speech.

2. Well-educated citizenship. This might be a cliché, but in a digital ear, maybe there should be an organized educational system to speech on the internet.

References:

[1] http://www.egyptianrevolution.com/

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/world/middleeast/06face.html?pagewanted=all

[3] http://www.facebook.com/elshaheeed.co.uk?sk=photos

My review for the President Obama’s Twitter Town Hall

Social media has played an important role in our life. After watching President Obama’s Twitter Town Hall, I feel it is so true! Nowadays, the influence of social media not just affects the way we keep in touch with friends, but also help us to update the President’s leading strategies in the future. The President Obama’s Twitter Town Hall is hold by the White House and there are questions selected from the twitter by 8 curators, showing on the screen. President Obama answers these questions. This is a remarkable event, because this is the first time the President of the United Stated answers questions to the public through social media directly.

From my point of view, generally speaking, President Obama’s Twitter Town Hall is a good public relations strategy from the White House. Here are my thoughts:

1. Good Speaker, genuine listener.

From this video, President Obama listened every question carefully and tried to answer them precisely. At some points, this makes the crowd feel that he would like to understand the questions people have in their lives. He also tried to answer each question very precisely.

2. Provide an up to date and good channel for the public to interact with President Obama.

This event provided a good channel for the public to have a chance to ask the President Obama their questions, which reflect the problems in the current society. According to Social Media Today, there are some demographics showing the age of major users of the Twitter is 18-34. The age represents the young generations who engage in participating with discussing public issue in the society. I think the Obama government chose the twitter to communicate with people maybe they are preparing to win some you generation supporters. With using the hot social media in the United Stated, the Obama government also tries to represent a new image of the government that they are open-mined and up-to-date.

There are some questions of the President Obama’s Twitter Town Hall worth to be considered.

1.Why twitter?

I am just curious why the White House choose the Twitter as the medium to communicate with the public. Although I made a research on line and found out it is the widely used social media in the United State. Would it be an official advertisement for the twitter? Why don’t they choose other social media, like Facebook?

2. How they choose the questions

According to the video the Obama’s Twitter Town Hall, just 17 questions are selected and answers. Although these questions are variety, it seems the curators chose these questions from main big cities in the United Stated. I would suggest they could choose the questions from more different city.

3. Too long to answer each question

Each tweet has 140 words limit, so each questions the President Obama answers need to be narrowed down to 140 words. From the video, I could tell that the President Obama tried to answer every question as detailed as possible. However, if in the case, I would suggest the President Obama answer each question shorter, that’s way, he could answer more questions.

Update 07/20/2011

Some thoughts are added after the class on 07/19

Is social media disrupting public relations?

The prosperous social media tools, Youtube, Twitter, and Facebook are changing the pubic relation industry nowadays. Not only we use these social media to keep in touch with our old friends, but also people from diverse industries use it as a tool to promote themselves.

Is it familiar to you that seeing your friends like a new restaurant in the town? Or is it easier nowadays to find a promotion activity for our favorite brand on twitter than old days. Yes, I do not think I could deny the fact that social media is becoming a wildly- using tool in the area of public relations. Therefore, I do not agree with the statement that social media is disrupting pubic relation.

From our daily life experiences, we could find different business using social media to promote their products. I also found many politicians they also using social media as a tool to promote themselves. They post their current opinion toward this country. They also answer questions that the public has. There is a piece of interesting news in my country. The president in my country releases a strong ideological tendency on his Facebook (chances are that it was released by his staff members.). Moreover, he also popped a question to the public on his Facebook. This interests the public discussing and also the chasing of other Taiwanese news firms.

The prosperous social media tools, Youtube, Twitter, and Facebook are changing the pubic relation industry nowadays. Not only we use these social media to keep in touch with our old friends, but also people from diverse industries use it as a tool to promote themselves.

However, there is one problem that occurs to me. When it comes to discuss the question what is social media disrupting the public relation. In some cases, if a politician or a company does not use it well, it might jeopardize their public relations.