When we watched the video about youth leadership during the Arab Spring, I was a little surprised. We have focused a lot on charismatic leadership and the personality involved in gaining followers to support a cause. However, this showed a different perspective.
The use of social media was invaluable in gaining supporters for the protest. The leaders did not have to go and make a big speech in a public place and convince people to follow them. Instead, they merely organized a campaign through Facebook. Somehow it worked, and ended up with thousands of supporters.
What is even more impressive is the idea that they did not have to leave their building in order to be a part of the movement and it was still a huge success. They were very much focused on the idea of empowering their followers, and simply providing organization in terms of leadership. This event was an outlet for them to express all of their feelings towards the government, which may be why so many people turned up.
I know that leadership involves a lot of behind the scenes work, which is exactly what they did by asking and giving advice for other movements around the world. It just shows that you do not have to be that big leader at the front of a crowd making a speech, demonstrating the importance of the everyday leader. These people were empowered to rally together and speak their minds with passion, which is exactly what leadership does. This different approach worked very well in this instance, and it would be interesting to see if it is quite as effective in another setting. It reminds me of the Kony 2012 movement with the video that went viral. It gave a lot of people something to be passionate about, and was a campaign based purely on social media and an event. It definitely targeted more young people as well.
I completely agree your argument. Now there have been many protests and events planned on social media sites like facebook. The amazing thing is how many people are aware of these events and actually show up. However, this use of social media should not be a privilege given only to certain people. In the movie we watched, the right to use facebook was denied after the protests were occurring.
ReplyDeleteI agree that there are many benefits to the ease of organizing social movements using social media which has become an everyday part of life for millions if not billions of people. Surely, the Arab Spring and Kony 2012 were just causes that were of course with their flaws, but for the most part they achieved change for the better. My concern is, with creating such large movements simply using a computer what is to stop the masses from being manipulated for a not so just cause. The internet provides a great deal of anonymity which could allow an individual or group put together a cause with more malicious intentions than the democratization of a country or helping children in conflict ridden regions. The Arab Spring is a perfect example; with some clicks of the mouse a government was toppled in a matter of months. Such power is frightening when consider almost anyone has access to it.
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