SOCIAL MEDIA: NEW PLATFORM, NEW DEFINITION

As stated by Schirato (2010), together with the first three estates of a country namely executive, judiciary, and military, the media is considered as an important component of society. The notion of the concept is that the media plays a key role in maintaining the flow of information in the public sphere where people are free to interact with society and to participate in processes of political making decisions which affect their lives significantly. However, there are many scholars and experts argue that the media has not met its role as the Fourth Estate. Particularly, Stanley Cohen (2002) indicates any phenomenon which is put in the limelight of either local or international attentions is a result of a corporation between the exaggeration of the media and the viewpoints of interest groups.

When the mainstream media is seen as not fulfilling its function, another form of new media is obviously necessary for an implementation of public debate. Therefore, the emergence of the Internet and its product, social media, are warmly welcome by everybody all over the world and are recognized as a revolution in archiving a truly freedom of speech. With the advantage of providing a stable platform for people to express their opinions and ideas freely, network communication has become a pivotal community. No matter where they are staying, no matter which color their skin is, as long as they share the same interests and belief, they are able to connect each other tightly by virtue of such a remarkable advantage of the new media. Let’s take a look at the situation of Tunisia and Egypt as a typical illustration of social media’s strength. Wael Ghonim (cited by The Star Publications 2011), the Google executive and cyberactivist who emerged as a leader of the anti-government protests in Egypt, say that network communication played as a curial position in the events... without Facebook, without You Tube, without Twitter, without Google, this would have never happened.

Generally, social media and its advantages are setting a new standard for the practice of the conventional media in order to accomplish the duty of pioneers who accelerate the true space of public sphere.

References list:

1.       Cohen, S 2002, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, Routledge, London.

2.      Schirato, T 2010, Understanding media studies, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne.

3.      The Star Publications 2011, Social media, cellphone video fuel Arab protest, lasted view on 22^nd May 2011, <http://techcentral.my/news/story.aspx?file=/2011/2/28/it_news/20110228100840&sec=IT_News>.