Facebook Effect

I started reading "The Facebook Effect" book which we were provided as part of this class. It starts with a story about a civil engineer from Colombia, Oscar Morales, who used Facebook in his fight against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). He created a Facebook group against FARC to begin the fight. Overnight 1,500 people had joined his group. On the group's wall people could post their thoughts, discuss anything on the forum, etc. As the group was growing, members started to also use the wall as means to communicate potential actions to be taken. That is how National March against FARC was organized. Through Facebook, this event turned into a global demonstration on February 4 which was joined by approx. 10M members from all over the world and not just Colombia. As can be seen, Facebook was the only source that allowed this group to communicate and protest against the government. Actual media coverage occurred after the events took place and after people realized what role Facebook played throughout the whole process. Even after press and other media picked up reporting, Facebook remained central to this movement. As Morales said himself, Facebook "(...) was the newspaper. It was the central common. It was the laboratory - everything. Facebook was all that, right up until the last day." The Facebook effect as part of this national fight was unbelievable.

During one of the breaks yesterday at school, I was talking to one of our classmates who is originally from Turkey. As the media has been silent, not many people are aware about what is going on currently in the country. I myself did not know despite staying on top of the news. Turkish media is heavily censored through the strong ties between the government and media outlets and the riots were not covered from the beginning at all. Therefore, similarly to Oscar's situation above, people in Turkey turned to social media, specifically Facebook, to communicate and share everything that has been taking place out there and to get the attention of foreign media. Heartbreaking pictures started flooding Facebook to make people aware and increase support from Turkish people, as well as others, within and out of Turkey.

Finally yesterday, thanks to Facebook and other social media such as Twitter, the news about events started spreading around the world. This is just one of the articles out there now available: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/06/02/turkey-protests/2381911/.

This story again shows how powerful Facebook became around the world. Its effect can be more impactful than that of all the other media taken together. There might be no freedom of speech in certain places around the world but as long as there is some type of social media available in the country the word will spread and actions will be taken...