Social media and crisis

Was digital media entirely responsible for the Arab Spring? Were there other important factors? Overall, how do Internet and social media tools help protect our rights to freedom of opinion and expression?

Choose an activity from one of three levels:

Flashlight: View the Indian film No One Killed Jessica, based on the true story of a young waitress and aspiring model who was shot dead by the son of a prominent politician in New Delhi in 1999. Discuss whether digital media assisted the journalists and activists in achieving eventual justice in that case. If a similar case occurred today, would that media use be different?

Spotlight: Listen to Ethan Zuckerman’s talk about the Big Picture of Digital Activism. Examine the role that social media and traditional media like Al Jazeera had in the Egyptian crisis of 2011. Did social media cause the revolution? During class, go online to revisit Egypt. Have the hopes of the protesters come true? What is the status of freedom of expression in that country? Is it realistic to expect that everything all will change at once?

Searchlight: Ask students to review this interview and video, in which Andy Carvin, NPR’s social media strategist, explains his philosophy. Have students seek out a local or global cause that they feel passionately about and try to call attention to it. How did you they do it? Did it work? How do they know? How would they do it differently?

Extra credit: Where do all those cell phones come from? Read this Fast Company article about China’s pirate innovators. By ignoring intellectual property law, the shanzhai have created a massive electronics black market that is providing technology for much of the developing world. Ask students to research and write a paper or blog on this phenomenon. To innovate, you must reject tradition, but does that extend to the stealing of patents? Are the pirates, on the whole, good for the world, or bad?