Are Social Networks the New Media?

‘Social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to mention just a few have become powerful tools of communication,’ says Kiran Agarwal of Dum Dum Road, Kolkata. They are meant to connect people, enabling them to interact, revive childhood friendships, keep in touch with distanced friends and family, and keep aware about current changes and so on. Anyone can be a part of it, provided ethics of internet etiquette is maintained. 

    Danah M. Boyd and Nicole B. Ellisson in their essay Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship in Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (Volume 13, Issue 1, pages 210–230, October 2007) have defined Social network sites as ‘web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. The nature and nomenclature of these connections may vary from site to site.’

The term ‘social networking sites’ also appears in public discourse, and the two terms are often used interchangeably. Boyd and Ellisson chose not to employ the term ‘networking’ for two reasons: emphasis and scope. ‘Networking’ emphasizes relationship initiation, often between strangers. While networking is possible on these sites, it is not the primary practice on many of them, nor is it what differentiates them from other forms of computer-mediated communication (CMC)

These most popular websites across the world are also promotional and marketing platforms for corporate firms, production houses, film releases, book promos and even political campaigning. In fact, in one recent case, a hit-and-run case of negligent driving in Mumbai that took the life of a very young man has snowballed into a massive man-hunt thanks to the victim’s friends who reached out globally to find the identity of the hit-and-run culprit who left the young man to bleed to death, lying unattended for six hours on the street. On 25th January this year, Vinit Sancheti (38), a young man, who was riding his Yamaha RX 100 bike at around four was hit by a car on JNPT Road in Panvel, Greater Mumbai. 

Five friends from his school and college, namely Dhawal Ojha, Hrishikesh Joshi, Ravi Gaur, Prashant Sampat and Roland Gottur not only began a website with the title Justice For Vinit Sancheti but also opened separate accounts in Facebook and Twitter where they got more than 400 hits within a few weeks. A prize of Rs.25000 has been announced for the person who will identify the driver of a killer car. If and when nabbed, the driver will have to face charges under IPC Section 279 (reckless driving), Section 307A (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), Section 427 (mischief causing damage) besides several charges under different sections of the Motor Vehicles Act. 

A downloadable PPS called Online Campaigning for Social Justice is available for those who might wish to use Facebook and Twitter and other similar social networking sites for social justice campaigns. It has been prepared by Nana Moe that aims at ‘Equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex people in Europe’. But the slides are flexible enough to lend themselves to many causes other than the target groups described. 

There are other activism-centred functions too. Though only seven years old, Charity:Water,  a nonprofit organization has had tremendous success with their fundraising strategy with over 100 million dollars raised from over 500,000+ people. On Twitter, Charity:water, the founders claim, is the most followed charity with over 1 million followers. They were one of the first 20 brands ever to use Instagram and were also quick to try on Vine, Twitter’s new 6 sec video service. On Facebook they have close to 300,000 followers.

Charity:Water claims to spend zero dollars on marketing. “Our focus at Charity: Water is on building a grassroots movement of inspired people actively giving, fundraising and influencing their peers. We have amazing major donors, but the real power of the movement is delivered by thousands of normal people running their own word-of-mouth marketing campaigns for the water cause,” Says Paull Young, Director of Digital, Charity:Water. Social media is clearly the fuel that powers their growth, they excel at using the web to communicate the importance of their cause and  produces high quality content for distribution through their various social media channels. 

In India, since Anna Hazare’s campaign against corruption followed now by Kejriwal, thousands of people including celebrities signed up online to the India Against Corruption feeds via Facebook and Twitter. They tweeted, shared, commented and raised an army of online supporters that spread the word about peaceful offline support actions happening worldwide. Information could be exchanged easily and instantly, and the movement gathered momentum within hours as the mobile phone has become the modern day version of the clandestine printing presses of the 1940s.

Paula Ray of the University of Auckland in her extremely well-informed paper, SNS in India – Gossip as a Vehicle of Activism cites the unique but controversial case of how women took the social network to spread the good word. On February 5 2009, the Pink Chaddi campaign launched in India found an expression for the nationwide outrage against Shri Ram Sene, an extremely conservative Hindu political group, when their activists beat up a group of young women at a Mangalorean pub. The Hindu group claimed that women who wear western clothes and drink alcohol at pubs violate Indian tradition. 

By coincidence, a local journalist, Nisha Susan, was also present at the incident. She decided to set up a Facebook group called ‘The Consortium of Pubgoing, Loose, and Forward Women’, and urged women to gift pink chaddis (panties) to Pramod Mutalik, who heads the political outfit, to stop him from disrupting the then forthcoming Valentine’s Day celebrations. It became so successful that today it is considered one of the best examples of digital activism in India. It brought together Indian women from across the world to take collective action using social media tools.

The global internet, then, is creating the base and the basis for an unparalleled worldwide anti-war/pro-peace and social justice movement during a time of terrorism, war, and intense political struggle. 

It would be apt to conclude with what Richard Kahn and Douglas Kellner of the University of Califorina say in their article - New media and internet activism: from the ‘Battle of Seattle’ to blogging. They conclude that ‘online activist subcultures have materialized as a vital new space of politics and culture in which a wide diversity of individuals and groups have used emergent technologies in order to help to produce new social relations and forms of political possibility. Many of these subcultures may become appropriated into the mainstream, but no doubt ever-new oppositional cultures and novel alternative voices and practices will appear as we navigate the ever-more complex present toward the always-receding future.’