▶ DIGC202 GLOBAL NETWORKS
I’m pretty sure that most of the world is aware of what’s happening in Hong Kong at the moment, and I’m even more than certain that the way that the world is aware is through the use of social media.
Social media is one of the biggest contributors on how word gets out to anyone and everyone, from live updates and live videos on Facebook or Instagram to point-to-point communication to individuals or large groups through WhatsApp or Telegram messages (Chiu, 2019).Actually if you’re up-to-date on all the latest news in Hong Kong, you would know that for a fact the world didn’t know much about what was happening in the early stages of all the protests in Hong Kong.
From a distance you could see that the people of Hong Kong were protesting for their freedom, and it goes as far as to people who are from Hong Kong that are residing in other countries (like the UK and Canada) to be protesting with their fellow Hong Kongers in Hong Kong as well. It wasn’t until people in Hong Kong started projecting what was happening through their social media accounts; using different hashtags like #standwithHK and #FreeHK, this phenomenon made people from all around the world realise what has happened and what is happening in Hong Kong today.
Will history consign Twitter and Facebook to much the same fate 20 years down the road?
Morozov, E. (2011, March 7)
It’s safe to say that anyone can easily make a big difference from a mere tweet, just as Morozov mentioned in the quote above; I definitely think that in the future, most of the upcoming events in history won’t be broadcasted on a radio anymore but rather on someone’s Instagram story.
References:
- Chiu, P. (2019, October 12). How older Hongkongers are taking to social media for protest updates. Retrieved from https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3032496/older-hongkongers-taking-online-apps-and-social-media.
- Morozov, E. (2011, March 7). Facebook and Twitter are just places revolutionaries go | Evgeny Morozov. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/mar/07/facebook-twitter-revolutionaries-cyber-utopians.
Jessica Pauline Camille Ablog Mercado 
I definitely agree, nowadays something like a tweet which may seem small can actually be part of something very big. Taking the HK protests as an example, through the power of Twitter I think everyone in the world knows about HK’s current situation! This definitely proves that something as simple as voicing out your opinions on social media platforms like Twitter can definitely help in getting a bigger message across to the world.
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It is interesting to see how twitter and instagramers help spread updates and informations about the protest in real time. Yet I am a bit sceptical when it comes to trusting all the information we come across social media. I believe the legacy media also plays an important role in legitimising the ‘news’ shared on these platforms.
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