Charles Beitz in his chapter on “The Practice,” discusses
the “paradigms of implementation” or “enforcement” for agents to prevent or
mitigate human rights failures by a government (33). He explains that six of these “paradigms of
action” are 1) accountability, 2) inducement, 3) assistance, 4) domestic
contestation and engagement, 5) compulsion, and 6) external adaptation. I wanted to look into “domestic contestation
and engagement.”
Beitz discusses domestic contestation and engagement as the
way in which “outside agents can seek to influence a government’s conduct by
engaging in various aspects of a society’s domestic political and social life”
(37). With new technology and an
increasingly connected world, I believe we can begin to create societal change
with the click of a button. We can
create human rights discussions by posting about human rights standards and by
disseminating information on life in other states. As Beitz acknowledges, by doing so, “local
actors themselves may be empowered and their political activity legitimated by
a recognition that their grievances have a basis in human rights doctrine”
(38). With more than one billion people
on Facebook, simply sharing links or posting statuses has the capability of
reaching huge numbers of people. Now, of
course, this could be for the good or for the bad (with great power comes great
responsibility J),
but I think it is clear that social media and new technology allows us to multiply
the impact we were once able to have.
Moreover, I think technology has already played this role, changing
discussions around human rights and promulgating information to those who
previously may not have been reached, as shown in many recent human rights
political actions and discussions. By
gaining this further access to opinions and information, individuals may feel
the backing of other humans and feel “legitimated” and “empowered” to contest
their lack of human rights. Social media
seems to affect both political and social spheres, but how big of an impact do
you think global technological interconnectedness has upon human rights engagement and contestation in
countries? Does it need to act in
coordination with other factors to inspire social and political change or can
it work independently?
Hey Ellen!
ReplyDeleteI have to get in on this because I have strongish feelings about social media. I don't want to write off social media completely, but I am very skeptical that the kind you are talking about can create substantive change. I am generally disdainful of "passive activism" aka posting a status and doing nothing concrete. I think social media does have a few advantages:
(1) access to information
(2) potentially shaping dialogues using that information
(3) potentially providing a platform to organize concrete action
But my short answer to your question is that (in my opinion) social media must act in coordination with other factors to inspire social and political change. For the most part, social media allows for disseminating information, but that doesn't make much difference if people do something beyond posting a status. Some examples of social media movements that come to mind as particularly related to social media are the 99% movement we had here in the US and the Arab Spring. I know that Malcolm Gladwell is basic, but I actually really like this article he wrote on why social media movements are likely to fail.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell
He makes the distinction between strong and weak ties, arguing that strong ties are necessary for substantive change and most social media interaction inherently involves weak ties. If the organization does have strong ties, that is likely due to an external organization that is utilizing social media, as opposed to an organization that developed organically through social media. I'm inclined to agree. The more interesting case would be the Arab Spring, in which social media played a prominent role. I'm definitely not well versed enough in the Arab Spring to comment, but it could be argued that even if many countries failed to bring about lasting political change, social media did bring about a cultural revolution of sorts. This would support the thesis that social media, in conjunction with other efforts can bring about change -- but those other forces must be present.
The cultural revolution argument is from this Economist article:
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21581734-despite-chaos-blood-and-democratic-setbacks-long-process-do-not-give-up
Also! I worry about phenomena like the "filter bubble," wherein people's web searches and news sources are filtered (either by them or by search algorithms) to provide a certain type of viewpoint (like MSNBC or Fox... etc.). Similar issues can occur in social media -- I am from northern California and go to college -- most of the stuff in my social media feed is liberal. So in terms of creating a dialogue, again it has the potential, but it requires a concerted effort just like any meaningful dialogue. Just letting social media do its thing could actually frustrate efforts to engage with one another as opposed to the other way around.
ReplyDeleteI swear I'm not a luddite.