John Darry P.

Ligan
BS-Criminology
08 November 2022

“HOW SOCIAL MEDIA CAN MAKE A HISTORY” BY: CLAY SHIRKY

The said video article of Clay Shirky is very informative, he speaks about how social
media is affecting people’s everyday lives through internet and we can’t deny the fact that it has
a big impact on our society. He also mentioned how fast the innovations have become and tells
about the four periods where media has changed enough to be truly considered as revolutionary
when it comes to (1) Printing press, (2) Two-way communication, conversational media:
telegraph and telephones, (3) Recorded media other than print: photographs, recorded sound,
movies, (4) The invention of the television and radio, and most of all, the invention of internet.
Basically, because of the Internet, communication has become easier, faster and more efficient.
People can gain more information because of the sources that we can find thru online.We saw
photos, videos, and even live footage posted all throughout the social media platforms like
Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. It just shows how people connected to the internet can easily
spread over the world.

As an example Shirky gives an example of the earthquake in China that has occurred in
2009. With the help of Twitter, Facebook and other means of technology the citizens of China
spread the news of the earthquake as it was happening whereas the last time China had a quake
of that magnitude it took them three months to admit that it had actually happened. This shows
how much impact media has on the people all over the world. Later, the Chinese government
banned accessed to Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites that provided information
about the earthquake. They wanted to filter the shared information concerning their country and
the only way to do that was by forbidding access to the sites that were causing that information
to be spread. Moreover, the Chinese government tried to stop protesters from spreading
information by arresting them.
 As one of the Internet users, I can proved that social media can have a big help to
everyone because based on our experiences; along ago when my brother’s dog is missing for so
long that time we don’t even know where to find our missing dog because technology before was
not been invented or let’s just say the social media it’s very hard to find or to ask about the
missing dog. To make the story short, comparing before and up to present we can say that
technology now is very different before it is very helpful now especially the use of Social Media,
that if you have something missing you can just post it now on internet and if there is someone
who can see it they can just message you by messenger or they can inform us also by texting us
if we have posted our information in social media. That’s one of the advantages of social media
nowadays; it keeps everyone united in terms of this kind of problem.

And because the media that is good at creating conversations is no good at creating
groups, internets solve it. Internet is the first medium in history. It had native support for groups
and conversation. Now the groups that listed or see the same information can discuss everything
together on Internet. Internet also has bad sides, for example sometime it can have bad influence
in the world. Though when someone wants to get news, information or discover new things he or
she uses social media. But all of us must understand and use it in the best way not to make panic
or scare, not to share fake information, because the information which comes out of the media is
not always having a good influence on humanity.

To sum up it all, I want to say that we live in a world where media is global,  social and
cheap. With the help of the internet we are no longer disconnected from each other. Even a
decade ago, as Shirky states, the internet used to only contain information that was posted by
professionals but now every one of us is capable of producing information through the internet.
And as the capabilities of the internet expand, the internet is becoming the career for other social
media outlets such as radio, television, music, magazines. And the only thing we have to do now
is to make the best use of this media.