How Facebook Changed the World

It’s quite extraordinary the way people use the internet, it can be misused, underused and overused. But in this particular case a group of activists from Tunisia, have found a very good purpose for a social networking website called Facebook. As peaceful protests against the government were developing in to fights against the police, the participants filmed everything that was happening on their streets and streamed it on to Facebook.  As one of the activists points out “...the videos were broadcasted on the internet and social networks at the lightening speed, at the speed that was uncontrollable.” Using the internet worked to their advantage in terms of getting the word out to most Tunisians and Egyptians, as the state television did not report anything on protest in the country.

The reporter states that “Over the last few days the regime had watched how activists had used the internet and mobile phones to help them get tens of thousands of people on to the streets. The government’s reaction was simple it switched off the entire network, severing all online and mobile communications.” Perhaps they took such actions to prevent innocent people being killed and so there is no further violence on the streets. However this had only worked to activist’s advantage as people started to wonder what was going on and they ended up joining the protest. I personally believe that the government simply didn’t want to hear anyone who spoke out loud on how they felt about the countries leadership. It’s so refreshing to see that doing good deeds is possible with our advanced technology and a little bit of team spirit!

How Facebook Changed the World: The Arab Spring. 2011.[TV documentary] BBC, BBC2, 5 September 2011 21.00.

screen shot: https://www.facebook.com/pages/6-April-Youth-Movement/200774956609622?ref=ts