Enter the Blog: a contemplation on the possibilities of social media

Over the last five years, the phenonemon of social media - Facebook, Twitter, blogging, iPhones, BlackBerrys, and so on - has come to be one of the most influential shapers of our behaviour and interaction as a global society. It has changed the way individuals, communities and companies communicate with one another, and has altered, to an extent of which we are perhaps even as yet unaware, relationships between friends, families, lovers, professionals and businesses.

One of the most politically powerful features of this kind of social media is its unadulterated accessibility to one and all. Facebook profiles, Twitter pages and online blogs provide an open platform for the voicing of opinions and the possibilities of mass following to anyone, theoretically, regardless of race, nationality, gender or social class. In this space, this alternative universe, everyone has a say; everyone has power; everyone has influence. This is, ultimately, the biggest threat one could pose to the strict divisions of authority in the structure of capitalist society.

It is curious, then, to consider the British government's recent ambivalence towards the power of online social networks. We - Britons, Europeans, Westerners, our media and our politicians - were more than ready to congratulate the revolutions of the 'Arab Spring', lending our support to the people of nations like Egypt and Tunisia in their efforts to overthrow tyrannical governments. Moreover, we happily reeled in the delight of the fact that national revolutions could be born out of messages on Facebook and Twitter, and celebrated the power of social media to liberate the down-trodded, repressed citizens of these Islamic states. Then, after the streets of Britain were turned upside down in August, a man was sentenced four years in jail, not for destruction of public property, not for robbery, not for grievous bodily harm, not even for his presence at the riots, but for his public encouragement of rioting via Facebook. Should Mubarak have takes after a similar example? Surely all those 'feral' Egyptian rebels deserve to be put in their place, just like any Briton who dares to even speak out against his or her government?

I am no advocate for the incitement of violence or hatred, but I take this opportunity to observe the contradictions that arise from incidents like this which expose the ideological limits of neo-liberalism and blur our distinctions between 'criminal' and 'revolutionary'. Instead of taking the opportunity to unpack the motivations of these riots, to contemplate the extreme unhappiness that people must be facing in order to want to destroy the world around them, to recognise how tyrannical our own government can in fact be, or to consider what the repressed and underpriveleged classes of Britan have in common with the rebels of the 'Arab Spring', we instead take to militant monitoring of BlackBerry Messenger and promises of clamping down with "the strong arm of the law". Social media is here exposed as the destabilising force, and its place within a capitalist society, which depends upon the voices of some and the silence of others, is called into question.

I therefore take this important step into the blog space, and put forward this voice that I have, in an attempt (however miniscule) to contribute to the shaping and re-shaping of our society, our people, our ideas. Happy reading.