The page keeps rejecting me saying that I don't have permission to view one of the readings: Clay Shirky (2011) The Political Power of Social Media : Technology, the Public Sphere, and Political Change. Would it be possible that there something wrong with the page...?

Hi there Prof. Chan and Stian... same problem as Hannah.

Clay Shirkey argues that it is important to promote and protect the public sphere because this is a long term goal which strengthens civil society and participation, leading to fulfillment of the ‘good society’. He states that democracy and political freedom follows the development of a strong public sphere. The current progression of dominant word forces however, do not promote and protect this sphere. Social media and other communication forms are avenues of public discussion and linkages have been sidelined for the short term goals of a stringent view of internet freedom, more adequately presented as lack of censorship to western modes of knowledge consumption.
His rationale behind this argument is that long term tools for strengthening civil society and the public sphere are dependent on a two-step process (in which the proliferance of information does not lead to social change). Instead, opinions and information are first transmitted through media channels. Then these sentiments are reinforced by friends, family, peers and colleagues through the social processes. Social media can have a profound impact on this – information is proliferated and people can also reinforce their views through online platforms of web 2.0.

Some of the evidence he provides to support this theory is the 2001 impeachment of Philippine President Joseph Estrada. After news that the president may be left of the hook on claims of corruption, angry citizens rallied against this decision through a massive protest. This protest could only be organized through the likes of coordination and communication technologies, and in this case, cellphone text messaging. The response irked the government to banish Estrada from power. Shirkey uses other examples as well, for instance the protests against Spanish Prime Minister in 2004, the takeover of the Communist Power of 2004 in Moldova and the uprising against the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandals.

Through the event of corrupt Philippine President Joseph Estrada we can see that social media has the ability to strengthen civil society and the "public sphere", which in this case represents text messages could force out a national leader.Although the protests were also beaten by violence or central government, for example, as the events in Belarus in March 2006, June 2009 in Iran and in 2010 in Thailand. For now, social media have become a fact of life for civil society world-wide, it has an essential influence on the economic, political and social aspects in a society as it provides freely access to information, more opportunities to engage in public speech and enhanced possibility of collective actions for public, which will help the voice of the public to be heard and coordinate them with demand change.
U.S has committed itself to "internet freedom" as a specific policy aim, which means the goal of U.S policy is the right of people to use the internet freely, as it can not only strengthen civil society worldwide but also it represents freedom of expression. However, there exists the 4 kinds of dangerous of it as it overestimates the value of access to information while underestimating the value of tools for local coordination.
A structural transformation of the public sphere: the historical role of the printing press. e.g. East Germany(Czechoslovakia)-- creating and disseminating literature and political documents provided a visible alternative to the communist regime, which led to peaceful collapse of communist control and emerge the new political leader.
Mass media has 2 steps process to change people's mind: 1. opinions are firstly transmitted by media and get feedback by friends and families. 2 As internet involves in, the media has long-term impact as it allows people to privately and publicly read and speak out their views. He also put forward an argument that it is harder to shut down the idea used by larger population than the state censorship.

One of the reasons why Shirky argued about the importance of promoting and protecting a strong public sphere is because it generates positive changes in the life of a country such as a pro-democratic regime change through the lens of the environmental view of internet freedom. It brings about effective social change such as the role of the printing press (i.e. Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere) in the democratization process in Europe as an instrument for discussion and agreement for political participation of the citizens. In this case, there is a two-step process in achieving political freedom and that constitutes the transmission of opinions through the media and the formation of political opinions. Input of the public sphere brought about by access to conversation induces political freedom. This can be demonstrated by signature campaigns that fight for women’s rights in Iran and Chinese middle-class protests against corruption. Moreover, the proliferation of social media can contribute in reducing the costs of coordinated actions (shared awareness) therefore increasing the transparency of corrupt governments from being an open secret to a public truth. These governments in turn would then be forced to implement reform for long-term changes. Social media, in the case of the Philippine protest along EDSA in the form of text messaging, creates opportunities for ordinary citizens who mostly do not have money and power to demand changes individually, hence ousting the president. The role of strong and developed civil societies should also be acknowledged due to their ability to resist control i.e. the collapse of communist regimes in East Europe.

The social media campaign undertaken by the grade eleven students of Sinenjongo High School in South Africa is impressive. These students are attempting to challenge several unbalanced power dynamics that mitigate the opportunities offered in the spaces they live in. As high school students they have limited influence about the resources that are offered in their school. As high school students from a poor school in Cape Town they have limited resources that are made available to improve the school. For instance a school in Aurora had a candy sale last Christmas that raised enough funds to send the school’s band to Germany for a competition. It is probably fair to suggest that the same socio-economic conditions don’t exist for these students. And as consumers, they are asking cell phone and internet providers to forgo revenue. The conditions for these Cape Town students present a challenging space in which to better their educational circumstance. By using social media to engage the public sphere and create attention to circumstances that might otherwise go unnoticed is creative approach to a difficult problem. Therefore the social media campaign can be seen as an impressive and insightful challenge of the power dynamics that in part create the space these students live with. However, the objective of the campaign itself might be a little short sighted. Just as cell phones cannot be expected to act as a cure to the poverty found throughout Africa, Wikipedia cannot be expected to challenge the structural factors that shape the educational experience of these students. It would be interesting to think of the consequences if this campaign progressed to the point that all schools without adequate libraries were replaced with Wikipedia access. Without a greater understanding of the impacts that their campaign would produce I would decline to sign the petition.

Shirky argues that the public sphere is a neccesary space for allowing various groups in society to freely come together and share thoughts without fear of political backlash. He uses the participatory aspect of the internet and web. 2.0 to show how more people are becoming producers of media and it is no longer an exclusive group for professionals. Shirks advocates for media use similar to Barack Obama's website where he allowed supporters to congregate freely and even disagree with him. When supporters disagreed rather than attempt to quiet them, Obama acknowledged their outrage and respectfully refused to side with them on the issue. Shirky lauded the maturity of the dialogue and posited it in stark contrast to the Chinese censorship of media. When the earthquake occured in China, the government initially allowed those on social media to post relatively freely, once they felt like the publicity was too bad, they began cracking down. In both cases citizens of the countries had qualms with their leadership, in both cases the leaders didnt change their policies based on citizen outrage but the existence of a public sphere gave the citizens an avenue to express their outrage. Having a public sphere allows for democratization because citizens can now feel like they are being heard and the new forms of media communication allow for a democratization of dialogue.

Question 2

In Week 3, we had a discussion on the "Missing Wikipedians". The article states that Wikipedia's vision is to "make all human knowledge accessible". However, "smaller" wikipedians do not have as much power as those with access to the English version. Though there are similar blogs and avenues of information from other countries, the large bulk of information on Wikipedia are presented by people from the West and are often published in English. I want to address the idea of local notability that Wikipedia must place more value on if free access becomes available in Cape Town. Most of the information that these students will receive will very much be biased since it is predominantly western perspective. I do think that these students will benefit greatly from having access to Wikipedia but I think that it should not be limited there. Local academics and even students should also be able to contribute to information available to them. Valuable information pertaining to local issues and local events that directly affect the people within the area should also be presented by the people in the area and not just outside perspectives.

I am in favour of open access and the idea behind the campaign. I think there are many notable benefits for education systems. Personally, I will not sign the petition (or any online petitions for that matter) because I think that they often focus too much on awareness and does not provide in depth descriptions of implementation. Awareness can only go so far. There is no difference if people are constantly signing petitions and not taking into consideration who is implementing change and how they are doing so.

Referring to the lecture on Sep. 17th Understanding Wikipedia and its Communities, Wikipedia is the free contributed website which means everyone can edit the content of Wikipedia as anonymous person. And it is knowledge representation website which people can edit the content by transferring from other sources without citation. Their edition of the content does not necessary to be neutral, they can edit the content base on their culture and own understanding of the topic. Therefore, we can find different opinions on different languages of one topic. Although students are not allowed to use the content in Wikipedia as their research sources for their lecture works in western countries, but they do allow using Wikipedia as the sources to understand their research topic. Therefore, the positive of opening the access of Wikipedia can help students in South Africa have more understanding on different topic that they interested in which might not able to find on other website or their local libraries. However, because of the imperfect neutrality of the content in Wikipedia, and it becomes one of the reasons that mobile companies in South Africa do not open Wikipedia to public for free. The negative impact of biases in Wikipedia is students and people in South Africa might leads the independent on literature as most editor of the content were from western countries, and their view to the topic is base on their own culture and biases, so that students who uses the content will frame the view of how they understanding the topic and follow the same biases of the editors.
In my opinion, I will happy to sign the petition because the negative impact of the Wikipedia might only exist in short term. Students and people in South Africa can also become the editor of the content in Wikipedia, but without free access, the situation of western biases in Wikipedia might not able to change.

Based on the reading from week three, Wikipedia's vision is to make all human knowledge accessible. Although we are aware of the fact that the information from Wikipedia is simple knowledge representation from random people, which means anyone can go share their thought on any subject, the reality is that the very first website we all go to get familiar with a subject is Wikipedia. In western countries students are not allowed to use Wikipedia as a source for their academic work however the website can be used as a source for understanding a topic or subject in various point of views around the world. I think if the students from western countries can come to an understanding that Wikipedia is knowledge representation from random people than students from Cape town can also understand the same fact. They should not be limited to the access simply because of the bias that majority of the information comes from western countries, rather they should be aware of those information and be also able to contribute their own knowledge towards any subject from their cultural perspective. Restriction of access to Wikipedia is a digital divide. If we know that majority of the Wikipedia's contribution is from western countries, then it's due to the restriction from undeveloped countries. This bias situation will only change if everyone is given the access to contribute their knowledge. I would definitely sign their petition believing that it will only add benefits to these student's development of knowledge.

Question 1: Clay Shirky mentions in his TED speech, that this era is the largest increase in expressive capability in human history. The internet has allowed for both individual and group conversations. The power of the internet as Dan Gilmore says is that an individual is not just a consumer but can be a producer as well. Shirky walks his readers through various historical events that prove the immediate benefit of mobilizing the masses for political redemption. Clay Shirky’s main point is the need to use social media as a long –term instruments to solidify civil society and the public sphere. The media is an excellent tool for immediate public awareness such as the KONY2012 campaign. Also it can be used to coordinate, seen in the 2001 Philippine protest organized through text messages to for out President Joseph Estrada. Clay recognized this in a two-step process, first opinions are projected through the media, and they get transferred by individuals to their friends, families, and etc. Eventually political opinions are formed. Clay focuses his attention on the U.S instrument approach to Internet freedom, which stops nations from blocking external Websites like, Google, Youtube, and etc. He feels this “overestimates the value of access to information, particularly information hosted in the West, while underestimating the value of tools for local coordination”, (Shirky, 2011). Rather, Clay would like to put less emphasis on anti-censorship and give more support to “local public speech and assembly”, (Shirky, 2011). In the long-term, we need to support and preserve the platform social media has provided the civil society.

Argument about Clay Shirky:Social media has now become one of the biggest concern in human history. Social media and citizen participation is taking a huge role in every field of our life such as the governance, campaigns, entertainment, and also learning. Everyone is connected to each other, and that is something that has never occurred before. It is still innovating, and will never stop, moreover, this is so true that every single one of us is a producer and also a consumer. It used to be only professionals and filtered up but now everything is mixed up, never know what is out there. It is so scary what social media can do, the possibility is infinite.
Online petition for free access to wikipedia in South Africa: It is one of the best examples of using technology efficiently. If they have free access to wikipedia, their life will be so much better because they will learn much more things in such a short time. It gives such a big impact to people by telling them their circumstances, and what they need because now we know that there are people out there that are having difficulties to get what they need while we have everything we need. If you can sign for the petition with one click, then why not.

Question 1

Public spheres like twitter, facebook, and .blogs allows individual the power to communicate and share their viewpoint on world issue. Via these growing networks the civil society is being heard and their opinions are essential and should be considered or at least be heard and these voices outnumber the professional’s - Shirkly believes that the process of these increasing communications have a positive-change affect on the views and issues. Clay Shirky argues that it is important to promote and protect the "public sphere" because it prevents uproar with public disagreement. Given this opportunity to be heard allows for public opinion and government and the people to work in harmony making for a better democracy. This also prevents violence and protest and various other outlashes against the government. Social media may also allow for legislation to be changed based on public pressure. For example, Barack Obama’s initiative to reach out to civil society through social media allowed for the public to have their say freely on the new laws set in place.

Q1.
He argued that it is important to promote and protect positive changes in a country and so as to ensure that the public sphere is empowered and are strong enough. He looked at social media as an addition to popular means of public participation. He backs up this argument by giving the example of Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld's views in the 1948 Presidential election, who explained that the transmission of opinions by media and then the formation of political opinion among family and friends. Social media therefore would allow both the dissemination of information and will also allow discussion and formation of political vies both publicly and privately. He discusses that the use of social media can be much more efficient and promising, if seen from an environmental perspective rather than an instrumental one, which is to promote democracy and increases freedom for people.

Not only does it allow political empowerment but the example of China's quake example shows the need of social media for public empowerment. Instead of knowing from the news agencies, people got to know about the earthquake along with the corruption involved in school building, through social media. This example shows the importance of social media in such emergency situations and in allowing public opinions against the authoritarian government to be known.

However there maybe downside of openly allowing people to discuss their views. Although it may strengthen the public's ability to participate, it may also create chaos and conflicts among certain groups in the society. For example the recent practice of blogging in Bangladesh led to the murder of a youth, when he expressed Anti-Islamist views and went against war criminals in the Islamist Party. This created an unsafe environment for the citizens to express their views although they have the freedom to participate.

Source used:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22049408

Clay Shirky provides a fascinating perspective in both his journal article The Political Power of Social Media (2011) and in his Ted Talk “How Social Media Can Make History”.
While delivered through different mediums, in both works Shirky investigates the various consequences of our new media landscape in our world today. More specifically, Shirky provides analysis on how emergence of interactive social media, or web 2.0, is creating a new form of public sphere in which internet users are now both consumers and producers. This new form of public sphere he argues, is fundamentally different than anything our world has seen before, as it is no longer controlled by professionals, and thus there is no single message. Building on this, point Shirky argues that this new form of public sphere is worth protecting, as “little political change happens without the dissemination and adoption of ideas and opinions in the public sphere”. He elaborates further, suggesting that a vibrant public sphere is more likely to occur out of a dissatisfied population, where governance and/our economic issues are not adequately being addressed. An example of this, as discussed by Shirky, is the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China, in which thousands upon thousands of people, especially children were killed. Here, the Chinese government was so pressured by a vibrant Chinese civil society, that they cracked down on its members, imprisoning many. Thus, Shirky argues that these new public spheres must be protected and that this is of the utmost importance.

I probably won't sign the petition because I have lately tended to agree with Charmaine in that online petitions don't usually have effects beyond activism, and I tend to only sign petitions where I know that I am able to keep the people who actively decide on the implementation of these petitions accountable (ex: the last petition I signed online was one to give UTSC a separate library building -> this is a petition that I can directly participate in its implementation and thus prevents my signing from becoming simple "slacktivism" where one thinks they're doing good by signing something and then doesn't follow through on ensuring the petition has impact)

That being said, I think we should respect the students' goals to have access to Wikipedia. Although the content may sometimes be biased, from a development perspective, if this is a movement that came up organically through the students, it is important to be attentive to what they identify as their needs. By opening up Wikipedia to them, it may influence Wikipedia to shape itself and its content around this new demographic. By opening up Wikipedia to students with different worldviews and perspectives, there is a chance that these students can then become producers of knowledge on Wikipedia, thus reducing the Western bias in the content. I think the important thing to take into consideration with this case though, is that open access to wikipedia cannot be seen as the only solution to South Africa's education problems. Changes to the overall structure of the education system that addresses the deficit that caused the need to have Wikipedia access are also necessary in order for the students to have an effective education system. This demonstrates that although ICT like Wikipedia has a huge potential for improving education, it is only effective insofar as to complement a successful structural component to the education system. Once given access to Wikipedia, more work must to be done to meet the students needs.

#2 This online petition is impressive and convincing. Wikipedia is a great open source for students to gain knowledge for fulfilling their thirst of curiosity and for their school assignments. I agree that usage and access to wikipedia should be accessible for all students. However this awareness video seems to imply that wikipedia is the only source of 'heavy-information-data', and the key to every solutions or questions. It does not provide an indepth description of the potential consequences after implementation
- Majority of information comes from Western contributors, and viewpoints. Are they aware of it?
-why cell phone while there are tablets available with educational apps pre-built in.
- If their only motivation is to get a greater access to the pool of information, then wouldn't it make sense to raise awareness for building public infrastructures, like installment of computers in school library (internet gives a greater access to various sources, not limited to wikipedia, and must achieve a certain educational level of understanding 'hard'-texts like reading wikipedia and other academic journals). Also, installing wikipedia for free access will benefit the cell phone companies more than the students as customers. There is always an opportunity cost for free things. As wikipedia is most likely to be accessed as an application in smart phone, students would have to get a contract with that cell phone or telecommunication company, and the monthly phone bills will be more expensive. The cost of the phone usage bill and contract fee will be greater than the times the students access to and use wikipedia. Building infrastructures for academic development are responsibilities that should be lied on government initially. However in this case, the information channel is given to the hands of the private company, and the private companies see this free wikipedia as an opportunity for a new group of customers, and only operate by means for their profit-seeking.