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southcoasttoday.com
  • Editor Bob Unger: Social media comes of age

  • It turns out that social media isn't just for posting selfies, bullying other people or selling stuff.
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  • It turns out that social media isn't just for posting selfies, bullying other people or selling stuff.
    It also turns out that what's happening in the United States in 2014 isn't all that different from what's happened in Egypt or the Palestinian refugee camps.
    Let me explain.
    By now, you or someone in your family or close circle of friends probably has had a bucket of ice water poured over their heads as part of something called the "Ice Bucket Challenge," a regular guy's brilliant marketing idea to raise money for the fight against ALS. It takes the basic elements of crowd sourcing (easy, online philanthropy and group-think) and chain letters (guilt and fear of social scorn) and combines them.
    People who took part then got to issue their friends (or enemies!) the identical challenge, and post photos and videos documenting their experience on Twitter, Facebook or some other online share site. Your personal newsfeed and timeline are probably jammed with these videos and photos. Celebrities did it, so — of course — everyone else did, too.
    Even President Obama got a challenge (he donated cash instead). Most people, myself included, both took an ice bath and gave money.
    Between July 29 — when the Ice Bucket Challenge became an Internet phenomenon — and Friday, the ALS Association said it had received $9.5 million in donations, compared to $1.6 million during the same period a year ago. It also has seen more than 184,000 new donors, whose money will support education and research efforts in fighting ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease, a neurodegenerative disease that ends in death.
    Certainly, you can make the case that those new donors and those new dollars will come at the expense of other charitable organizations, but it also is possible that these sorts of initiatives, which spread like wildfire across the social media scene, will teach a new generation the importance of giving.
    Here's a prediction: There will be lots and lots of copycat efforts, most of which won't be half as successful because they will become increasingly annoying.
    Your Facebook page and Twitter feeds will fill up with videos and photos of people doing all manner of silly things (I'm predicting cracking eggs on people's heads and perhaps head shaving, all for a good cause, of course).
    As for my observation that what's happening in the United States is much like what's happening in Egypt and the Palestinian camps, I refer you to what happened last week in Ferguson, Missouri, a mostly black suburb of St. Louis. There, a police officer shot and killed an unarmed black teenager, touching off a week's worth of protests and an excessive response by Ferguson's police, who confronted angry citizens with drawn weapons and sniper rifles, rubber bullets and tear gas.
    The police also arrested and roughed up news reporters trying to record and report what was happening, banned the television cameras on hand, declared the area a no-fly zone and generally behaved like a clutch of storm troopers rather than peacekeepers.
    What they didn't count on was that nearly every protester and onlooker seemed to own a smart phone, and so while police might intimidate and arrest professional journalists, they couldn't stop private citizens from reporting the event through Twitter.
    It is the same way that Palestinians told the world what was happening in the Gaza Strip during Israel's offensive against Hamas militants. And the same way that Egyptian citizens told the story of their own revolution three years ago, when they overthrew President Hosni Mubarak and chronicled the murderous force the government brought to bear in the unsuccessful attempt to squash the rebellion.
    When the traditional press cannot — or will not — tell the story, private citizens become journalists and tell the story instead. It was breathtaking in Egypt in February 2011, and it is breathtaking in Ferguson in August 2014.
    As redeyechicago.com's social media columnist Jessica Galliart wrote on Wednesday, "It's clear the widespread knowledge of the events and outrage for the people in Ferguson would not exist without Twitter. ... This is what Twitter and everything else that came after were created for."
    She's right, and that should be a warning to all of those who would attempt to use force to control information by strong-arming traditional news reporters because a determined people will act on their own behalf using technology readily available to almost everyone.
    Citizen journalism like that coming out of Ferguson, Missouri, means that liberty cannot be constrained by any government entity if people are determined to prevent it.
    In a sense, August 2014 is the moment when social media got serious in the U.S. Nothing is or will ever be the same again.
    Bob Unger is the Editor and Associate Publisher of SouthCoast Media Group, the publisher of The Standard-Times and SouthCoastToday.com. He can be reached by email at runger@s-t.com or by phone at 508-979-4430. You can follow him on Twitter at @BobUnger SCT.
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