Target User Group:
Why would they be interested?
As our web feature will be a (slightly) informal, investigative critique into the role of social media in the riots in London and Egypt, it will offer them an informed analysis of recent event, whilst remaining laid back and tackling questions 18-30 year olds would be interested in. We will offer an online opinion poll and forums for each feature, giving them an avenue to participate and voice their opinion.
It would also be of interest, as our web feature will relate these events to the social media world that this group is very actively involved in, as shown by Screen Australia (2011): The Audience Pack: Understanding Audiences in a Multiscreen World.
We plan to use a tone similar to that taken by the BBC's Click video, 'How has technology affected the riots in England?' (however, of course, in web feature form):
Beyond comparing the situations in Cairo and London, however, we will look at how social media's role has been framed very differently by the media and governments across the two events.
Taking inspiration from this week's Online Media lecture, which explored how one of the consequences of social media is the 'death of privacy' , and that when you engage in social media use, you are assigning rights to the information you publish to the service provider, which raises issues such as, Who looks at your data?.. We will explore issues such as
- Privacy
- Censorship
- Whether governments have the right to shut down social media sites during periods of civil unrest, or exclude people thought to be orchestrating violence.
These topics will be of great interest to 18-30 year olds, as knowing, for example, whether Facebook could be shutdown is directly relevant considering that these forms of social media play such a significant role in the majority of this groups' lives.
The fact that English Prime Minister, David Cameron, even suggested shutting down social media sites, triggered furious debate throughout the world, leaving human rights groups uneasy- and highlighting the utter hypocrisy of such an idea, especially considering the way governments and media of countries such as England framed Egypt's shutting down the internet, a situation which is explained well in AlJazeera's: Probing social media role in the UK riots video:
1 comment:
While there're lots of comments from the media commentators and scholars, I am pretty interested in the views from the internet provider or social networking sites (Blackberry/twitter/facebook) that how they think of themselves as the agent for uprising social unrest.
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