The Use of Social Media to Promote Civic Participation

Abstract

The widespread adoption of social media as tools of communication has resulted in a potentially transformative change in the way people interact and engage with each other. Recent events in countries such as Brazil, Egypt, Turkey, and Iran have shown the power of social media to affect social change in ways never seen before. In an age where the rise of a network society provides a leap in global connectivity and instant access to information, this essay is aimed at examining the role that social media may be playing in shaping civic participation. The essay takes on an approach that looks at a number of case studies from around the world to show exemplars of the use of social media as tools to augment civic participation. The focus is also on the problems faced by these technologies and consider proposed strategies to address these issues of access, capacity, literacy and apathy. This examination is done through the lens of a strong theoretical foundation of scholarly literature in order to better position the work within the broader discussions in the field of communication studies which is concerned with the intersection of new media and society. Social media have become increasingly popular over the last few years with the rise of social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. These new technologies have been quickly adopted by millions of people where online communities can be formed and information shared in ways that were previously not possible. There is growing interest in how social media may play a role in shaping civic participation and what may be the consequences for democratic processes. It is posited that social media may promote and enable new forms of civic engagement in a number of ways (A Ayankoya, 2013). Traditional forms of engaging with politics, such as membership in a political party or voting in elections, while still important, are being supplemented and, possibly, reinvigorated by the rise of these new online tools. At the same time, these technologies may also create a new set of problems. There is evidence to suggest that people are also very good at using these social technologies to insulate themselves from participating in civic events altogether. There are also issues to do with access to the internet in the first place and the level of information literacy needed to benefit from online civic activities.

Keywords social media, civic participation, social change, case studies, democratic processes, online communities, information literacy, access issues