OLJ Task 1: Social Media + Society

Description and Analysis of journal: Online Engagement Between Opposing Political protest Groups via Social Media is Linked to Physical Violence of Offline Encounters

From reading through the article “Online Engagement Between Opposing Political Protest Groups via Social Media is Linked to Physical Violence of Offline Encounters”, the article had highlights social media had to provide a platform for people to engage with others in our world, and some social media platform, such as Facebook, has been adopted by protest groups in both United States and the United Kingdom, to organize upcoming political protests through creating an event on Facebook event pages to engage with the potential viewer online. In this article, the author had highlighted the online environment provides groups with a different perspective to disseminate their political view and values, thus allowing them to host the political forum. At the infancy stage of the digital communication technology’s development, it was hoped that the increased interpersonal connection made possible by social media would bring about global expansions in democracy, highlighted by its role in promoting the Arab spring (Howard et al., 2011). But in today’s world, the idea of bringing democracy with enhancing interpersonal connection has faded, instead, it became the fundamental threat to democracy by driving social polarization, disinformation, and hostility (Guess, Barber, et al., 2018; Sunstein, 2017).

To address the physical violence between two political protest groups when they encounter offline, Gallacher has focused on literacy which studies the social movement which happened since social media had become popular among people for communication, such as the Arab spring, anti-capitalist protest in the USA and Spain and the anti-government protest in Ukraine to study the relationship between online communication and offline group behaviour. Tufekci (2017) state the digital connectivity has been identified as a driving factor in how these social movements connect, organise, and evolve. This highlight the online digital platforms are playing a critical role in driving the development of major social movements. But social media can also become a platform to disseminate values from two opposing groups which can result in hostile action, as Berger (2017) state the hostile action can vary from discriminatory behaviour to verbal attack and violence. Also, the hostile act that happened on social media can also lead to violence between the opposing groups when they met in an offline environment, as co-radicalizing groups use actions of the other group to justify their own behaviours and prejudices (Ebner, 2017).

From reviewing this article, I tend to agree with Gallacher’s perspective in online engagement between two political groups on social media is linked to physical violence of offline encounter, as hostility between opposing groups regarding their political value and perspective tend to use actions to justify their own behaviours and prejudices.

References

Berger, J. M. (2017). Extremist construction of identity: How escalating demands for legitimacy shape and define in-group and out-group dynamics. Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Studies. The International Centre for Counter—Terrorism—The Hague. https://doi.org/10.19165/2017.1.07

Ebner, J. (2017). The rage: The vicious circle of Islamist and far-right extremism. I.B.Tauris.

Guess, A., Barber, P., Vaccari, C., Kingdom, U., Nyhan, B., Seigel, A., . . .Stukal, D. (2018). Social media, political polarization, and political disinformation: A review of the scientific literature. William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. https://hewlett.org/library/social-media-political-polarization-political-disinformation-review-scientific-literature/

Howard, P. N., Duffy, A., Freelon, D., Hussain, M. M., Mari, W., Maziad, M. (2011). Opening closed regimes: What was the role of social media during the Arab spring? Project on Information Technology & Political Islam. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2595096

Sunstein, C. R. (2017). #Republic: Divided democracy in the age of social media. Princeton University Press.

Tufekci, Z. (2017). Twitter and tear gas: The power and fragility of networked protest. Yale University Press.