BY MIRHAN ABOUELFADL, PUBLISHED MAY 25, 2022
Digital Citizenship
What is the impact of the social media on today’s world?
Higher social media use was linked to self-reported impairments in mental and physical health, as well as life satisfaction, according to a recent study that was conducted on 5,000-person (American Journal of Epidemiology, 201). Did you know that 64% of the people who joined extremist groups on Facebook did so because the algorithms steered them there? (Internal Facebook report 201)
Surveillance Capitalism
With the collapse of communism in the early 1990s, capitalism emerged as one of the most extensively adopted economic systems in the world. Harvard Professor, Shoshana Zuboff introduced a very interesting terminology, ‘’surveillance capitalism’’. According to Zuboff, “surveillance capitalism” is an economic system centred around the capture and commodification of personal data for the core purpose of profit-making where big Tech companies collect users’ information and human experiences -without their knowledge- so they would be able to study and predict their behaviours and modulate them if needed.
In 2020 ‘’The social dilemma’’ documentary came out. The film addressed various topics that are related to the change occurring in human behaviours and psychology in response to the emerging technologies incorporated by social media products. It also tackled most of our modern life debates regarding the matter. The documentary shows how manipulative the algorithms system and processes are created. Nothing happens by accident, it’s by design, this is how the algorithms were built to manipulate the brains and attract attention in order to buy anything, including the perception of self, people and the world. The film also shows how discords could be empowered and political divisions could be fueled through Surveillance-based advertising and amplification.
In my opinion, the ideas of Zuboff are very logical. In fact, from a product design perspective, designers focus on human behaviours to provide the best solution that not only fulfils the user’s basic need but also could establish an emotional connection between the product & the user. Studying the user is a fundamental step in the design process, hence, I can tell that the users’ data become the commodity of any business and any industry.
Although the Surveillance Capitalism concept is new, I believe it will be of the highest impact on business decision-making in the future, if not now already.
The Democracy Dilemma
The documentary also addressed a controversial topic: the influence of social media in revolutions. That reminded me of the Arab Spring Revolutions. When the 25th of January Egyptian revolution took place in 2011, we were preparing for the volleyball tournament. I remember hearing everyone in the club talking about a big event that would happen in Al-Tahrir square. I can recall the replies that I received when I tried to ask them ‘’Are you checking your Facebook’’, ‘’Read the news on the social media instead of spending most of your time in complete isolation’’, ‘’ you need to spend more time on your Facebook!’’. When I got home, I spent the entire day on Facebook. I remember the first thing I came across was the fall of the Tunisian regime, followed by many posts about people’s sharing their feelings of hope as well as resentment; between fear, anger and uncertainty. Other posts discussed the social and economic situation in Egypt, which could lead to a similar protest movement, and so on. Many people argue that social media was the cornerstone of the Egyptian revolution that brought down the Egyptian regime led by President Hosni Mubarak. ’Being the first opposition group to use Facebook as a main tool to reach supporters, April 6th Youth Movement was founded in 2007 in the wake of a revival in the Egyptian labor movement after long years of repression under the Sadat and Mubarak regimes’’ (MIT TechTV, 2011; Wright, 2011).
The impact of social media platforms cannot be denied; however, the substantial question now is: do we control the social media, or does it control us?
References
Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. Hachette Book Group, 2019.
A CRITICAL ANALYSIS ON MEDIA COVERAGE OF THE EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION
