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A Small World After All? by Ethan Zuckerman

By Negar "Behbahani", on September 18th, 2012

The article discuses that nowadays the role of Internet in globalization is too much over-hyped based on this fact that actually in this so-called age of increased global connection the coverage of international news in western media and newspapers are half as many as it was in 1970′s and even most American Internet users read the news that is published in the United States; It emphasizes on the point that Increased global connection does not automatically lead to increased global understanding.

According to the article the main obstacle for a more effective global connection and understanding is the cold war attitude of finding secrets of the Other/enemy and the solution is changing this attitude to the one of tying to understand and decipher mysteries of other global communities. It suggests for reaching such a global understanding the Internet engineers should use some of even existing today’s functions of search engines and social networks to connect more diverse cultures, communities and nations together.

Although the article makes some thought evoking points but overall it underestimates the role of Internet in today’s global relationships between diverse cultures and nations and Its impact on political and activist movements around the world. In my opinion we are more effectively globally connected together nowadays than ever before and I would like to use some of examples that the writer uses in this article to prove my point.

Being an Iranian I see Internet as a very powerful and effective tool for global connection and understanding; the article depicts the connection mechanisms in 1979 revolution but not compare it to the later 2009 Green movement, a resistant and non-obedience protests to the fraudulent election, most importantly under a regime that has all media and papers in its hands with no international journalists being able to report the protests; Internet and digital connections was the only way not solely for inner movement connections to manage and schedule protests but also for international awareness of it; the writer admits the its global widespread coverage but do not consider that without Internet with the censorship of conventional media by the regime, the world would know nothing about it.

On the other hand it is important to know that the global connecting function of Internet was not only spreading the news, for example Iran Green movement made a new global pattern of using Internet, weblogs and social networks that created a powerful alternative media, a citizen-reporter that does not wait for TV stations or papers, activists that schedule their protest by internet, a pattern latter was used widely in Arab spring movements -a fact confirmed by Egyptian activists- and then becoming aware of the power of Internet as a powerful alternative media, Internet made a key role in Occupy movement through out many cities in United States. This point shows that Internet was successful in connecting diverse nations, communities and cultures through out world and helped them to influence and affect each other, giving us all the hope of more globally connected world in future.

September 18th, 2012 | Category: A Small World After All, Essays

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