Studio 1 Reflection - Diane Lee

I actually knew nothing about Arab Spring before today’s class. So I learned about this series of anti-government protests and violent riots that started in the Middle East in early 2011. Since our group’s topic is specific to Egypt, we tagged news articles relating to Egypt’s political turmoil. What was interesting to me was how Arab Spring was really mobilized through various forms of social media. Bloggers, especially through Twitter, allowed for the widespread knowledge of important events to be taken in by mass amounts of people, both in the area and not. Though I could not personally read the details, I found multiple Facebook events organizing protests in Egypt. Events like these and groups were ways for Egyptians and other supporters to come together and communicate their opinions. This was a form of media that was not as easily censored or manipulated as the news and the people realized this. In this digital age, we are not just reliant on the government or the news to provide us our information. Instead, we can turn to each other, all with our smartphones, capable of capturing images and video, and the internet, that can connect us to strangers far away and give us a platform to speak without being censored.