Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
the protest, Estrada's supporters in the Philippine Congress changed their votes and al-
lowed the incriminating evidence against President Estrada to be released. Within hours,
Estrada's presidency was over [35].
Ten years later, Twitter and Facebook played a highly visible role in the “Arab
Spring” demonstrations that led to revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, a civil war in Libya,
and protests in many other Arab countries. In the midst of the protests in Cairo in 2011
that led to the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak, one protester tweeted, “We use
Facebook to schedule the protests, Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world”
[36]. Arab news organization Al Jazeera created a “Twitter Dashboard” indicating the
level of tweeting activity in many Arab nations where there was unrest [37].
Scholars of the Arab Spring uprisings point to an interesting phenomenon: People
started using online social networks such as Twitter in order to keep up with their
friends, but these interactions caused them to become politicized. Through these net-
works, bloggers met new people, became exposed to new ideas, and developed an inter-
est in human rights [38].
Others think the role of social media in catalyzing social change has been overblown.
They argue that social networks like Twitter and Facebook are great at building networks
of people with weak connections to each other, but high-risk activism requires strong
ties among the members of a hierarchical organization [39].
Censorship
is the attempt to suppress or regulate public access to material considered of-
fensive or harmful. Historically, most censorship has been exercised by governments and
religious institutions. For example, Roman censors banished the poets Ovid and Juvenal
for their writings. During the Middle Ages the Inquisition suppressed the publication of
many books, including the work of Galileo Galilei.
Censorship became a much more complicated issue with the invention of the print-
ing press. The printing press broke the virtual monopoly held by governments and
religious institutions on distributing material to a large audience, and the increase in
printed material resulted in a greater number of literate people. For the first time, pri-
vate individuals could broadcast their ideas to others on a wide scale.
In Western democracies, the gradual separation of church and state left the govern-
ment as the sole institution responsible for censorship. In other parts of the world, such
as the Middle East, religious institutions continue to play a significant role in determin-
ing what material should be accessible to the public.
Direct censorship has three forms: government monopolization, prepublication review,
and licensing and registration.
The first form of direct censorship is government monopolization. In the former
Soviet Union, for example, the government owned all the television stations, radio sta-