Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Twitterstorms effect on politics

After reflecting for about a week over our discussions on the various twitter storms (Dominos, Amazon, Time Warner), it has become increasingly apparent to me just how empowering and democratic the internet can be. Thinking back fifteen or twenty years ago there is no way that so many citizens could have such an overwhelming and instant impact on the way that massive corporations do business. In the case of the Time Warner twitterstorm people were able to override a juggernaut business's choice to charge people for how much internet they would be using. Of course this did not sit well with heavy internet consumers, such as Time Warner's clients on Twitter. In this way, these Twitter users who were also Time Warner clients were able to lambaste the corporation for its profiteering choice and in effect given the power to veto Time Warner's choice. Concurrently, this make me wonder if this is the reason that the Chinese government is perhaps afraid of the power that the internet gives to the individual. This idea that the internet and social networking websites inherently make people more democratic, and gives power to the individual's voice whereby dismantling the most core value of Chinese society which is unity and giving up oneself towards the whole. It is my opinion that while these values are important they often leave out the sounds of the minority and thus the internet's ability to give the power to the people is fundamentally productive towards creating a world harmony.