Reader Response Draft 3

Summary

In the article "Where social media isn't ubiquitous," Levi (2012) brings up two reasons for the lack of prevalence of social media in some areas. The first reason is the lack of support for the native language which alienates users. However, there are areas where the 2nd language is supported, allowing users to gain access. The other reason is that politics in the area may restrict internet access or the languages supported by social network sites.

Reader Response

Levi (2012) suggests that politics play a big role in deciding the prevalence of social media in a country. I agree with his view that political disputes in a country affect the prevalence of social media by disrupting internet access and resulting in a lack of support for the language used on social networks for fear of angering the larger political party. However, he fails to mention that political censorship which restricts the use of social media plays an equally important role in deciding the prevalence of social media. 

Levi (2012) suggests that 'Facebook’s policy is not to add support to a language which is used by a national group in a contested territory – especially if recognition is likely to annoy a powerful and large party with a vested interest,' thus affecting the prevalence of social media. This may explain why Facebook uses 'Traditional Chinese (Taiwan)' as a language option rather than recognizing 'Taiwanese' as a language. Because China and Taiwan are in a dispute regarding Taiwan's sovereignty, if Facebook recognizes 'Taiwanese' as a language, it would seem as though Facebook is taking a political stand. Therefore, social networking sites tend to be selective in supporting languages, for fear of the political implications of their actions. Although the above example seems to suggest that social media is not prevalent in such countries, Levi (2012) implies that in countries where their language is not recognized as they are still able to use social sites by using the languages that are similar to their native language. In the case of Taiwan, they would then be able to use 'Traditional Chinese (Taiwan).   

Sometimes, the political situation in the nation does not allow for social network sites to take root due to the lack of internet access the country. Because political disputes often take up much of a country's resources, it results in a lack of supportive infrastructure. In the article, Levi cites Myanmar as one of the countries that lack internet access due to the political disputes in the country. Myanmar is one of the world’s “least connected countries” (Greene, 2013)  and this is due to the "massive coverage gaps, glacial connection speeds, and exorbitantly high service costs, putting the Internet beyond reach of 98% of Myanmar’s citizens." (Greene, 2013) Since political disputes in the country makes Internet less accessible to the majority of the citizens, it is highly impossible for social media to be prevalent in the country.  

There are times where the government tries to prevent social media from being ubiquitous through censorship, but it is not always successful. Censorship is often put in place to prevent politically sensitive contents from spreading both internally and externally. In a way, it is the government’s way of maintaining political stability. This is evident when Egypt temporarily blocked social media Web sites such as Twitter during its protests in early 2011. (Bamman, O'Connor, Smith, 2012) Censorship in China through the “Great Firewall of China” (GFW) prevents Chinese residents from accessing foreign Web sites such as Google and Facebook. (Bamman, O'Connor, Smith, 2012) In this case, the Chinese government set it up to prevent the Chinese citizens from accessing foreign social network sites. However, such attempts to restrict social media has failed as the Chinese came up with social network platforms such as "Weibo" and "Qzone" which functions like Twitter and Facebook. 

In conclusion, the level of accessibility to the Internet is dependent on the politics in the country as a whole. Political disputes as well as censorship play equally important roles in restricting access to social media, be it successfully or unsuccessfully.  

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Reference

Bamman, D., O'Connor, B., & Smith, N. (2012). Censorship and deletion practices in Chinese social media. First Monday, 17(3). doi:10.5210/fm.v17i3.3943 )

Greene, W. (2013, May 11). Myanmar’s promising experiment with Internet freedom [Web log post].Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/techonomy/2013/11/05/myanmars-promising-experiment-with-internet-freedom/

Levi, D. (2012, July 24). Where isn't social media ubiquitous? [Web log post].Retrieved from http://www.etondigital.com/where-isnt-social-media-ubiquitous/