Reader response draft 4

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, the author goes on to state that) 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 social mediaaccess or the languages supported by social network sites.

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 preventing the access to internet and causing 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 a language is not recognized, users 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 lacks 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). Therefore it can be said that,  because Myanmar has been war torn for a very long time, much of their resources have been lost to the war, making it 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 a 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  up the firewall 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. Despite the internal social media sites that the Chinese have created, there is still censorship on these sites that serve to protect the Chinese government from being criticised on the internet.

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.  

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/