In the 18th Century you had the Age of Enlightenment as a growing number of people desired to change their society by way of philosophical reasoning. The political ideas propagated at this time influenced the American Revolution and the American Declaration of Independence. It's occurred to me (as I'm sure it has to you) that this is a time of a new kind of enlightenment, in the Age of Social Media. Now in the 21st Century we are seeing an unprecedented cross pollination of ideas through sharing on social media. I'm definitely excited by the idea of all our tweets being preserved throughout time. Can you imagine, someone 100 years from now, or 200 years from now, deducing an overall malaise or a startlingly positive quality possessed by our society at large? I can. I hope it happens sooner than that so I might be alive to see it, and so that it might do us some good. We've already begun to see the power of social media in social networking statistics and the increase in companies demand for strategies for social media marketing. Most important to me though, is the power social media can have to create a real demand for political change, cue "Arab Spring" memories. I say can have, because I don't think we Americans have found that perfect trigger for change just yet. 

 

Right now America is in the middle of an Election season, and every time there's a debate my Facebook feed is a constant flow of "I HATE ROMNEY" or "I LOVE ROMNEY". 'Friends' are cursing out friends and declaring war on each other by seizing their status' and leaving a trail of hate comments. Now these are people who are 'friends' on Facebook. If social media can count as a mini survey of our political state of affairs, I'd say we've reached a certain kind of low. I like to think, as I mentioned before, that social media is a path for political pressure to encourage political change. However most of what I see is people getting super emotional on Facebook and hate bashing, which is counterproductive to working for political change. How can this change?

 

When the government is reacting to demands from the American people instead of the American people passively commenting on who they love and who they hate in politics, then we will be closer to a Democracy. It's important to get down to specifics; what do you disagree with in Obama's policies? What do you disagree with in Romney's politics? How can you speak about that in an articulate way, and pose questions to them or their reps asking for specific clarifications? The town hall debate between the two Presidential candidates is tonight. Many citizens submitted their own questions or voted on ones already submitted on a website set up for people to have direct access to the candidates. I hope this makes for less of a blame game showdown, and more of an issues based conversation that Americans need to hear. I don't think I will die because of either candidate winning or not winning the election. The collective emotional binging we go through during each election cycle is fueled by the media and taken advantage of by politicians. I look forward to seeing how social media helps counteract the big money campaigns that keep less wealthy, or less well affiliated people from running for office. I don't think it's that far off in the future. How about you? 

 

Here's what some people are already doing & saying:

Interesting short video on social media's role in politics from: George Osborne, British conservative politician here. 

 

Have you heard of Chasing the Hill? It's a new webseries that hopes to promote across the aisle discourse between Democrats and Republicans. Here's what they say about the show on their page: 

"People from both sides of the aisle love our show as it focuses on the human cost of both campaigning and retaining political office. The show has been written about in Hollywood Reporter, Roll Call, ABC News, Huffington Post, NPR, BBC, FoxNews and more."

 

 

- Lillian Rodriguez