The TED video "Johana Blakley; social media and the end of gender" claims that the wide use of social media will lead to the end of sexual discrimination.
However, I think the claim of the video is not plausible. It is very true that much more women use the new social media such as Facebook and they lead the trend inside it. However, the important thing is that many people consider the usage of social media very trivial and sometimes even negative.
Although the speaker said that people actively gather according to their interests inside the social media, many social media users usually take advantage of it as a way to keep in touch with people they either knew and met at the past or know now. This is why more women are participating in the trend of the new social media boom. Still, many people find this sort of social activity time-wasting. They even blame the others who do that. Especially in Korea, there is a kind of a perception that people who play an active part online while doing nothing offline, are considered strange and socially disabled.
Moreover, many of the people who do not use the online social media even think of it negatively. In social media, there is a high possibility that one's private life and information exposed to the mass. For example, there was an announcer who wrote in the social media about her break up with her boyfriend. Although she claimed (before she killed herself) that the articles were not written by her, this information which included some inappropriate contents was all spread to the mass and she suddenly became the target of blame from the netizens. She eventually killed herself by throwing herself from 19th floor of her apartment building. This is just the happening of yesterday.
The explanations given in the video are very sweet and ideal. However, the social media may have earned popularity of many but not all.
Debate motions
1) THW require the social media to impose much heavier privacy protection regulation.
2) THB more people should be educated with internet manner.
Good post, and the news about yet another star tarnished in the media (unnecessarily) seems commonplace in Korea. Sad to hear it. So that is definitely a dark aspect of social media.
답글삭제Blakely's lecture is never that clear, and she makes big assumptions while not actually making them, so it's tough to really figure out WHAT she's implying. Nice stuff.