The Power of Social Media

Social Media, can we live without it..? I think many of us will admit to missing updating our friends and followers on our status. We are yet to define the precise power of social media; we take a glimpse into its persuasiveness with some recent social media stories:

One famous use of Twitter was the voice it gave the Iranian people to express their frustrations to an international audience of election ‘irregularities’ during 2009 Twitter broadcasted voices from areas of Iran with limited access to traditional forms of media during that period of trouble. Read more in Will Heaven’s Telegraph commentary and on how Iranian ‘Citizen Journalism’ used YouTube, Twitter and Facebook to broadcast what was happening inside the country.

Raising awareness has been a stronghold of the traditonal advertising medium, we now notice more and more grass-root’s movement using social media to get their message out to a public immune to traditional forms of advertising. This weekend many Facebook users (mostly female and some male – you know who you are?) updated their ‘bra colour’ status to raise awareness of breast cancer the telegraph reports one group having 33,000 fans.

There was Rage Against the Machine ‘Killing in the Name’ reaching the Christmas No. 1 spot thanks to Facebook. Friends of the British volunteer ‘Daniel Eley’ who was left paralysed in Columbia whilst diving on New Year’s day, created campaigns on Facebook & Twitter to raise £90,000 to get him air lifted back to the UK has so far 2,000 members and raised £22,000. Read more here.

The H&M ‘Trashgate’ incident caused TwitteRage when a CUNY student reported bags full of destroyed clothes outside H&M in NY at a time when charities can do with clothes, reported this incident on Twitter. H&M refused to give the NY Times an explanation at the time but was unable to keep silent when the news of the holey debacle reached their 22,000+ fans on Twitter. The company eventually responded.

The craziest story this year is ability of Social Media to connect people who were literally on opposite sides ideologically, legally and culturally! A former Guntanamo Bay prison officer decided to track down one of his former detainees using Facebook after discovering they both shared similar rap tastes, incredible! Does anyone know if they’ve started a Facebook group?

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