This is the synthesis of Pressenza’s workshop at the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum 2014:
Whereas Big Media tends to focus on sensationalism, to promote the interests of business over the needs of individuals, to cover minority acts of violence and has relatively few reporters on the ground, Social Media compensates by turning users into de-facto reporters, focussing on human issues, covering nonviolent protests and doing so in huge numbers.
Social Media generates consciousness of social injustice and human pain and suffering that Big Media is unwilling to cover. In doing so it provides the information that leads directly to participation. Something as simple as a small rise in a bus fare can lead to millions of people on the streets in 500 cities as happened in Brazil.
It’s not that Social Media causes a revolution, the revolution would happen anyway, sooner or later. There were revolutions before twitter! It’s just that never before have human beings had the possibility to turn locally-felt injustice into social transformation and all of this without having to be armed.
