06 August 2007
Can Facebook be a force for change?
Kathryn Senior tells us what she thinks about the rise in Facebook’s popularity.
Up until about two months ago, I’ll admit, I had no idea what Facebook was. I had my obligatory MySpace page and an account on Bebo, that I’d never used, and that was enough for me. In all honesty I still prefer MySpace, and although a lot of bad things have been said about Facebook, it is a useful social network that can not only make it easier for people to stay in touch after moving away or changing schools, but it can also be used as a force to affect social change.
The convenience of Facebook as a networking site is that it allows people to keep in touch and find old classmates or work colleagues, even making it easy for a friend of mine to find classmates from his primary school despite having moved to a different city. It can also serve as a place to store photos and videos online which, as I recently found out, is much safer than keeping them on a PC, just in case a virus deletes everything. It is also a good method of spreading awareness of political and social causes as people can join groups and share their views with others.
In the months leading up to the 2007 G8 summit, Oxfam launched a campaign called the G8 wait using social networking sites in order to put pressure on politicians and remind them that their actions were being watched. A campaign that 6,500 people on MySpace, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube joined. While I was not on Facebook when this campaign was launched, I did follow it on MySpace, and was able to stay up to date with the progress through regular bulletins and messages.
In recent years, the more traditional methods of raising awareness and showing support to a cause like this, by signing petitions and sending out leaflets for example, have developed and expanded to include campaigning at music festivals and concerts, advertising within the media and on websites and using social networks. These newer methods of campaigning are certainly fitting for a society where the internet is central to a lot of people’s lives and Facebook is a good example of this.
Despite it’s increasing popularity, Facebook is still a site that is relatively under-used by my friends and my age group. In Swansea and Cardiff I would still say that other sites such as MySpace and YouTube are more prevalent, but it is clear that Facebook’s popularity and usefulness in terms of campaigning and activism is growing fast.
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I'm currently studying for A level exams in English literature, French, psychology and theatre studies. I've always wanted to write, particularly about things that are important to me. I would love to go abroad for my gap year to do voluntary work in Africa or elsewhere and hopefully go on to do journalism or languages at university.
