Social Net- A Digital Education Platform Eroded by Media Activism-

A Critical Study

 

G. Arockiasamy M S*, J. Jacintha¹, B. Sujeevan Kumar Bullard², Rathan Suhas³

*Assistant Professor, Media and Communitation – Karunya Universiy.

¹²³Students, Media and Communication, Karunya University, Coimbatore, India

 

ABSTRACT:

To-day no connectivity means no communication. Digitization has increased the speed and access through networking system. The younger generation lives in social media fell prey to ideological groupings leading to protest activities as media activism. The objective is to trace out the status of media activism reported in print and social media identifying causes. The paper by Drezner (2005) argues that the Internet has posed new challenges to authoritarian control of information. Content analysis is applied to newspapers and social media postings. Major findings reveal that media activism have emerged over the years with the increase of social media engagements. Whatsapp is the significant site for such media activism several factors are indexed as cause for such media activism.

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION:

The world began to spin around with a flow of communication. These flow of communication in the whole world runs only through means of network. The media plays an important role in communicating with people either in good or bad ways. The power of communication through media can influence and change the attitudes of the people about their society. Since the technology of communication advanced the power of the media leading to the realm of media activism. The mass media has been developed for the benefits of the people. The people in the early generations were not very much aware of the media activism because of the poor exposure to technology.

 

The digitalized media influenced the people in such a way that, every individual was exposed to the media uses in some or the other ways. Government officials and all the politicians were connected to the citizens through the development of social media. The globalization of technology has transformed one individual’s way of expressing and sharing their own opinion on any issues which was known to him through the media. In spite of the radio and television, the social media has placed every individual in the present digital generations. The new inventions of science and technology have become threat to the traditional culture and brought many changes to the society.

 

Social media has a great impact in changing the country’s economic and political situations. There is no way for the government to maintain any secret decision regarding the people or officials because through social media every information reaches every corner of the universe. There are many ways of getting exposed to social media. The country’s future growth are in the hands of the youths, thus youths of present day are led to the free information access which took an important part in the interactions about social issues. When the usage of media network increased, the communication between the people also increased leading to interactions about the present issues and problems openly. Since the media activism has become part and partial of the present generation, it demands a closure look at this phenomena.

 

OBJECTIVES:

The blade finite element is the objective of this study is to trace out the present status of new media engagement, which leads the individuals to media activism. In order to trace out the media activism, the best way is to look out the news reported on such activities. For this purpose, few of the newspapers and social networks were selected for a closure look. Another objective is to analyse the reports on media activism in order to get some clue on the reasons behind such activities. It also can provide information on which social media causes this type of media activism the most. Many newspapers and social media use different terms to indicate this type of issues either in the good or bad ways. This can also provide means for determine the intensity of media activism among the individuals. It can lead to identify the maximum usage of the media which increases the media activism. To begin with this objective, it is worthwhile to go through the past researches in this context.

 

REVIEW OF LITERATURE:

Several researches are already conducted by many social media scholars among them some of the vital ones are referred here. FRANCIS L. F. LEE1 (2014) in “Triggering the Protest Paradigm”, the author explains that many factors are interlinked to produce the effect of protest. It confirms media is used by political people to radicalize the population towards protest. This tactic is used at certain targets to create dissatisfaction via news reporting. It traces the case of Hong Kong protest where people are brought together as protesters. In another study MERLYNA LIM (2013) social media is the vital platform for social transformation or power of silencing the upraise. This report gives a strong claim that the context in which people participate in social media can direct them to sole winning political activities. Such activities can induce support among large number of people through simple reporting attached with emotional ideology like nationalism and religious sentiments.

Similarly Wiley-Blackwell,( 2015) says Digital links and communication activities highly shown as a realm of debate due to emerging digital rights and independent goals set by activist NGO’s on social movements. Castells Manuel (2007) describes the upraise of individual pattern of free communication leads to frame postulate of effects within political and social sphere. Digital instruments give ones freedom to articulate opposite power due to democracy.

 

METHODOLOGY:

The methodology used for this study covers both quantitative and qualitative. This study uses convenient sampling to select the newspapers and social media as the source of information. Most popular newspapers such as The Hindu and The Times Of India are selected and the highly used social media such as facebook , whatsapp, youtube, blog and twitter are studied. A random sampling method is used for the selection of specific date and year,. A content analysis method is used for analysing the data collected and suitable Statistical analysis is applied to arrive at the significance level. A comparative analysis is made between newspaper and social media findings to arrive at the core issue of Media Activism.

 

Needed Operational Definitions:

Media activism is a broad category of activism that utilizes media and communication technologies for social and political movements methods of media activism include publishing news. To recongnize this study trace the words photos, coloum, heading, subhead, other name, word terms, reference, attack words, and border problem Other names means the names of people involved in media activism other than the initiator, Word terms means emotional creating words such as fighting, anger etc, Reference means direct accusation., Attack words means the words that are creating negative attitude, Border problem means not only specifying territory division but also in mind and views.

 

Findings:

The data analyzed in the following section deals with five months newspaper contents for the year 2017.The content of both Times of India and The Hindu are compared to find how much media activism is reported in these newspapers as well as how certain forms in reporting can lead to determine the cause of media activism. It is descriptively presented and analysed.

 

The Times of India Newspaper

 

Table 1 Mean and Standard Deviation of The Times of India

	N	Minimum	Maximum	Mean	Std. Deviation
APRIL	24	3	100	42.70	26.302
JULY	24	4	100	39.31	32.315
AUGUST	24	3	100	44.02	27.356
NOVEMBER	24	4	100	42.91	29.174
OCTOBER	24	3	100	43.35	30.087
Valid N (listwise)	24

 

The selected newspapers namely Times of India and The Hindu are analysed for this study. The selected five months newspapers were collected and the results were considered for the comparison. The months namely April, July, August, October and November from 2016 were recorded. The total overall average for month April is 42.7, July is 39.31, August is 44.02, October is 43.35 and for November is 42.91. The overall average for the newspaper, Times Of India is 42.45. This average is to be compared with the Hindu newspaper.

 

Table 2 Mean and standard Deviation of The Hindu

 

The Hindu Newspaper The Hindu newspaper average was calculated from the selected 5 months. The average for month April is 44.59, July is 40.15, August is 45.32, October is 47.49 and for the month November is 93.50. The overall average for the Hindu newspaper is calculated from the analysis was 54.21. This overall average is compared with the Times Of India.

 

Table 3 Mean and Standard Deviation of Social media

 

Among the social media facebook has the high overall average compared with other social media. Now for the final output, the newspaper The Hindu and social media facebook were compared. The Hindu has an average of 54.21 and facebook is of 78.91.With the compared statistical data, facebook has more media activism compared to other social media and the newspapers.

 

CONCLUSION:

The study clearly explains how the newspaper and the social media involves in media activism. Activism in social media have comparatively high percentage than the newspapers. The news through social media reaches the people much faster than the news from newspaper. The people are not giving much importance to read the newspaper like using the social media. The content analysis on newspapers show that among total articles 53 Percentage of articles belong to media activism, on the other hand the Hindu has only 51 Percentage. In the total articles on media activism the times of India newspapers has supported with 59 percentage of photograph of, while the Hindu newspapers support the activism with 55 percentage of photographs. Both the newspapers carry same type of attack words and word terms equally. In social media facebook provides the hightest percentage of photos (93) word terms (82) Media words (66) Attack words (61). As a hole facebook and times of India newspapers support the media activism articles with photos. this aggravates the minds of readers and viewers. visual communication has the greatest influence on younger people that stimulates them to become part of pressure group which leads to protest and agitation as a expression of media activism. This crowd behaviour has come up has an output development of social media.

 

REFERENCES:

1.     Castells, Manuel (2007), Communication, Power and Counter-Power in the Network Society, International Journal of Communication.

2.     Drezner, D. (2005). Weighing the scales: The Internet’s effect on state-society relations. Paper presented March 2005 at conference: “Global Flow of Information,” Yale Information Society Project, Yale Law School. Pfiefle, Mark (14 June 2012). "Social Media and Political Activism". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 14 May 2013.

3.     MediaMiser (2011). How print media and Twitter interact during a majorcrisis, A media scan and analysis of the March 2011 disasters in Japan. Asia Pacific Public Relations Journal, 6(1), pp.1– 34.

4.     Andrews, K. T. and Biggs, M. (2006). The Dynamics of Protest Diffusion: Movement Organizations, Social Networks, and News Media in the 1960 Sit-Ins.

5.     Gamson, W. A. (2004). Bystanders, Public Opinion, and the Media. In D. A. Snow, S. A. Soule and H. Kriesi (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.

6.     Youmans, William Lafi and York, Jillian C. “Social Media and the Activist Toolkit: User Agreements, Corporate Interests, and the Information Infrastructure of Modern Social Movements.” Journal of Communication 62 (2012).

 

 

 

 

Received on 24.10.2017       Modified on 03.12.2017

Accepted on 12.01.2018   ©A&V Publications All right reserved