Social Media and the Creation of Cyber Ghettoes

By now, very few media scholars argue that the world is becoming culturally homogenous. Apart from the
nature of diverse audiences and regional trends in cultural production, the internet and social media are
proving that the globalization of culture and ideas can move in different directions.

Western culture remains powerful and media production is still controlled by handful of powerful Western
corporations, the internet, particularly the social media, is challenging previous ideas about media and
globalization.

Cyber ghettoes are online spaces where individuals with similar beliefs, ideologies, or interests gather to
share and reinforce their perspectives while often excluding dissenting views. These echo chambers can
lead to the polarization of society and hinder constructive dialogue and understanding between different
groups.

✓ Cyber ghettoes are online communities where people who share the same ideas, interests, or beliefs
congregate to share and reinforce their viewpoints while frequently excluding opposing viewpoints.
✓ A social media echo chamber is when one experiences a biased, tailored media experience that
eliminates opposing viewpoints and differing voices.

As with all new media, social media have both beneficial and negative effects. These media have enabled
users to be consumers and producers of information simultaneously.

Beneficial Effect:
-The democratic potential of social media was most evident in 2011 during the wave of uprising known as
the Arab Spring.
✓ Arab Spring, wave of pro-democracy protests and uprisings that took place in the Middle East and North
Africa beginning in 2010 and 2011, challenging some of the region’s entrenched authoritarian regimes. The
wave began when protests in Tunisia and Egypt toppled their regimes in quick succession, inspiring similar
attempts in other Arab countries.

-Without access to traditional broadcast media like TV, activists opposing authoritarian regimes in Tunisia,
Egypt, and Libya used Twitter to organize and to disseminate information.

- More recently, the “women's march” against newly installed US President Donald Trump began with a
tweet from a Hawaii lawyer and became a national, even global, movement
✓ The idea of the Women’s March began on the social networking website Facebook the day after the
election, when a Hawaii woman named Teresa Shook voiced her opinion that a pro-woman march was
needed as a reaction to Trump’s victory. After thousands of women signed up to march, veteran activists
and organizers began planning a large-scale event scheduled for January 21, 2017, the day after
Inauguration Day.
✓ The protesters who took part in the various Women’s March events voiced their support for various
causes, including women’s and reproductive rights, criminal justice, defense of the environment and the
rights of immigrants, Muslims, LGBT people and the disabled—all of whom were seen as particularly
vulnerable under the new administration.
Negative Effect:
- However, social media also have dark side. In the early 2000s, commentators began referring to the
emergence of a “splinternet” and the phenomenon of “cyberbalkanization” to refer to the various
bubbles people place themselves in when they are online.
✓ The word splinternet is made up of “split” and “internet”. It refers to the balkanization of the
internet, one that is fragmented and divided as a result of technology, commerce, politics,
nationalism, religion and particular interests.
✓ Balkanization is to break up (a region, a group, etc.) into smaller and often hostile units

- As such, being on Facebook can resemble living in an echo chamber, which reinforces one's existing
beliefs and opinions. This echo chamber precludes users from listening to or reading opinions and
information that challenge their viewpoints, thus, making them more partisan and closed-minded.

- This segmentation has been used by people in power who are aware that the social media bubbles can
produce a herd mentality.
✓ The tendency of the people in a group to think and behave in ways that conform with others in the
group rather than as individuals

- Fake information can spread easily on social media since they have few content filters.

- This dark side of social media shows that even a seemingly open and democratic media may be co-opted
towards undemocratic means. Global online propaganda will be the biggest threat to face as the
globalization of media deepens.

Conclusion
This lesson showed that different media have diverse effects on globalization processes. At one point, it
seemed that global television was creating a global monoculture. Now it seems more likely that social
media will splinter cultures and ideas into bubbles of people who do not interact.

Every technological change, after all, creates multiple unintented consequences. Instead of fearing these
changes or entering a state of moral panic, everyone must collectively discover ways of dealing with them
responsibly and ethically.