I
love the fact that every time I buy a bottle of Fairy Liquid, I am
helping overthrow a dictator somewhere around the world. Proctor &
Gamble, the company behind Fairy, is one of the biggest advertisers on
Facebook, helping to generate the $10bn a year of advertising revenue
that keeps the social networking site alive. Facebook is now one of the
primary means by which public uprisings are being organised. So, my
little over-priced bottle of soap is doing its bit to change the world.
It
is perverse to think that tools like Facebook, Twitter and free email
services like Gmail, which have arguably done more than any other to
facilitate the political activism of the last decade, are almost
entirely reliant on paid advertising. Social media and web 2.0 is the
contemporary soapbox. But corporate influence is no longer limited to
the label on the orator's crate.
Every 20 minutes on Facebook,
3 million messages are sent. Almost half of 18- to 34-year-old Facebook
users check the site when they wake up; 28 percent before they get out
of bed.
The
new "public spaces" we have created online are an increasingly
important part of our everyday lives and our societies' shared
infrastructure; but they are also privately run. And the implications of
this go far beyond attempts to influence which brand of soap we
purchase.
There
is no greater threat to the internet's potential to radically enhance
our public sphere than the corporate colonisation of cyberspace. Yes,
the internet makes accessible more information from a wider array of
sources and to a greater number of people more easily than any
instrument of information and communication in history. As a global,
decentralised, two-way medium that is not owned by any one corporation
or government, it allows for relatively unfettered public communication.
With
so much material available, what matters most is what gets our
attention online. Publishing views on the internet is easy; getting them
noticed is not.
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment
Hi and thank you for your interest in sharing your view.
Please be aware that your message should follow the rules of creative criticism and knowledge/ideas sharing. No defamatory, insulting, hideous, hateful, inapropriate language or targeted messages would be posted.No trademark or IP violation will be allowed nor the promotion of any commercial services or products. Of course anything that can violate others' privacy is not allowed as well.
Last, but not least, mind that it is better to have a discussion than angry monologues.
That is all. Comments welcome!