Do you think that social media has the ability to bring about real social change?

I believe that social media does have the potential to bring about real social change. Anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock for the past year should know that social media has pretty much already brought about some great positive social change in the Middle East and Africa, specifically Egypt and Tunisia where Twitter was the kindling for huge revolutions. People who were suffering from government oppression and a weak economy among other things decided to set up Facebook pages and use their Twitter accounts to spread the word about the terrible conditions and massed people together to begin public protests and receive donations from people all over the world to help their cause.
 
Many people believe that the best hope for developing countries and those living in them is education. Social media is a great way to send and receive information to and from everyday people all over the world and to get news as it happens so that people can react to positive or negative situations right away, which also make it difficult for those oppressive governments to silence people or a story. As for the future there’s no telling where and in what situation social media will be able to help raise awareness and allow everyday people in those situations to lead the charge in remaking society for the better. A couple of decades ago the idea that large revolutions could coalesce as quickly as it did in Egypt would be laughable, but now that technology and the software that people create has advanced so much with so many different uses who knows what social media idea will come next and how that could affect social change.

 In conclusion, I do not see how social media hasn’t or couldn’t bring about real social change with all the evidence over the past couple of years that has arisen from so many people accessing programs like Twitter and Facebook for the benefit of large and struggling societies.