How does it all affect us?
Digital technology is with us all day, everyday (Those who are lucky enough to have it), even in previous blogs, technology is basically us, so it is obvious that something digital, especially something that includes our opinions (democracy) is going to affect us in one way or another..
Young adults and teens are aware of the social networking sites such as; Face
book, Twitter, Tumblr, therefore similarly we almost have a public sphere of our own, just through modern technology and online communication. Those with strong opinions will write statuses to update friends about what they think should happen, and why. Others will comment and like, or discuss oppositions and one day even use a dislike button on it. It is just debating on social sites.
So, our debates may not be those that change laws and we definitely aren't new MP's however, we all get involved in those we believe in. Do you remember KONY? Kony 2012, the invisible children campaign began as an experiment to see if an online video of obscure criminal behavior, and he was famous, would the world work together to stop him?
3.7 million people pledged their support to arrest Joseph Kony. The invisible children project was to help stop the raising of an army of children and killing anyone. The campaign resulted in a resolution by the United States and contributed to the decision to send troops by the African Union. This list included 20 "celebrity culture makers", such as George Clooney, Angelina Jolie, Oprah Winfrey Taylor Swift and Ryan Seacrest. It has over 97 million views on YouTube, all those with Facebook had posted and shared the video online for everyone to see. Although it didn't result into his arrest, we had such a huge spread of people who got involved to help stop Kony.
This evidence alone demonstrates that we are all involved in a digital democracy. We get annoyed with certain posts on our timelines, however we made a stand for something. It just proves that social networking helps form democracy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kony_2012
