What's Wrong With The World Today - An Emphasis On The Social Media Aspects Prompting Revolutions

     I went to a lecture this week by Peter Maass called "Seeing Revolution: The Altered Image of War in New and Old Media." I found it an extremely talk considering the fact that last year for one of my classes, I wrote a paper touching on many of the same topics on which Maass spoke. My paper was called Revolution in the Middle East and the Impact of History vs. Social Media.
     Maass spoke about the technical aspects of how images of war have changed in the past years - for example the types of cameras and mics that were used by journalists when reporting on the Bosnian War vs. the wars of today. What I was most interested in, however, was the idea of the rise of the civilian journalist.
     Even back in the 90's, the people of Bosnia could not tweet or facebook about the horrors of what they were facing ... But today, we see in places like Egypt and Iran, hundreds of people taking to the streets for what are called "Facebook Revolutions" and "Twitter Revolutions." People all over the world are seeing the images and words that are being posted by these everyday journalists and are also getting on board.
     Our mainstream media are quick to dub the revolutions that happen around the world with catchy names like the "Wikileaks Revolution" in Tunisia and the "Facebook Revolution" in Egypt, and stream youtube videos posted by civilian journalist and use that as news, however, they often neglect the deeper issues at hand when it comes to war and revolution. And, they are the ones that need to be focusing and bringing to light the deeper issues at hand, because mainstream media are where most people go for their news.
     The truth of the matter is that every country that has a revolution has a long and, probably, convoluted history involving deception, take-over, lies, and killings. When writing my paper, I just focused on the most recent revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, and Iran, and just the histories of those countries - simply going back to the late 19th century and forward - had long-stretches dark histories. These histories cannot be ignored. Mainstream journalists cannot just choose one of these:

And assume they have enough information to go on when describing a revolution. It's a revolution for goodness sake. People are clamoring to make change. They are clearing angry about something, and that pent up anger is not over one spilled cup of tea - it's over years and years of water boiling out of a pot over the people.

Don't look back. Keep your head held high. Don't ask them why because life is short and before you know you're feeling old and your heart is breaking. Don't hold onto the past. Well, that's too much to ask. (This Used To Be My Playground, Madonna)