The Internet is a symbol for unity.
The medium we can communicate with our friends and family even if we are hours and miles away from home. And moreover, we can talk to people we don´t know – all over the world, in all different places and of various different races and cultures.
Today we might sometimes tend to see the www just as an everyday tool. We can´t imagine to be without it as it has become a ‘normal’ part of our communication.
Isn´t it sometimes worth to step back, take a breath and just think about who is also there – in the wide space of the www? On the platform that unites us all - Australia with the US, with Germany, with Sweden, with Canada with Malaysia with Barbados with whatever place in the world we don´t even know it´s there?
Take a breath and think about it. Can you feel it?
In 1985 Meyrowitz already reported about the power of electronic media, which re-territorialize ‘sense of place’ and the spatial, political and social conditions of this sense of place.
"They do this by their cross-contextuality and reach, the way in which they can asymmetrically bring together extremely diverse groups who are otherwise separated in cultural focus, in space, and perhaps also in time. Media, especially electronic media, make possible arbitrary relations between a concrete space and a sense of place. By undermining ‘the traditional association between physical setting and social situation' the constraints of embodiment such as being in one place at the one time disappear." (Meyrowitz, 1985, cited in Holmes, 2005, p.42).
The phenomenon of distinguishing time and place but also cultural aspects has become more powerful than ever before – thanks to the Internet. And with Social Media and all the manifold platforms, networks and channels we can communicate through, the phenomenon peaked. According to Nielsen (2009) Social Networking has been the global phenomenon of 2008. “Two-thirds of the world’s Internet population visit a social network or blogging site and the sector now accounts for almost 10% of all internet time. ‘Member Communities’ has overtaken personal Email to become the world’s fourth most popular online sector.” (Nielsen, 2009).
So where to get a better idea of all the different races and
faces using the Internet than on
Facebook? “Facebook is the second largest ‘country’ in the world: With more than 310 million members, it recently surpassed the U.S. in total ‘population.’“ (Farwell & Kashatus, 2010). But also facebook´s brothers and sisters MySpace, LinkedIn and all the other member communities have to be regarded.
According to Nielsen (2009) the strongest growth of member community has come in Germany where the sector now reaches 51% of Germans online compared to 39% a year ago – an actual increase of over 12 percentage points. Large growth has also occurred in the UK, Spain, Italy and Switzerland – the sector reaching 10% percentage points
more of the online population in each of these countries than it did a year ago.
This increase in popularity is only half the story when it comes to the social networking phenomenon – the time people spend on these networks is also increasing dramatically. The total amount spent online globally increased by 18% between December 2007 and December 2008. In most of the countries monitored the share of time accounted for by ‘Member Communities’ has more than doubled. In Switzerland, for example, the share of time has tripled from 3% to 9.3%. A year ago ‘Member Communities’ accounted for one in every 15 online minutes globally – now it accounts for one in every 11. In Brazil alone, ‘Member Communities’ accounts for almost one in every four minutes. In the UK they now account for one in every six minutes (up from every 13 minutes a year ago) and in Italy one in every seven (up from one in 14 a year ago).
However, if we regard the Internet, its faces, cultures and races participating the net-conversations, it comes to a point where we should raise the question:
“Who is not there?”Is the Internet really a symbol for unity or is it, on the contrary, a phenomenon that further separates certain countries from the rest of the world? What about those who don´t have access due to isolation? What about those who are not allowed to see the entire ‘reality’ of the Internet, as it is censored by the government?
United Internet or Internet Isolation?Eva (evesaintlaurent)
References: Nielsen (2009). Global Faces and Networked Places. A Nielsen report on Social
Networking’s New Global Footprint. Retrieved, April, 9, 2010, from, http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/nielsen_globalfaces_mar09.pdf
Holmes, D. (2005). Theories of broadcast media. In Communication theory:
media,technology, society (pp. 20-43). London: Sage.
Farwell, H., & Kashatus, K. (2010). Social Media: The New Frontier of Corporate Reputation Management. Retrieved, January 21, 2010, from www.wcsr.com/filefolder/Stratcomm_socialmedia.pdf
.jpg)
