TITLE:
How Ideas Turn into an Active Force in Society
AUTHORS:
Abdallah Hidri
KEYWORDS:
Actor Network Theory, New Public Sphere, Social Media, Polarization, New Media, Public Opinion
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Journalism and Communication,
Vol.7 No.1,
January
22,
2019
ABSTRACT: The Most prominent feature of social media and personal blogging websites is that, with their advanced and flexible nature, they are now media under the management of social individuals all involved in the sensmaking and reality shaping processes and remain thanks to their design of the communicative environment with the greatest influence on the techno-social activities of society. Given the fact that this environment was distinctive from its early days with a strong flavor of individualism—through language mostly—it actually brought back the romanticism of the 18th century that swept across the fields literature, arts and philosophy and dragged it right to the center of the media focus declaring a veritable revolution against the ways of the classic institutionalized media ruled by the standards and the ethics of media. Social media are now considered the effective drive of crisis management and the true vehicle of the public opinion as it would appear form social and political events fa?ades, as it would be—for instance—in the case of the Arab Spring, or the events of July 2016 Turkish failed coup d’état. But how again? How social media could be the media environment on which ideas could turn into an active force of society?