The year 2011 will be remembered for many a reason starting with the protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya to the natural disaster in Japan and to the recent protest by Anna Hazare in India. All this in less than four months and we still have a long way before we can bid adieu to this erratic year. It has been a ground-breaking year so far. India’s fight against its evils is the latest in line of people rising against oppressive rulers, rising food prices and decades of being taken for granted by dictators, corrupt politicians and monarchical despots.
However, amidst such hue & cry was the overwhelming response of netizens across the globe on such issues and all thanks to the blooming social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Buzz, Newsvine and Stumbleupon among others. This voice did not just stay as an info-byte in the world wide web but it was acted upon in reality. Agitated individuals/groups used it as a medium to communicate, inform and organize protest against injustice meted out by the government. It was used as a medium to showcase the stark reality in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and India through sharing photographs, videos & status updates. A news report stated that as many as 4.4 million tweets in support of Anna Hazare was tweeted from 8,26,000 unique users across 79 cities in India in just three days while Tweets on Tunisia showed up in Twitter streams as many as 329 million times,reaching 26 million Twitter users! Another online site called the Avaaz.org launched in 2007 has been creating waves with their online campaigns. These are just not only impressive statistics but they also reflect the sentiments of the common people.
Social Media has not just been used as a tool for organizing protest against oppressive rulers but it brought all the ethnic groups together to join in prayer for the disaster in Japan. As the powerful earthquake of 8.9 magnitude struck the coast of Japan which caused a major Tsunami in several places. In less than an hour after the earthquake, it was reported by Tweet-O-Meter that 1200 tweets were sent out per minute from Tokyo with the country’s telephone system being totally shut down. Soon after Twitter and Facebook exploded with prayers and condolences from all corners of the globe. Its been one month since Tsunami in Japan yet the prayer tweets continue to fill the digital space.
The drivers of these causes have been the youth themselves and it speaks volumes about the consciousness of today’s generation to bring about perceptible change. The youth today are not just well-informed but definitely have the burning passion to make a difference in this platonic atmosphere.
A very young talented friend of mine called Jasvipul Chawla - a research scholar at IIT Bombay and a passionate photographer has captured the many moods of the youth in IIT (B) where a recent candle light vigil was held in support of Anna Hazare’s cause. He informs me that this was the first time in IIT(B) where such a protest was held to support a political cause. The following photographs are from his private collection.
His entire collection can be viewed at
http://www.me.iitb.ac.in/~jasvipul/IITBAgainstCorruption/
