Critique 1

Mary Anne Marrero

Eng 100 - 1:10

Mr. Hayes

2/5/2013

Toulmin Analysis of “Social Media Empower People”

Claim: The social media carries a very important role in providing people empowerment and contribution to social transformation.

●       Claim is absolute. Mainwaring asserts his own justified knowledge about the importance of social media, as well as the good advantages.

Reason 1 (¶3): Social Media provides an infinite connection to anyone, anywhere, anytime.

reason is not good - Although it is open to anyone, not everyone is able to have access to these activities online due to the lack of technological literacy, those who are living in ethnic minorities, lower levels of education, or the elderly.

reason is relevant: Since it is fairly accessible to anyone all around the globe at any time, people are able to express their opinions, create organizations, and

Reason 2 (¶5, 6): The use of social media works in the service of “building a better world” by a number of ways that could relate to social transformation.

reason is good - Using social media can somehow contribute in building a better society.

reason is quite relevant: It can be the other way around, depending on how it is used and wht is is used for.

       Objection 1 (¶2): Social media are ineffective tools for serious social transformation.

                Rebuttal 1 (¶4): Its transformative potential should not be limited only to the worst excesses of its current practice. Gladwell should consider the positive uses of social media.

      Objection 2 (¶3): Even before the internet, people protested and were able brought down governments.

             Rebuttal 2 (¶4): Technology matures along with its users, thus, adding up to the value of freedom of speech and liberty.

    

      According to Simon Mainwaring, founder of the social branding consulting company We First in his article Social Media Empower People, the use of social media has contributed much to the efforts of the people bound to transform Egypt’s political situation. In his article, he tries to explain to his audience why social media holds an important role to activism by providing reasons that don’t seem to be efficient enough. Although I agree with his contradictory response to Malcolm Gladwell’s argument that social media is a weak and ineffective tool for social transformation, he lacks efficient reasoning and relevant details strong enough to prove his claim.

     Mainwaring doesn’t go further in explaining how using social media, especially in times of political distraught, could actually increase people empowerment. In this case, he uses the political situation in Egypt as a perfect demonstration of the impact of social media. I find this a very interesting to argue about, since this has been going over outside debates. He seems to have absolute knowledge about the impact of social media to activists and to Egypt, but he only limits his knowledge to those who are able to have access to social networking sites stating that, “these [social media] tools are accessible to everyone, available 24/7, infinitely scalable, real time and free.” He assumes that everyone in the Middle East is technologically literate and are able to access social media at any given time. Mainwaring uses the word “enables” several times in the article, pertaining to the usefulness of using social media to empower people. Although he provides amenable reasons, it could have been more persuasive if he added more proof about the effectiveness of social media.

     It is impossible to say that social media does nothing to social transformation especially in a mutually-dependent world we are now living in. Mainwaring mentions in his article,“as more people use social media to tell the story of the future, the wants and needs of people will be reflected” in which he was able to point out that the presence of social media can actually raise more awareness and shdagdijd not only in Egypt, but all over the globe as well. People who are most likely concerned with the political situation happening in Egypt can inform other people by using social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, or even through blogging. These events could also be contemplated through the use of other forms of social media like Youtube or Flickr, and could possibly make its way to television and news coverage, building collaborative ways in order to transform a nation. Even though I find myself agreeing with Malcolm Gladwell in his statement saying, “People protested and brought down governments before Facebook was invented. They did it before the Internet came along.” in regards to the protesters in Egypt who have not or may have used any form of social media to correspond to the issues, I still stick with what Mainwaring has in mind in this article because I believe that as we time goes by, technology advances and so do we.

    Although I agree that social media can contribute to the development of nations and imbue social transformation to people, Mainwaring could have done better in persuading his audience by adding more details to his evidence.