#homogeneity

However, I also like my devices nice and undamaged, which is not a given with used goods (especially as many of the old electronics at home are damaged because younger me was a monster). On a more practical note, even without cosmetic damage I have to deal with natural degradation eg. battery aging, broken mechanics, failing flash memory. Also, obsolescence is real and as the market moves away from old methods and technologies things just stop working well with old tech no matter how much autism (affectionate, shout-out to the FOSS dev community) one throws at the problem (i386 and under 4GiB RAM are no longer bearable to use for the web) because unlike wealth, performance trickles down, and there is little incentive to build for old things especially when the new methods are simply more performant (graphics performance, auto white balance, sensor resolution, battery life).

The power of social media has been used by many people to organise protests and demonstrations in the hopes of creating social change. In the last decade, social media has been the driving force behind organised protest and activism for movements like Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and the protest of President Donald Trump. These movements have garnered much attention globally, with protests for the same causes being held in other countries outside America from where these movements sprouted. This is the advantage of digital citizenship in an interconnected world; the disbursement of information brings prevalent issues to the forefront of the media, leading to greater awareness and discussion which can breed activism and global change. However, I can’t help but feel that much of the issues, dialogue and activism dominating the news is coming from North America.

 It is clear that globalisation through the Internet has given birth to an Americanised media, especially within Australia. A majority of our media entertainment is comprised of American movies, music, and TV. News stories shared across social media sites are often produced by American companies or at least focused on American events. In an SBS top 12 list of viral stories in 2017, 6 were Australian, 5 were American and 1 was from Yemen (see the article here). Australia has even held our own activist gatherings surrounding Black Lives Matter, the protest of the American president and Occupy in the last decade (links here, here and here).  But what I find concerning is the amount of other serious issues and events unfolding in the rest of the world that do not receive the same amount of media attention that these movements have gotten (certainly not enough to have international protests in support).

 Just last week, protests in Iran have violently escalated, in response to government corruption, economic conditions and unemployment (Barker 2018); yet there are no viral videos, no trending hash-tags or public gatherings organised in solidarity overseas. Protests in the Philippines have occurred this year following the death of over 20,000 people under the Philippine president’s “war on drugs” (Aljazeera 2018), yet there hasn’t been any global activism or a palpable social awareness in the general public. Perhaps these events aren’t seen as globally relevant, however, shouldn’t the gravity of the situation in these countries warrant the same dialogue and discussion as the aforementioned movements?

 While social media has been effective in allowing the voices of the marginalised to be heard, is globalisation and a homogenous American culture muffling out the rest of the world’s cries for their own social transformation?

  Perhaps it is our own individual responsibility to be more critical and selective with our news outlets in order to gain a larger perspective of what is really going on outside the confines of our own computers.

References:

Aljazeera 2018, Thousands protest deadly drug war in the Philippines, Aljazeera, viewed 18 May 2018, <https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/02/thousands-protest-deadly-drug-war-philippines-180224084450606.html>.