25 February 2011
Young American Blogger Discusses Social Media’s Power for Change
Washington — Blogger Zerlina Maxwell may live in America, but when Hosni Mubarak resigned as president of Egypt, it felt like she was in Cairo.
“I think that social media allowed me, someone who is sitting in New Jersey with a computer, to experience that moment as if I were there,” Maxwell said.
On February 17, Maxwell spoke with 25 students at the U.S. Consulate’s American Studies Resource Center in An-Najah National University in Nablus — the largest university in the Palestinian Territories’ West Bank — via digital video conference for a State Department dialogue on “Promoting Social Media as a Means for Change.”
Maxwell discussed the various forms of social media, including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and how these mediums can be and have been used as a platform for personal expression and as vehicles for social change. She also highlighted Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s message on Internet freedom, particularly her discussion of the impact of social media on recent events in the Middle East, efforts by some countries to control access to social media and the importance of safeguarding tolerance and freedom of expression.
Maxwell, a student at Rutgers University Law School, is an aspiring professional blogger and social media expert. Obsessed with politics and current events, Maxwell writes primarily for TheLoop21.com, a website that “offers insight, resources and opinions on African-American issues.”
For her, events in Iran and now in Egypt highlight the role social media plays in organizing movements for change.
“I think it shows the power of social media. In environments where all traditional media is blocked by regimes, social media is used by the people,” Maxwell said. “It is a modern-day version of how they used to organize during the civil rights movement. … It is an incarnation for 2011.”
A self-proclaimed “political junkie,” Maxwell campaigned actively for President Obama in 2008. She said a major part of Obama’s campaign strategy was using social network sites to organize volunteers and reach potential voters.
Despite the power of Facebook and Twitter, Maxwell said they are the tools, not the architects, of change.
“Social media doesn’t bring about change. But it allows for the people who want to create the change to organize,” Maxwell said. “I don’t think that Twitter is going to make a revolution happen but it can allow the people that want to create a revolution to pick a time and location.”
Twitter’s groundbreaking way of communicating is comparable to the emergence of radio and television, Maxwell said.
“With the Iranian elections, with the use of hashtags [a way to provide additional information in a tweet] to organize those events on Twitter, you are seeing a student at a university in Tehran tweet about somebody barging in his door with a gun right when it is happening,” Maxwell said.
For bloggers, Twitter is a powerful tool to track the movement of ideas across the blogosphere.
“Before Twitter, when you blogged you weren’t really sure if people were reacting to it or reading it, but if you blog and you link to it on Twitter, then you get instant feedback,” Maxwell said. “And by following other people in the media and blogosphere, you are able to make connections and network.”
In recent years, bloggers have become regulars on television because their viewpoints are being noticed.
“I’ve seen people go from ‘I’m just a blogger’ to being on CNN or MSNBC because they wrote something, a producer saw it, liked it, and wanted to go further with that story,” Maxwell said.
A paralegal by day and a law student by night, Maxwell spends her free time writing for blogs, or thinking about topics. A member of the New Leaders Council, an organization that trains and supports political entrepreneurs, Maxwell is planning innovative ways to combine her education with her passion for blogging.
“I’m getting a law degree, but I definitely don’t necessarily want to go into practicing law. I think that the degree is to give me a level of versatility,” she said. “But my focus is to use my writing, whether it be in the realm of politics or promoting women’s rights.”
A Palestinian undergraduate student who participated in the video conference, intrigued by Maxwell’s presentation on social media, asked how to start her own blog. For people interested in blogging, Maxwell provides insight on how to get started in the social media world.
“You have to start writing,” Maxwell said, adding that Blogger and WordPress are good places to open an account. “If you are a political blogger, usually you are going to be expressing your opinion about a certain news event and giving your own voice and your own angle.”
Along with a blog, Maxwell suggests people who want their voice heard online should also open a Twitter account. And for those less inclined to write, Maxwell thinks YouTube might be a better option.
“A lot of people choose to use video blogging instead of writing it down,” Maxwell said. “Instead of writing paragraphs, you can speak and say whatever is on your mind, and I think that is another really powerful way to express an opinion.”
Although social media is still a fairly new concept for many Palestinians in the West Bank, especially among those living outside a major urban area like Ramallah, the students at An-Najah were eager to discover ways in which networking tools like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube can be used to inform their global peers.
(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)
