Social media is without question a game changing technology. It impact on economic decision making is a preview to the impact it could have in the political arena. The New York Times recently reported the concerns that merchants have over review sites, a form of social media.  Couple that with recent Neisen report that 70% of people find online reviews helpful and consider them when making a purchase decision.

Fundamentally social media is redistributing influence away from centralized authority figures and media channels. The value is the community that redistributes the message, spreading it viraly, creating that multiplier effect. In previous years there was no easy way to redistribute messages on a mass scale. Recipients were often only able to pass along a message to one person (an audio tape, a video tape, a flyer) creating a 1:1 distribution model.

In international politics the cellular phone is going to be the platform for global change. Wimax enabled handhelds are the solution for the spread of democracy and tolerance. Leveraging a nimble, pervasive, and open phone platform in concert with a built in social media community should be core component to a democracy spreading strategy. If government actors have the funding and the capacity to support locally active fight for democracy, they should do so by delivering phones, setting up social networks, and allowing the constituents to grow their on local movement. Tie geographies together and create regional movements.

The power of distributed communication technology came into clear view recently durring the disputed Iranian elections, thanks in part to support for the US State department.  2006 Philipino student protests were fueled by text messages. Distributed communication will play significantly larger roles in spread of democracy in the comming years. The qquestion is are we in a position to accelerate it and leverage it?

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This entry was posted on Sunday, September 6th, 2009 at 12:51 pm and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.