Zawaya

Social media: The New Face of Alter-Globalization

By: Mouhamed Lemine Kettab

Monopolizing information, possessing knowledge, and mastering expertise have always been sources of power and thus possibilities of domination and even socio-political and psychological enslavement.

Therefore, to ensure their sustainability and strengthen their dominance, all established authorities and powers have struggled to control and even monopolize information sources and means of communication.

Thus, States have tried to control mass media and direct them according to their concerns and ideological persuasions. The great powers have also set up sprawling news agencies in order to model news and ensure the control of information flows to give global events the interpretations and explanations that serve their interests.

The same can be said on major satellite channels about the satellites that serve as their auxiliary and logistical tools.

What has emerged from this situation is the enslavement of minds, standardization of opinions, modelling of mentalities and predetermination of attitudes in life.

The Internet, this powerful tool, has then appeared to be firstly used by the same powers for the same purposes and objectives. But the only difference there is in comparison to other mass media is that the Internet has proved to be a double- or even triple-edged weapon, and thus a means of breaking the monopoly of the unambiguous use of information, knowledge, and expertise. This opportunity offered by the Internet was appreciated by an ever-growing number of people who are determined to escape the straitjacket in which the instrumentalized institutions by the liberal wilderness surround the new technologies of information and communication.

So, as a method of counter-information, and as an alternative means of distribution and dissemination of information, knowledge and expertise of all kinds, there is a systematic use of a wide range of interactive communication processes and methods such as: blogs, Facebook, Twitter…

These means of communication and expression that present an alternative way to see things, reflect the emergence of a popular awareness of the impact of information, and reveal a new dimension of alter-globalization which has the mission to work towards a world that is more fair, equitable, and human, to replace the world that is shaped by the liberal wilderness that has threatened the very existence of our planet and the vital conditions that have allowed the permanence of biodiversity so far.