Blog Post 1

Hello my name is Abby Wells and I am a junior Communications major with an English minor. I am taking Civic Media partially because it is a requirement for the Communications major, but also because I wanted to learn more about how media and technology plays a part in our society and civic issues. In our first week of class, we talked about the processes behind social activism and movements, and how those processes are impacted by social media and technology. The Zuckerman reading stood out to me as especially interesting because it talked about different movements that are happening in other parts of the world, and how those movements are affected by technology and media. Something that struck me was the amount of control and power that other nation’s governments have over media and expression, and how activists and movements in those nations have to work so much harder to share their message with the world. Something that I also found interesting was how the everyday citizens of these nations want access to the information that is censored by the government, and that even though they aren’t living in a free society they still want to be informed on the social issues within their own government.