Bringing Distant Nations Closer Together Through Use of Social Networks

Iliktarević, Vesna and Korać, Srđan (2013) Bringing Distant Nations Closer Together Through Use of Social Networks. In: Challenges of the 21st Century and the Region : [proceedings of the round table conference, 11 September 2012, Belgrade]. Institute for International Politics and Economics, Belgrade, pp. 148-163. ISBN 978-86-7067-190-4

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Abstract

The Internet as a new form of mass multimedia enables people to communicate from person to person, to send or receive information, to find out about practically anything, to find new friends and lovers, to buy and sell etc. The inhabitants of the ever-shrinking McLuhan’s global village have become very sophisticated in the way they use the social networks, spinning new uses all the time. They either want to tell other people about themselves and their attitudes, to share their problems, and to help others by suggesting the solutions. A number of media theorists have been lamenting the furthering fragmentation of society by alienating individuals, while some other analysts have been indicating the risk of criminal abuse of the global cyber networks. Surprisingly, it seems that the cyber environment turns to be a space of the online activism that promotes alternative social platforms, with the impact in “offline sphere”, i.e. in the actual public. The authors examine to what extent the virtual public and Internet communities may foster relations between Japan and Serbia, officially established by the exchange of diplomatic letters 130 years ago. The authors discuss human potentials of the Internet communication between 13,000 km away Serbian and Japanese users, with a focus on the online activism grown in the aftermath of the 8.9 magnitude earthquake and devastating tsunami that hit the north eastern coast of Japan in March 2011. The conclusion is that virtual activism can encourage civil actions to bridge the spatial and cultural gaps; it can save the virtual space from alienation in the same time.

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