My notes for the debate (21.09.11)

There were two groups in  the debate, the question of our debate was;
 'Are social media network good or evil in contemporary society?' and it was about London Riots 2011.

My group's aim was to convience the other group that social network was a positive thing in London Riots.
Here are the short points we've covered:

1) Our first and main point is that social network isn't to blame for it, because riots would happen anyway, as they happened many years ago, when social network such as Facebook, Twitter or BBM didn't even exist. We can't blame social network for bad things, but people who use it.

2) E.g. Arab Spring which started in December 2010 in Tunisia, and spread out to other North-African countries like Egypt etc. People used facebook to communicate, and they used it in a good way. They fighted for their rights, when most of the people involved in London Riots didn't even know what they were 'rioting' for.

'How facebook changed the world'

3) We also talked about how Twitter organized a group of people who were cleaning after London Riots.

We were talking about how the guardian and other countries (Poland) represented these cases, and other sources of information were saying about these cases and social network influence.

4) We also talked about Aaron Biber (89 years old) and agency called BBH. Aaron Biber had a barbershop, which was destroyed by London Riots. People on Twitter and Facebook after seen the video of him, tried to help him fix his old barbershop. He got about 1271 votes and over 600 comments. Also, agency called BBH organised a webpage, in which people were donating money online for Aaron Biber and other people influenced by London Riots.

 

(All the scan shots of the printed pictures were shown and spread out around the classrom, while our discussion.)

In the conclusion we decided that social network made the situation bigger and more dangerou than it should be, however social network isn't to blame for it.