In the article Social Media in the Egyptian Revolution: Reconsidering Resource Mobilization Theory, the author talked about the revolution in Egypt in which media had an immense impact on the activism of anti-government revolution. One motivated event that led to the revolution was the brutal death of Khaled Said. According to the bloggers, he was demanded money from the officers but got beaten when he said that he did not have it. Some argues that Said was killed because he uploaded a video of two officers exchanging money after a drug deal. However, Said’s death was not justified because it was reported as an accident that he choked on packet of drugs. His brutal death and disfigured face were soon posted on the Internet and a lot of human-rights activists and revolutionists expressed their outrage. This was a prominent event in the revolution because it aroused people’s awareness of civilians’ rights and the detriment of the dictatorship government.
This event reminds me of the politics in China. As I was growing up in China, I never thought too much about politics of China before I came to America. But after I came to the U.S., I soon found out that my view was too narrowed because everything I learned in China was what the Chinese party was teaching me. It seemed to me that there was no doubt that Chinese party was always doing the right thing for my country and the people. However, when one day my history teacher asked me about the protests in front of the Tiananmen Square in 1989, I was petrified. I was reluctant to admit that I had never learned such an event when I was in China. There was nothing related to this event in any of my history book, and neither of my peers knew much about it. Plus the censorship of a lot of websites, I never got an opportunity to get exposed to learning such an event. That was the moment I realized that politics was never an easy thing and there was always a reason to doubt what are being told.
Media indeed helped me learn more about China — my home country — in both positive and negative ways. American press and Youtube helped me discover many truths that I used to believe wrongly about China. At the same time, I realized that a lot of Americans held bias towards China as well. In terms of the Kunming attach happened last month, in which 8 terrorists targeted against civilians, using knifes stabbing people in the train station, leaving 29 people died and more than one hundred people injured. The event stirred up great panic in China, and a lot of Chinese people expressed their sympathies for the families of the victims. However, when I read the newspaper in the U.S., I found that American medias reported a lot about how China mistreated Xinjiang (the place where the terrorists came from) and judged that Xinjiang should become an independent country of its own, instead of showing sympathies for the victims. I know each country may take different positions in political events, but I think that sometimes China was misunderstood or misrepresented in a lot of Americans’ eyes because of the fact that it is ruled by the communist party. Nevertheless, we should always tell the truth and strengthen the communications between the countries. To this perspective, properly using media probably will eventually become the best way to remove the barriers between the countries and their people.
This event reminds me of the politics in China. As I was growing up in China, I never thought too much about politics of China before I came to America. But after I came to the U.S., I soon found out that my view was too narrowed because everything I learned in China was what the Chinese party was teaching me. It seemed to me that there was no doubt that Chinese party was always doing the right thing for my country and the people. However, when one day my history teacher asked me about the protests in front of the Tiananmen Square in 1989, I was petrified. I was reluctant to admit that I had never learned such an event when I was in China. There was nothing related to this event in any of my history book, and neither of my peers knew much about it. Plus the censorship of a lot of websites, I never got an opportunity to get exposed to learning such an event. That was the moment I realized that politics was never an easy thing and there was always a reason to doubt what are being told.
Media indeed helped me learn more about China — my home country — in both positive and negative ways. American press and Youtube helped me discover many truths that I used to believe wrongly about China. At the same time, I realized that a lot of Americans held bias towards China as well. In terms of the Kunming attach happened last month, in which 8 terrorists targeted against civilians, using knifes stabbing people in the train station, leaving 29 people died and more than one hundred people injured. The event stirred up great panic in China, and a lot of Chinese people expressed their sympathies for the families of the victims. However, when I read the newspaper in the U.S., I found that American medias reported a lot about how China mistreated Xinjiang (the place where the terrorists came from) and judged that Xinjiang should become an independent country of its own, instead of showing sympathies for the victims. I know each country may take different positions in political events, but I think that sometimes China was misunderstood or misrepresented in a lot of Americans’ eyes because of the fact that it is ruled by the communist party. Nevertheless, we should always tell the truth and strengthen the communications between the countries. To this perspective, properly using media probably will eventually become the best way to remove the barriers between the countries and their people.