Toyoma Chapter 5-7

From chapter 5 to 7 of Greek Heresy, Toyoma spends most pages talking about social changes and the promotion of such by media. For the author, this idea can sometimes go wrong. Sometimes, the knowledge in a specific place about a certain medium doesn't  meet the requirement of such medium. In other words, if a specific population doesn't have all the necessary information and capacities to use a specific technology, the consequences of that media in relation with the social change would be different than expected. The specific population won't benefit from such technology because they don't have the skills to use it. Within these chapters, multiple examples are giving about when media does not promote positive social change; but, nowadays, we can also see some examples of when this social change does occur in a more powerful and prodictive way because of different media and the correct use of them.

These chapters bring an interesting discussion to the table: to what extent can media be useful to promote social change? With examples that argue in favor of both sides of the discussion, now is up to the opinion of each individual to understand and explain why or why not media and new technology should be used to promote a social change.

I personally think that media has been helping, in most causes, to make revolutions and social changes more effective and powerful than they would be without them. By connecting a social movement or a social change with social media, an interaction with other people is established. This connection strengths the movement and improves it by adding new ideas to it over time. That being said, it is true that in order to make every social change more powerful by media, we need to be able to use the right media for each population. This means, some information has to be taken into consideration in terms of demographics or development, for examples, in order to use a medium that meets the requirements and skills of that specific place. A great example of a good job taking into consideration differences in demographics, was the social movement hole-in-a-wall that we talked about in class. In that case, the medium used was known by the population, but was considered relatively knew. It helped strengthen the movement and make it more successful over the years.