Citizen Empowerment In Today’S Society

Citizen empowerment in today’s society

We live in a binary world in terms of the antagonistic character presented by our positions. This ideological binarism frequently translates at a social level in a polarization. Regarding this, Lozada establishes that it generates a narrowing of the perceptual field (unfavorable and stereotyped perception: "we-ellos") and entails a strong emotional burden (acceptance and rejection without nuances) and a personal involvement (any fact affects theperson), in such a way that the other stops to be seen as a couple and hinders the possibilities of dialogue and reaching agreements. Personally, for example, I have a vegan philosophy of life. It entailed to put me in one of the poles, in a minorMy family and affective jurisdiction. The vegan is unfailingly stigmatized as a weirdo, a fundamentalist, who is not recognized as a being with a complex political orientation and ideology.

It also states that social polarization fractures the social fabric while favoring the naturalization and legitimation of violence. Each sector increases its hermeticism as a collective, perceiving external groups as possible enemies. This social rupture is in numerous cases servile to political and economic interests and is fogged by a malicious and intentional management of information. Thus, keeping the population busy in the internal struggle moves them away from activism for urgent causes that bother economic power.

However, in this society where information is manipulated and biased by hegemonic media, social networks are presented as a disruptive way to communicate, congregate and call reflection and fight.

García-Galera et al. (2014) raise as a question what do social networks have to influence their users who have not previously had other media, such as television, whose effects on the audiences – and their mobilization of them through the medium -have studied for decades?. In response they indicate that the networks link two obvious features: immediacy and interactivity.

“Digital communication dilutes geographical limits and provides rapid access, at low cost and open to an unlimited number of participants, which results in the behavior of audiences, giving them an action capacity that alters the traditional unidirectional and descending communicative modelin which the media or other social agents issue their messages to the rest, towards a model where interaction with information producers is possible and even adopt that creative role from the technological tools of self-edition, enabling the so -called journalismcitizen or user generated content, as well as social networks ” 

Consumers are suddenly transformed into content producers and information transmitters. García-Galera et al.  They point out that “users no longer play a single role of receptors, barely abandoned in the communication process of traditional Mass-Media, but alternately assume the role of receptors and emitters, almost innate alternation to interpersonal communication that now nowmoves to global communication ".

In this way, the focus of the problems is not put only by media and multinationals but is democratized and allows user plurality to manifest as activists of various movements. Thus increases the possibilities of issuing content in which situations of social injustice are denounced, abuse. Any individual can have a global impact on their dialogue.

It is in this premise, among others, that the Fridays For Future movement is supported. In the words of Greta Thunberg, its founder, "No one is too small to make a difference". Gretha began the movement, mainly integrated by students from secondary schools around the world, in August 2018 with only fifteen years of age and pursues the peaceful protest throughout the globe to demand that governments take a more positionconscious and active regarding climate change and its responsibility in it. The adhesion that it has presented has had an impact on numerous countries, less than a year after having begun, and counts as the main engine of dissemination and activism with social networks.

However, social networks are not a panacea. Democratize consumption and issuance of information is not always good. With this democratization, the phenomenon of misinformation is also given, according to which intentionally false information is created that spreads through the networks and is adopted by users as true as true. Such information is generated for three purposes: the first, simply for fun purposes. The user who produces the content just wants to make a joke and see how far it spreads. The second, for profit. News are made to gain influx to the page that hosts them and thus obtain greater monetary income from advertising. The third, and most dangerous, as a social management tool. The population is misinforma in order to make it position in this or that way with respect to a current issue, or to reinforce ideas and prejudices already present in the consumer (Ibidem). This poses an even greater problem with polarization since the user is not only exposed to a deceptive manipulation of the information but can also take for certain totally false information. According to a study published in the American Portal Schools.com In 2012, almost 50% of the people surveyed had known news news through which they had later turned out to be false.

Since it is too new and still unexplored terrain, Jiménez states that legislation is not the solution since it can scratch freedom of expression in a bias. On the contrary, he says, he is in citizen empowerment, so that he can identify fallacious information and even denounce it. Education must be generated and people aware about the problem. In this regard, Villegas states that the solution is also in generating quality journalism, where the sources and veracity of the content are easily verifiable.

In this way, the exercise must be joint. The user is seen in a check position since as a consumer he must access a diversity of sources of the best possible quality that allow him to contrast their content from each other and generate their own trial. In turn, as a content creator, an awareness of the use of these tools must be forged since the social impact is increasingly evidence.

As the mobilization of Fridays for Future there are hundreds, perhaps thousands or even more, of causes that nucle people from various parts of the world. Of various realities, ideologies, beliefs, doctrines. People who perhaps otherwise would not relate and, even less, they would combine efforts in pursuit of a common cause. However, by appropriating these new spaces to urge rebellion, struggle, cohesion, we discover that the times the barriers are diluted if we have the same objective if we have the same objective. We do not need to think like those who accompany us in our battles, but, on the contrary, we need to continue working together to achieve synergies and gradually conquer these common ideals. We have the opportunity to see ourselves reflected in the other as a couple, to deconstruct the polarization and secrecy that preceded us.

Social networks are constituted as a powerful tool, which allows us. However, we must be aware that, being a mode of construction of knowledge and social movements on which we are learning on the march, we are also vulnerable to the manipulation of which we intend to free ourselves.

The paradigm shift is imminent, but we are not going to see ourselves involved in it if we do not repetition first as individuals. We have to rethink our realities, privileges and axioms to be able to build a different future. From the point of view of consumption and generation of information, we must diversify in this regard in order not to fall into a feedback of our belief system. We must expose ourselves to opposed ideas to ours that force us to analyze our assumptions, either to collapse or to strengthen them, eradicating the binary categorization of society and considering the other always as a couple. We have the obligation to erect transparent spaces in which the common construction of information is a citizen empowerment tool, constituting ourselves as agents of change.