Social Media Is Redistributing Power

摘要

Social media ha s become an important part of people’s daily life and the whole society , which not only transform s forms of communication , but also ha s the ability to redistribute power by transforming the relationship between governments and citizens, by giving citizens more opportunity to participant political, spreading democracy awareness, having power to contend against the unfair social events and surveilling the behavior of governments . It also challenge s the position of traditional media and democratize s media and information. The aim of this essay is to explore how social media can redistribute power. The main method used is case study, along with documentary analysis, statistical analysis, and personal observation. It is divided into four sections. The first section will briefly discuss how social media transform s the forms of communication; the power of social media shifting in political sphere will be discussed in the second section; the third section will explore the power shifted and redistributed between social media and traditional media; and the dark side of the over powered social media will be discussed in the fourth section.