The nature of citizenship has changed in the last twenty years. Given the increasingly globalized world we live in, Marshall’s theory of citizenship is colliding with an increasing number of displaced populations and a globally mobile workforce, who might increasingly balk at the possibility of being civilly and socially responsible to people they share no shared history with. At the same time the creation of social media now allows us to interact and communicate immediately with whatever community we feel an allegiance to. This ubiquitousness of social media has a created a sort of cyber public square where people go to share the news, state political opinions and form bonds with like minded individuals.

Living abroad I rely heavily on Whatsapp and Facebook to sustain my connections. During the recent terrorist attack in Sri Lanka I found that I could not communicate with friends there because the government immediately moved to shut down Facebook and Whatsapp. Messages were simply not going through. Although this is an extreme (and very negative) example of how social media is now used as a political action tool, it led to my interest in understanding in which ways social media is shaping how we interact in the political sphere.

One way it has been particularly influential has been during uprisings in countries which earlier has limited access to ways of organizing publicly. The Arab Spring and the Hong Kong “Umbrella Revolution”. In this last case in particular many news outlets credited the uprisings initial success to social media communications. However, upon close inspection, in a study by Druzin and Li, they found that although the number of people connected and the general feeling of dissatisfaction where present, and social media boosted these two into a frenzy at first, the protests eventually fizzled. They argue that statements made at the time that social media would be a force for democracy were exaggerated. This is an interesting case, as is the aforementioned situation in Sri Lanka where both the government and the attackers were using social media as a tool for control.

We still don’t know the full extent in which social media will change how we behave politically. I believe we are only beginning to see the full effects recently and it will take years to understand the potential impact.

Druzin, B., and Jessica Li. "The Power of a Keystroke: Is Social Media the Radical Democratizing Force We’ve Been Led to Believe it is?." Harvard Human Rights Journal 28.1 (2015): 1-6.

https://www.sociologygroup.com/what-is-citizenship-marshall-theory/