Public Discourse (Namiki)

Throughout this course, we often talked about social media and its function. Social media could be repetitive topic to talk about, but I strongly believe that we have to talk about and be aware of what social media can do to us, especially the younger generations. The teachers in this class shared stories of their students, which was surprising but also expected facts. I don’t have kids or any children in my family yet, but I feel it is scary how children use social media and how they are influenced by it. Cyber-bullying is another thing that can ruin lives of people, and it could be the strongest and most complicated way to bully others. I have never been bullied, but I am scared for younger generations to go through what we did not experience. Is there any way we can learn without experiencing? 

As I presented in the last class, my topic is censorship of the internet and social media around the world. During my research so far, the most interesting and somewhat terrifying fact is the control of governments over the citizens who are brainwashed with the limited knowledge and information. Main reasons of censorship include protecting the government’s reputation and preventing conflicts caused by political or religious division and movements. These are more reasonable when they have authoritarian political system. However, blocking information from outside to control people is horrific for me who is able to know, learn and study without any restrictions.   Because I’m a native Japanese and (unfortunately) biased about certain neighboring Asian countries, I used to feel that the people of these countries are crazy, really crazy! They act as the leader want them to, and they say what the leader want them to. Now, I know how they have no choice to know the reality, which made me