Laura Jordan
Senior, Media Studies
In February 2004, Mark Zuckerberg created a website called Facebook (www.facebook.com), originally designed as a tool to “help people better understand the world around them by developing technologies that facilitate the spread of information through social networks.” Today, a mere two years later, there are over 10 million registered users across 40,000 regional, work, college and high school networks.
Anyone can join Facebook by registering through an active email account. By registering with a school or work email account, you will be able to access profiles of classmates or coworkers. Once you have registered, you can create a profile to connect with friends, share interests, join groups, send messages, and share photos. To keep information private, detailed privacy options control profile accessibility.
Global Activism
When initially developed, it was not one of Facebook’s goals to create a platform for global activism, yet that has been one of the outcomes of the website. As a result of high exposure and a growing membership, groups are forming to raise the visibility of issues that are often overlooked by today’s youth.
Marek Grodizicki has been one of the most publicized founders of this type of public awareness group. By organizing a group called, “For Every 1,000 That Join This Group, I Will Donate $1 For Darfur,” he hopes to raise awareness and give the crisis in Darfur the attention he feels it deserves. When joining this network, the user is transferred to a site with a complete description of the group and links to more information on current issues in Darfur. Although Gina Botti, a senior in the College of Communications at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, already knew about the controversies abroad, she reasoned, “I wanted to be part of a group that actually had a purpose. I think it is very important to educate people about the tragedy that plagues the people of Darfur. This group is a great idea because it has become another way to spread the word about Darfur.”
Another goal of the group is to raise money and inspire others to donate to charitable organizations on their own. Currently, this group has 485,000 members, meaning that Grodizicki will be donating at least $485 of his own money to Unicef for Darfur. He is also writing to companies and corporations asking them to match the donations, either by matching the total that he is donating or by asking them to donate $1 for every 100 people that join.
Grodizicki’s group has motivated several others to take part in Darfur awareness—“400,000 Faces” is another group addressing this issue. This group is trying to achieve a membership goal of 400,000 members; each person represents one person who has died in Darfur. Carly Andersen, a junior in the U of I College of Communications, is one of the 259,000 members currently in this group. She says, “I think that its good intentions are worth something, and popular as Facebook is, it has the potential to educate someone.”
When the goal is met, all 400,000 profile icons will be arranged and printed in packets to send to senators, representatives, UN officials, local and major news stations, and other opinion leaders. At the end of the description, the group boasts, “The group gives you the ability to make a huge difference by doing very little…as they say, a picture is worth 1,000 words.”
While some groups focus on awareness and donations, others have different goals in mind. “Arab and Arab-American Students Organization—North America” is a non-profit organization that connects the Arab and Arab-American communities through Facebook. Their goal is to coordinate the efforts of Arab student organizations throughout the nation to create initiatives and programs on national and global levels that one chapter cannot accomplish by itself. They are also seeking to establish the necessary social and cultural depth for the Arab communities on different campuses. These students are seeking the role of critical and strategic mediators between American society and Arab-American communities.
This group has brought 1,368 people together from campuses in the United States such as Harvard, MIT, Northeastern, and the University of Illinois to work toward a common goal with students on campuses in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Sharjah. One student from the University of Massachusetts wrote, “It is so wonderful to have Arab-American friends in the Facebook.” Currently, the group as a whole is celebrating the victory of Keith Ellison, the first Muslim to be elected to the U.S. Congress with a seat in the House of Representatives.
Other groups are following this pattern of cultural connections through Facebook. “Czech!” is a group that is limited to the University of Illinois network, meaning all 93 members have recently attended or are attending U of I. This is a group created for people of Czech (Bohemian or Moravian) descent or who are interested in the Czech Republic. The site offers information on ways to determine if someone has Czech heritage. It also offers a link to a site that has a list of common Czech names and their meanings. Through the discussion board on the group’s page, a junior from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Lisa Musser, and a junior from the College of Engineering, Mike Vasak, traced their heritage and discovered they were distantly related.
Aside from cultural connections and increasing awareness of international issues, Facebook also acts as a conduit for communication for students all over the world. According to International Student and Scholar Services at the University of Illinois, there are currently 5,146 international students on the U of I campus. While some international students may not have known what Facebook was when they came to the United States, they quickly discovered this tool. Sebastian Meisinger, a student visiting from Vienna, Austria states, “I didn’t know about Facebook before I came here. When people started asking me if I have Facebook, I created an account.” This exchange student, studying Speech Communication, was quick to add, “Most of the other international exchange students I know created accounts too.”
One reason that Facebook has proved popular with international students is that it gives them the ability to quickly upload photos and share them with friends and family back home. They can also send free messages to friends with accounts and receive messages from friends in their home country. While Meisinger often relies on Skype, a new tool which offers the routing of voice conversations over the internet, to communicate with friends back in Austria, he likes Facebook for its ability to display photo albums, as well as the networking profiles that allow him to search for people in his classes and different groups that are available to join.
When created, no one knew if Facebook would catch on or if it would be viewed as just another website where people can post their personal information. Within two years of its inception, Facebook has over 10 million registered users. This type of networking tool has been used for a variety of reasons, from finding classmates to keeping in touch with old friends to creating cultural and global awareness of events going on around the world.