In this age of social media people get to witness what’s going on globally in a matter of minutes or less. Nothing can explain this fact better than the January 2010 catastrophe that hit Haiti in the form of an earthquake. People’s ability to act and support communities has greatly been increased.

The American public retweeted and posted on Facebook quickly and in even greater quantity. The social media manager at the American Red Cross Wendy Harman said that the kind of response received from the public was unprecedented for the Red Cross. She said it was the first time she truly felt like people were using these tools to take action for a good cause.

Some benefits of social media are as follows:

Democratization of Media: It has been a tumultuous time of change for many industries much of it driven by the Internet. The newspaper industry has been particularly affected by the Web and over the past 10 years, news media has under gone change parallel to the invention of the printing press in 1440. Blogging was a direct challenge to the newspapers and ended up shaking up the print media world. The traditional media has had to up its game as anyone can now publish 140 characters to the Web whether they are a writer or not and this might end up as breaking news as it was proven by the Hudson River plane crash.

Creativity and Remix Culture: Remix is a collage or a recombination of existing, reference images or music mashed up into something new. According to street artist Shephard Fairey, Remix is literacy in the 21^st Century. Copyright scholar Larry Lessig and author Steven Johnson have argued for free expression saying remix is form of self expression that should be allowed to flow without restriction across today’s digital world. The social media’s nature to travel globally has played a big role in trying to achieve this.

Communal Sharing and Connecting: Starting a business can be lonely but now, due to the increasing accessibility of people, ideas and information web communities can be based around business, entrepreneurship. Facebook and Twitter together with other social networks have become an amazing way to learn new lessons and keep in touch with other entrepreneurs.

Transparency in government and organizations: As the social media bug spreads, government and organizations are not left behind. People are now visiting the government sites to get factual information on legislative texts. They are able to give their views and feedback and this keeps the organizations in check. Other sites such as Tweet Congress allow citizens to find their elected officials and contact them directly. Transparency is a huge step because it is government’s way of saying they want to be collaborative and engage with citizens.