I am putting my senior capstone proposal up here because I really want feedback as I continue with my research.
Suggestions, comments, feedback. Please let me know what you think.
Key Idea:
Throughout modernity, societies have undergone major changes as a result of technological advances. The restructuring of labor, communications, the global market and networks on a local and global scale mark some of these changes. Our concept of identity too is shaped by technological innovations and the expansion of new and all-pervasive forms of media. Through a comparative historical analysis, a pattern may emerge that illuminates these processes. How has the interplay between technology and major socioeconomic and political changes in the past two hundred years charted a path whose endpoint is revolution? For my thesis project I wish to address this question by providing a historical context for the so-called Twitter and Facebook revolutions in the Arab world. While focusing on the latter, my aim is to find historical patterns by comparing them with the Revolutions of 1848. I hypothesize that the effect of the industrial revolution on the political movements of that time are homologous to the effect of information technologies on the current sociopolitical turmoil.
