Re/What works > Social Media = More Than Selfie Posing + Self-Promotion

Wael Ghonim, Internet activist and computer engineer, believes that the Internet can be the most powerful platform for connecting humanity, if we can bring civility and thoughtful conversations back to it.
In just six days his 13:34 You Tube video Let's design social media that drives real change  filmed in December of last year and uploaded on January 13, 2016 has attracted 238,444 viewers.
While there are obvious advantages to social media, some claim that it has a deceptive presence that gives people a false sense of satisfaction just from clicking a button without taking any real action or risks.

For your MesaZona blogger, I am thrilled to see such a forward-thinking venture develop as a way to engage more people with politics and thus improve engaging citizens, increase transparency with insisting on open data, and establish accountability in government using digital democracy.
All are clearly stated outcomes and goals for the City of Mesa in Bloomberg's WhatWorksCities.
Simply put: interactive communication undoubtedly increases the accountability of governments.

What did Wael Ghonim do? He anonymously created a Facebook page. It had more fans than established media organizations and even top celebrities.He crowd-sourced ideas from people - It made people realize that they were not alone. Then came the consequences. His online world became a battleground filled with trolls, lies, hate speech. He stayed silent for two more than two years, using the time to reflect on everything that happened, trying to understand why did it happen. It became clear to him that while it's true that polarization is primarily driven by our human behavior, social media shapes this behavior and magnifies its impact. Say you want to say something that is not based on a fact, pick a fight or ignore someone that you don't like. These are all natural human impulses, but because of technology, acting on these impulses is only one click away.

What does he say now? 
There are five critical challenges facing today's social media:
1. We don't know how to deal with rumors. Rumors that confirm people's biases are now believed and spread among millions of people.
2. We create our own echo chambers. We tend to only communicate with people that we agree with, and thanks to social media, we can mute, un-follow and block everybody else.
3. Online discussions quickly descend into angry mobs. All of us probably know that. It's as if we forget that the people behind screens are actually real people and not just avatars.
4. It became really hard to change our opinions. Because of the speed and brevity of social media, we are forced to jump to conclusions and write sharp opinions in 140 characters about complex world affairs. And once we do that, it lives forever on the Internet, and we are less motivated to change these views, even when new evidence arises.
5. -- and in his point of view, this is the most critical -- today, our social media experiences are designed in a way that favors broadcasting over engagements, posts over discussions, shallow comments over deep conversations. It's as if we agreed that we are here to talk at each other instead of talking with each other.