I am writing this article when Sandy stormed the States: the campus is closed, and I could do nothing in my dormitory except refreshing my Facebook page again and again. Most of my friends online are talking about how Sandy has devastated the cities, and of course, how many days of break they enjoy in their respective colleges. It is amazing to see that at times of emergency, members of the online community, who have varied interests and preferences, suddenly draw their focus to one single incident at the same time and discuss intensely the ramifications/implications to society.

I visited the 911 Memorial at Ground Zero just one day before Sandy arrived in New York (and I barely made my way back to Princeton). The visit reminded me a similar case in 2001 after the shocking terrorist attack which draws the whole world’s attention to the two skyscrapers in the city. Almost everyone in every online community (Facebook included) instantly dropped what they were discussing prior to the attack and started searching for ‘Al-Qaeda’ and ‘World Trade Center’.

So how are these incidents related to the ‘power’ of social-networking websites? Even without the online communities, we are still informed of the latest incidents through TV, newspaper, radio and other media forms. Websites like Facebook do not change how we receive information; it changes the way we interact with information we have. Instead of passive receivers of news, we feel more engaged in the current local/global activities by discussing it over the Internet. And websites like Facebook help spread our voices to people and places we might never know before. The widespread user-generated opinions create links among different groups, and those opinions which represent popular views are resonated and amplified and could themselves become the key factors in the courses of development of the news.

The shared anger displayed online after the 911 attack was one factor behind the US war in Afghanistan; the common sorrow expressed by millions of people around the world for the innocent lives lost in the attack urged the US government to build the memorial and designate 9/11 every year as the Patriot Day. Similarly, the general concern on Facebook towards those suffering from the hurricane is also pressurizing the government to do more for them, especially during the critical election period. All these facts testify the power of Facebook and other social-networking websites – instead of letting us witness the news of yesterday, they enable us normal users to create news of tomorrow.

This analysis also brought to my mind the earthquake in Sichuan, China in 2008. Millions of Renren users in China displayed great sorrow and organized voluntary donations online. But that was not the most astonishing power of the website. Renren actually became the platform for anonymous users to expose local governors who misused/appropriated donations for personal benefits! Hundreds of such incidents have been uncovered during that year and even the central government of China was shocked by the rampant corruption in many provincial and municipal governments. And of course, the general public was more than unhappy about these governors and many of them were dismissed immediately. The social-networking website became the place where normal citizens strongly influenced the political system of China which was rather uncommon before the rise of such websites. Everyone plays a key role in this political change as every piece of opinion shared online added intensity to the public fury; Renren united all these users and directed their common anger towards the government. Without any one of them, the change would not happen.

Natural disasters and man-made incidents have the power to take away lives and wreak havoc on our society, but social-networking websites have the power to unite us, no matter how different we are, so that we can counter the negative impacts and build a better world. We feel a sense of close involvement with what is happening in the world when we are using Facebook and similar websites. This feel is the power they endow us, and is exactly the reason why we enjoy using them.