[iDC] The Twitter Revolution Must Die

[Armin Wagner]

There's an emotional state of connectedness supplied by the novelty of "new media". For a short amount of time users seem to experience a new medium as something liberating them from conventional norms and barriers. It allows them to contact any participating person - regardless of class/age/gender/heritage/etc - in an informal manner. It's a big unifying club of "adopters" where you can send an email to the pope, a tweet to the president, where you can call anyone, anytime from a phone - http://bit.ly/dEJyGk

This usually wears off very fast - hence the continuous need for new "new media". But it helps the armchair revolutionary to fulfill his desires "by proxy". It gives bystanders the feelings of solidarity, achievement and power. It gives the postmodern observer the reassurance of doing something …by just looking at it. A Twitter Revolution allows people to experience 2nd-hand revolutionary enthusiasm.


On 31.01.2011, at 02:16, Ryan Harrell wrote:

> Good point.  I would say rather that it is a series of political changes spurred by changes in communication technology.  I don't know why people have to have a catch-phrase for everything.