[iDC] The Twitter Revolution Must Die

Michael H Goldhaber michael at goldhaber.org
Wed Feb 2 05:31:52 UTC 2011 

Brian's statement in particular seems to me overly hotheaded. The fact is that hackers might have come up with easy to use tools such as Twitter and Facebook, popularized them  and given them away free, but they didn't manage to do so, partly, I suspect because they were not especially interested in making easy-to-use tools for the technically challenged. As far as I can tell, the developers of Facebook and Twitter were only partly motivated by money, but they saw the need to make easy-to-use tools to penetrate a new market. Simply to condemn them for that is absurd. Of course it's unclear at this point whether Tunisia or Egypt would have changed without such tools, and it's also absurd to apply specific brand names to these revolts. I have never been alone in believing that the Civil Rights movement in the South could not have gotten as far as it did without nightly TV network news bringing the events to the whole country in such vivid form, but that doesn't mean the episode should be renamed the ABC/NBC/CBS movement. 

Also, Mubarak is not the only dictator in Egypt's history. Nasser and Sadat preceded him, and the first was certainly not a client principally of the US. The rule by  a narrow class in Egypt doesn't owe itself only to American benediction, just as Pakistan's absurd level of inequality doesn't. 

Best,
Michael

On Feb 1, 2011, at 8:10 AM, Gabriella Coleman wrote:

> Hi folks,
> 
> Just echoing what many have said (thanks Ulises).
> 
> For me, what seems significant to social media is the fact of
> co-witnessing global events and what that might mean for how we, to
> quote Brian "listen to what people in the Middle East and   elsewhere
> have to say, whatever the medium they use, and let's talk
> about their fates and the ways they intertwine with those of other
> people in other lands, including ourselves in our own confrontations
> with corrupt rulers and special interests."
> 
> I can't but help think to 1883 and the telegraph and Krakatoa, which
> many hailed as the first global media event that allowed many folks
> scattered across the globe to witness as some level something thousands
> and thousands of miles away. This co-witnessing has now been unfolding
> for over a century and in distinct ways with the mix of new technologies
> but is happening in some new ways with live commentary and with the help
> of established media entries like AJ who are showing such a different
> picture than let's say CNN, and which we can see due to the Internet.
> 
> I am not going to make any grand pronouncements as to what this watching
> and  co-witnessing means (and I do think that proprietary corporate
> owned platforms pose so many problems, even for this) but it is worth
> putting on the table.
> 
> Biella
> 
> 
> On 01/30/2011 10:56 PM, Brian Holmes wrote:
>> I totally agree. The noise about Twitter and Facebook revolutions is 
>> part of United States propaganda in its attempt to continue imposing 
>> liberal empire on the world. Frankly, it's disgusting and it's about to 
>> be over: the dictator supported by billions of dollars in US aid every 
>> year for the last thirty years is about to fall, with any luck, opening 
>> a new era in which force will not so easily rule in the name of 
>> democracy. If this change happens it will be because brave people paid 
>> with their lives on the streets, not because of some company looking to 
>> make money by archiving your thoughts and selling them to other 
>> corporations. Let's listen to what people in the Middle East and 
>> elsewhere have to say, whatever the medium they use, and let's talk 
>> about their fates and the ways they intertwine with those of other 
>> people in other lands, including ourselves in our own confrontations 
>> with corrupt rulers and special interests. There is no more time for 
>> branding. Ulises' text is pertinent, beautiful, just. Thanks Ulises.
>> 
>> saludos desde Mexico, Brian
>> 
>> On 01/30/2011 03:38 PM, Radhika Gajjala wrote:
>>> thankyou for this!
>>> 
>>> I've been quietly fuming over the "is it a facebook or a twitter revolution"
>>> question!
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Sun, Jan 30, 2011 at 11:32 AM, Ulises Mejias<ulises.mejias at oswego.edu>wrote:
>>> 
>>>> [for citation hyperlinks and images, go to
>>>> http://blog.ulisesmejias.com/2011/01/30/the-twitter-revolution-must-die/]
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> THE TWITTER REVOLUTION MUST DIE
>>>> 
>>>> Have you ever heard of the Leica Revolution? No?
>>>> 
>>>> That’s probably because folks who don’t know anything about “branding”
>>>> insist on calling it the
>>>> Mexican Revolution. An estimated two million people died in the long
>>>> struggle (1910-1920) to
>>>> overthrow a despotic government and bring about reform. But why
>>>> shouldn’t we re-name the
>>>> revolution not after a nation or its people, but after the “social
>>>> media” that had such a great
>>>> impact in making the struggle known all over the world: the
>>>> photographic camera? Even
>>>> better, let’s name the revolution not after the medium itself, but
>>>> after the manufacturer of the
>>>> cameras that were carried by people like Hugo Brehme to document the
>>>> atrocities of war. Viva
>>>> Leica, cabrones!
>>>> 
>>>> My sarcasm is, of course, a thinly veiled attempt to point out how
>>>> absurd it is to refer to events
>>>> in Iran, Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere as the Twitter Revolution, the
>>>> Facebook Revolution, and
>>>> so on. What we call things, the names we use to identify them, has
>>>> incredible symbolic power,
>>>> and I, for one, refuse to associate corporate brands with struggles
>>>> for human dignity. I agree
>>>> with Jillian York when she says:
>>>> 
>>>> “… I am glad that Tunisians were able to utilize social media to bring
>>>> attention to their plight.
>>>> But I will not dishonor the memory of Mohamed Bouazizi–or the 65
>>>> others that died on the
>>>> streets for their cause–by dubbing this anything but a human revolution.”
>>>> 
>>>> Granted, as Joss Hands points out, there appears to be more skepticism
>>>> than support for the
>>>> idea that tools like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are primarily
>>>> responsible for igniting the
>>>> uprisings in question. But that hasn’t stopped the internet
>>>> intelligentsia from engaging in
>>>> lengthy arguments about the role that technology is playing in these
>>>> historic developments.
>>>> One camp, comprised of people like Clay Shirky, seem to make
>>>> allowances for what Cory
>>>> Doctorow calls the “internet’s special power to connect and liberate.”
>>>> On the other side,
>>>> authors like Ethan Zuckerman, Malcolm Gladwell and Evgeny Morozov have
>>>> proposed that
>>>> while digital media can play a role in organizing social movements, it
>>>> cannot be counted on to
>>>> build lasting alliances, or even protect net activists once
>>>> authorities start using the same tools
>>>> to crack down on dissent.
>>>> 
>>>> Both sides are, perhaps, engaging in a bit of technological
>>>> determinism–one by embellishing
>>>> the agency of technology, the other by diminishing it. The truth, as
>>>> always, is somewhere in
>>>> between, and philosophers of technology settled the dispute of whether
>>>> technology shapes
>>>> society (technological determinism) or society shapes technology
>>>> (cultural materialism) a while
>>>> ago: the fact is that technology and society mutually and continually
>>>> determine each other.
>>>> 
>>>> So why does the image of a revolution enabled by social media continue
>>>> to grab headlines
>>>> and spark the interest of Western audiences, and what are the dangers
>>>> of employing such
>>>> imagery? My fear is that the hype about a Twitter/Facebook/YouTube
>>>> revolution performs two
>>>> functions: first, it depoliticizes our understanding of the conflicts,
>>>> and second, it whitewashes
>>>> the role of capitalism in suppressing democracy.
>>>> 
>>>> To elaborate, the discourse of a social media revolution is a form of
>>>> self-focused empathy in
>>>> which we imagine the other (in this case, a Muslim other) to be
>>>> nothing more than a projection
>>>> of our own desires, a depoliticized instant in our own becoming. What
>>>> a strong affirmation of
>>>> ourselves it is to believe that people engaged in a desperate struggle
>>>> for human dignity are
>>>> using the same Web 2.0 products we are using! That we are able to form
>>>> this empathy largely
>>>> on the basis of consumerism demonstrates the extent to which we have
>>>> bought into the notion
>>>> that democracy is a by-product of media products for self-expression,
>>>> and that the
>>>> corporations that create such media products would never side with
>>>> governments against their
>>>> own people.
>>>> 
>>>> It is time to abandon this fantasy, and to realize that although the
>>>> internet’s original
>>>> architecture encouraged openness, it is becoming increasingly
>>>> privatized and centralized.
>>>> While it is true that an internet controlled by a handful of media
>>>> conglomerates can still be
>>>> used to promote democracy (as people are doing in Tunisia, Egypt, and
>>>> all over the world), we
>>>> need to reconsider the role that social media corporations like
>>>> Facebook and Twitter will play
>>>> in these struggles.
>>>> 
>>>> The clearest way to understand this role is to simply look at the past
>>>> and current role that
>>>> corporations have played in “facilitating” democracy elsewhere.
>>>> Consider the above image of
>>>> the tear gas canister “fired against egyptians demanding democracy.”
>>>> The can is labeled
>>>> Made in U.S.A.
>>>> 
>>>> But surely it would be a gross calumny to suggest that ICT are on the
>>>> same level as tear gas,
>>>> right? Well, perhaps not. Today, our exports encompass not only
>>>> weapons of war and riot
>>>> control used to keep in power corrupt leaders, but tools of internet
>>>> surveillance like
>>>> Narusinsight, produced by a subsidiary of Boeing and used by the
>>>> Egyptian government to
>>>> track down and “disappear” dissidents.
>>>> 
>>>> Even without citing examples of specific Web companies that have aided
>>>> governments in the
>>>> surveillance and persecution of their citizens (Jillian York documents
>>>> some of these
>>>> examples), my point is simply that the emerging market structure of
>>>> the internet is threatening
>>>> its potential to be used by people as a tool for democracy. The more
>>>> monopolies (a market
>>>> structure characterized by a single seller) control access and
>>>> infrastructure, and the more
>>>> monopsonies (a market structure characterized by a single buyer)
>>>> control aggregation and
>>>> distribution of user-generated content, the easier it is going to be
>>>> for authorities to pull the
>>>> plug, as just happened in Egypt.
>>>> 
>>>> I’m reminded of the first so-called Internet Revolution. Almost a
>>>> hundred years after the
>>>> original Mexican Revolution, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation
>>>> launched an uprising in
>>>> southern Mexico to try to address some of the injustices that the
>>>> first revolution didn’t fix, and
>>>> that remain unsolved to this day. But back in 1994, Subcomandante
>>>> Marcos and the rest of
>>>> the EZLN didn’t have Facebook profiles, or use Twitter to communicate
>>>> or organize. Maybe
>>>> their movement would have been more effective if they had. Or maybe it
>>>> managed to stay
>>>> alive because of the decentralized nature of the networks the EZLN and
>>>> their supporters used.
>>>> 
>>>> My point is this: as digital networks grow and become more centralized
>>>> and privatized, they
>>>> increase opportunities for participation, but they also increase
>>>> inequality, and make it easier
>>>> for authorities to control them.
>>>> 
>>>> Thus, the real challenge is going to be figuring out how to continue
>>>> the struggle after the
>>>> network has been shut off. In fact, the struggle is going to be
>>>> against those who own and
>>>> control the network. If the fight can’t continue without Facebook and
>>>> Twitter, then it is doomed.
>>>> But I suspect the people of Iran, Tunisia and Egypt (unlike us)
>>>> already know this, out of sheer
>>>> necessity.
>>>> 
>>>> [Ulises A. Mejias is assistant professor at the State University of
>>>> New York, College at
>>>> Oswego. His book,  The Limits of Nodes: Unmapping the Digital Network,
>>>> is under review by
>>>> publishers.]
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>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
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> 
> -- 
> Gabriella Coleman, Assistant Professor
> NYU, Department of Media, Culture, & Communication
> On Leave 2010-2011, The Institute for Advanced Study
> http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/faculty_bios/view/Gabriella_Coleman
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