[iDC] The Twitter Revolution Must Die

Mon Jan 31 22:29:06 UTC 2011

Thanks Ulises for an interesting post and I am waiting eagerly for your book - very timely!

But I think there is a real can of worms is opened (but hopefully not closed) by your post! The first thing we could say is: where are the good critical contemporary analyses of the roles played by a range of media in social movements? We could look to all the work done on web and online media (by which I mean mailing lists, websites etc) in the Euro-MayDay movements across the first part of this decade. Then there's the excellent article on texting and crowds in the Philippines during the early 2000s by Vincente Rafael titled 'the Cell Phone and the Crowd: Messianic Politics in the Contemporary Philippines' from 2003. But what's clear from these eflections is that the social contexts and technologies deployed during both these periods and places constitute a specific 'socio-technical ensemble' (Guattari), in which we have to ask: to what other spheres or universes – aesthetic, economic, cultural, political – do these technologies and movements refer and envelop? Rafael does a great job, for instance, in bringing out the phantasmatic sets of beliefs around the mobile phone held by middle class Filipinos and what they believed this could do for them 'on the streets' and in relation to 'the masses'. He also asks: why texting? And answers: because phone services as opposed to computer access virtually cost nothing in the Philippines at that time.

What is missing from contemporary analyses of social media in relation to social movements is this kind of careful tracing and investigation of the conjunctions of media and technologies that help to constitute the particularity of a given socio-technical ensemble. How for instance would the role of social media in the Austrian student protests of 2009 differ from the ways in which these feature in Egypt right now? I agree the moniker of 'Twitter Revolution' etc is ridiculous...nonetheless, what is the specific and differential role of text-messaging, of online social media etc in the energetics of a crowd's movements, meeting places etc? It will take, I would imagine, Middle Eastern theorists, activists and participants to chart this kind of thing for the contemporary moment in Egypt, Tunisia... 

The problem of naming things 'the twitter revolution' is more endemic than 'branding' and – I guess this is something you deal with in your book Ulises (?)–  goes to the heart of the problem of 'social' media. That is, what's the model of the 'social' here except for the nodal connectivty of already constituted individuals ('friends'), with their habits, patterns and online 'identity'. How can we possibly conceive, then, of a conjunction of social media with social movements? A social movement is never a collection of linked nodes but is first and foremost a  moving ( ie dynamic, heterogeneous and nonpredictable) collectivity. Social movements and social media occupy two different scales and modes of doing and thinking the social...but it would be interesting to attempt generate a consistency through which we might re-think their relations...this may well have to begin not with 'how do people use Twitter, ie what are they tweeting, what pictures get circulated ?' in periods of social protest but rather: 'how does a (particular) crowd become and move via relations between physical and telecommunications spaces?' 

best Anna 

On 31/01/2011, at 2:56 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.]
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity (
>>> distributedcreativity.org)
>>> iDC at mailman.thing.net
>>> https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc
>>> 
>>> List Archive:
>>> http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/
>>> 
>>> iDC Photo Stream:
>>> http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/
>>> 
>>> RSS feed:
>>> http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc
>>> 
>>> iDC Chat on Facebook:
>>> http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2457237647
>>> 
>>> Share relevant URLs on Del.icio.us by adding the tag iDCref
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity (distributedcreativity.org)
>> iDC at mailman.thing.net
>> https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc
>> 
>> List Archive:
>> http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/
>> 
>> iDC Photo Stream:
>> http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/
>> 
>> RSS feed:
>> http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc
>> 
>> iDC Chat on Facebook:
>> http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2457237647
>> 
>> Share relevant URLs on Del.icio.us by adding the tag iDCref
> _______________________________________________
> iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity (distributedcreativity.org)
> iDC at mailman.thing.net
> https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc
> 
> List Archive:
> http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/
> 
> iDC Photo Stream:
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/
> 
> RSS feed:
> http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc
> 
> iDC Chat on Facebook:
> http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2457237647
> 
> Share relevant URLs on Del.icio.us by adding the tag iDCref

A/Prof. Anna Munster
Deputy Director Centre for Contemporary Art and Politics
College of Fine Arts
UNSW
P.O. Box 259
Paddington
NSW 2021
612 9385 0741 (tel)
612 9385 0615(fax)
a.munster at unsw.edu.au