[iDC] The Twitter Revolution Must Die

Mon Jan 31 01:16:43 UTC 2011

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.

---
Ryan Harrell
423-313-6405
www.ryanfreelance.com

On Sun, Jan 30, 2011 at 4:38 PM, Radhika Gajjala <radhika at cyberdiva.org>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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>
>
>
> --
> Radhika Gajjala
> Director, American Culture Studies
> Professor of Communication Studies and Cultural Studies
> 101 East Hall
> Bowling Green State University
> Bowling Green, OH  43403
>
> http://personal.bgsu.edu/~radhik <http://personal.bgsu.edu/%7Eradhik>
>
> "I am not young enough to know everything."
>  Oscar Wilde<http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/o/oscarwilde103675.html>
>
>
>
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