Opinion: Debating social media and revolution

by Tanya O’Carroll

Were the recent uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt “Twitter Revolutions”? This debate has echoed back and forth across Columbia in the past six weeks. No less than five panel discussions have taken place on campus, with leading academics, journalists and activists offering their insights on the potential and the limitations of social networks as a mechanism for social change.

Eben Moglen, Columbia Law Professor and Founding Director of the Software Freedom Law Center, opened the Morningside Post´s conference on “Information Overload? Navigating the Age of Democratized Media” at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) on February 12. His voice was resoundingly optimistic that online social networks can, and are, transforming real world social networks.

“It is not the technology,” Moglen said. “It is that human beings have figured something out about the social world. What the network does is teach human beings that the cost of solidarity has gone down.”

Moglen cited Egypt as a leading example of social networks being used to connect people, facilitate dialogue across ideological lines and forge strong ties between citizens. In his opinion, this explains why Mubarak could turn off the Internet but was unable to turn off the Internet generation. His view is in stark contrast to critics like Malcolm Gladwell, who argues that the type of social activism associated with social media is built around weak ties and cannot sufficiently explain the sorts of high-risk activism witnessed in places like Egypt.

The two camps, exaggerated by the media, have sparked a lively series of discussions at Columbia. Most panelists unsurprisingly emphasized academic nuance over definitive answer. Anne Nelson, who teaches “New Media in Development Communications” at SIPA, agreed that social networks present new tactics to challenge power because they supplant the legacy media´s monopoly on information. Yet, she also emphasized the importance of situating social networks within the wider “media ecosystems” that facilitate action on the ground.

In Egypt, a country of 82 million people, only 1 million have broadband Internet, and only 15,000 have Twitter accounts. Hundreds of thousands more have access to Facebook, but as Nelson pointed out, the 82 million cell phones in Egypt were surely more instrumental in facilitating fast and responsive organization during the peak of the demonstrations than any social network.

Similar themes were discussed at the filming of Al Jazeera´s short documentary on “Social Networks, Social Revolution,” which took place on February 11 at the Journalism School.

Democracy Now´s Amy Goodman emphasized that ultimately, it is people who make revolutions, and in doing so, they use whatever tools that they can. Evgeny Morozov, author of “The Net Delusion” and so-called cyber critic, pointed out that the revolutionaries in Iran in 1979 made excellent use of tape recorders to smuggle in sermons, and that in 1989 commentators were quick to call events in Europe “telerevolutions.” In retrospect, Morozov argues, the role of these tools in the wider events of both 1979 and 1989 has become a seemingly minor point.

If social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter have been instrumental in the Middle East, most panelists agreed that it was in amplifying and accelerating change.

“What has occurred that is so threatening to despots is the availability to reach so many people so quickly, and to permeate borders,” said Carl Bernstein, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist famous for his role in covering the Watergate scandal. “Now we have these amazing tools that up the ante.”

But when asked by the program’s presenter, Marwan Bishara, whether or not consensus could be reached that the marriage between activism and social networks has “reinvented Egypt as we see today,” Bernstein drew laughter from the audience by asking exasperatedly why we need a definitive answer.

The full effect of new media and the role that these tools play in movements for social justice in the future is certainly unpredictable. Yet, with screens at both the Morningside Post conference and Al Jazeera broadcast running a Twitter feed of live commentary from the audience, it seemed clear that new media platforms are changing the dynamics of communication and social interaction.

Published in RightsNews Volume 29, no. 3, May, 2011.
Download issue as PDF