Social Media’s Power: Where’s the Net Delusion?
I’ve found the protests in Egypt, with the intent of overthrowing Hosni Mubarak, to be gripping, in terms of the larger debates around two major issues: (1) the role of new media in coordinating and empowering democratic political struggles, and (2) impacting the ways in which distant and local audiences see and understand the events occurring around the globe.
On the first point:
Many, from Malcolm Gladwell to the more recent book by Evgeny Morozov, have weighed in about our delusions of the Net. Some of these perspectives are based on the belief that techno-libertarian Western fantasies fuel an incorrect reading of the actual data. In developing world nations, internet access remains relatively limited, certainly in terms of bandwidth strength. And mobile phones which have profused worldwide, tend to remain as basic access-oriented devices (rather than “Smarter” phones) for most. In this reading, the masses may not be *directly* mobilized via the internet, and the internet as a *causal* factor in generating a political movement is mitigated. I’ve countered this perspective pointing to work done in Kyrgyzstan for example where my colleague and I saw that revolutionary leadership (the limited few) can benefit from internet technologies in early planning stages, even in conditions where many lack access to the technologies themselves. And as planning and missions are coordinated using the advantages of internet authorship, they can then be re-mediated into older forms, newspapers, messages in megaphones, zines, and posters in remote regions. My sense is that we tend to overstate the power of the quantitative data around use early on, ignoring the realities that often populist revolutions are fueled by a smaller group that tends to be literate, educated, and more tightly knit. The ability to author and share information via the internet nomadically (without having to assemble in the same place in other words), via such modes as scrambled proxy servers, and work on a message and strategy through coordinated sharing and reflection on information (like what we do when we co-write a paper on google docs, or respond to one another on a facebook wall post), speaks to the power that the internet has early on in terms of impacting causality and potential for a movement to actually occur. Moreover, these networks may move beyond borders – Egyptian activists today have pointed out that they were in internet-facilitated contact with activists in Tunisia as an example.
Is the above sufficient to inspire the type of movement that we see occurring in Egypt now? Likely not. However, it’s critical that the role of media is key to augmenting the spreading of the messages, the development of the mission, and the key element: the coordination of protests. It’s telling that the Egyptian government has now (in the fourth+ day of protests, and second since they became very large/animated) disabled most forms of internet access in the nation, including mobile phone coverage ( CNN Report Here). This speaks to the importance of the medium once the movement has reached a level of visibility and popularity. As more citizens are galvanized to protest and take to the streets, they have turned to the internet for information and Twitter/Facebook and other social media tools for coordination and updates. A Facebook page devoted to Friday’s planned protests had more than 80,000 followers as of 2 p.m. ET Thursday, compared with some 20,000 the previous day, according to another report. Once the movement has scaled to these levels, the technologies function to coordinate large numbers, which would not be easily achievable before, according to reports from the BBC, CNN, and Al Jazeera. Egypt is also the most populous nation in the Arab World, adding to this issue of scale. Facebook pages in memory of a dead victim ‘Khaled Said’, invoke the massive attention focused on Neda, the young woman assassinated during Iran’s Green revolution. And the hashtag #jan25 is dominating worldwide trends on Twitter.
Now the last two examples I raise point to my second point above, around the power of the net to take the local and rapidly make it global. This is a point that many are well aware of, so I won’t comment much here, except to say that I’ve been fascinated by the ways in which Al Jazeera has focused on covering this event (Live Stream Here). I was watching the live cast this morning and was interested in the ways in which they contrasted themselves to the Egyptian State-run Television. Specifically, they pointed out (in a blistering critique of the Egyptian State TV) the State’s real-time video feed which showed calm, peace, and the skyline of Cairo in contrast to their own video feed of activity on the streets, defiance of the curfew, and so on. They also pointed out that the video cameras were only located a couple hundred meters from one another, yet showed such contrasting views of the events on the ground. Clearly, the subjectivity of how one tells a story, and associated issues with journalistic integrity continue to dominate within the context of online video.
An important question thus persists whether in an old or new media era: What is the real story and who has the power to tell it? With the restrictions on internet access in Egypt, the ability to upload video and other media documentation is likely compromised. And even if one were exposed to those videos, the validity and credibility would need to be scrutinized. An aggregation of many videos, may not necessarily be easily digestible, as well, an issue that even YouTube is encountering, with its concern that users spend only an average of 18 minutes on the site per log-in (quite a bit lower than one’s average of the use of the television). And the other important question: Does the real-time, on-the-ground video feed of these distant events really shape Western audiences in new ways? Does it impact transnational mobilization and increased support for on the ground agendas (whether by the government or protesters)? Has it forced more rapid reactions and admonitions from foreign governments than before, as per Hillary Clinton’s comments this morning?
I think it’s appropriate to end this short post with some words from an earlier post, related to my response to Malcolm Gladwell’s Small Change: Why The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted article in the New Yorker last October. With my response here. The Egypt case continues to confirm these thoughts from a few months ago:
Social media thus lies at the heart of both sides of the network. It can generate the weak-tied awareness that then enable social roles and associated organization to emerge out of a complex, seemingly disorganized network. Or it can empower a smaller group of coordinated activists to hone their message, cultivate their strategy, and then reach out to larger groups of potential followers. It’s clear that while twitter is not ‘the message’, it still remains a viable social tool that can contribute to politically powerful events.
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Late in his life, but early relative to the advent of popular consumption of digital technologies, Raymond Williams wrote a chapter, “Culture and Technology,” still well worth reading for its insights into questions related to those addressed here. An excerpt: “The basic assumption of technological determinism is that a new technology–a printing press or a communications satellite–’emerges’ from technical study and experiment. It then changes the society or the sector into which it has ‘emerged’. ‘We’ adapt to it because it is the new modern way.” Much of what I find unsatisfying with popular and scholarly (not to mention pop-scholarly) discourse about new technology stems from this persistent and mistaken assumption. The very question, “Is the above sufficient to inspire the type of movement that we see occurring in Egypt now?,” is an extreme example, and the answer ought to be not “Likely not,” but “Of course not.” The genuinely important questions with which you close nevertheless presume that it is our (or some group’s) adaptive deployment of the tool that will determine whom it will “empower.” It is telling that you’ve paired this query with another one fueled with a double shot of skepticism (something like what Williams calls “cultural pessimism” in his chapter). As access to these tools increases, you suggest, we need to revisit the perennial questions of verification and vested interests. I think this latter inquiry should be paramount, not least with respect to the purported revolutionary effects of the tools themselves.
I also stuck for a bit on the question, “Is the above sufficient to inspire the type of movement that we see occurring in Egypt now?,” while thinking Ramesh made the right turn in noting that the new media worked to readily move and provide information, a key organizing feature, as well of course, as a tool to use against organizers. To me, the movement of said information is always as much about its context more than its flow: who uses it, how, with what else, with what ends. A recent article by Ann Johnson in Flow about decontextualized images and the irony they produce is a good caution against free-floating, fast-mivng images, even of protest. These, I think, are as often read as delectable icons of “freedom,” but without cultural, social, poiitical, economic frames, they say little more than pathos to the otherwise uninformed West, explaining the viral circulation of Neda for instance.
Thanks Alex – I’ll look at this article with interest. I much appreciate the reference.
Very insightful Ramesh. I think your question about the impact of real-time streaming (and, presumably, the echos this produces in the social mediascape) on political decision-making is quite apposite. It also raises many of the same arguments from more than a decade ago when political scientists and communications scholars began to explore the so-called CNN Effect. Criticisms of that argument then pointed to the more central role of policy certainty in mitigating media influence on foreign policy. I suspect same applies in the Twitter era – it raises valuable questions and opportunities for new research.
Thanks so much for the thoughts Josh. I really hope to keep hearing from you here and in other spaces!
Ramesh.
As usual I find your weaving through the mine fields of half-thoughts from the likes of Malcolm Gladwell to be well-pathed. Some observations:
–More than whether social media is or is not causal of x,y or z, the problematic criterion of effect/causality is the resuscitation of the Fukuyama-esque tropes whereby a pre-configured LIberal subject is said to either appear through social media or to appear through traditional Modern channels. The Arab street can be recognized to be speaking only if it is speaking through the lens of this tired script. More interesting instead is how the apparatus of social media (yes, dispositif) configures (or could configure) diagrams of individual or collective subject that genuinely unforeseen. (This is I think what Foucault wanted to see in Iran in 79; an truly “alterior ” subject) That is, as long as what IS happening is framed in terms of the meat-headed trope that by employing “our” tools “they” aspire to become “us,” then there is no analysis. Yes, I see Clay Shirky’s stories (even the “it will take a long long time for social media to bring us civil society in these dark areas” line from his Foreign Policy article included) as just as exemplary of this line as that cack on CNN reading emails.
–Egypt’s current government apparently doesn’t understand cyberinfrastructure management other than through Kill Switch’s but the next one surely will. The question on the ultimate political character of the use of social media during these days will be not be determined until we understand how it becomes part of/ not part of what comes next. Obviously Muslim Brotherhood and Elbaradei may represent divergent policy paths and the question to be asking is whether or not the use of twitter to date makes Egyptians into proper cosmopolitans but what kinds of political subjects they might be once the uprising is reterritorialized into governance. (See also this handwringing on why Egypt’s Kill Switch Geocide validates a Morozov reading in popular thinking.. http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/01/a-frightening-week.html)
–I’ve been thinking about the role of media in May 68 (handheld radio vs. state TV) but also how de Gaulle basically ended the events by going on TV and making an address, thereby getting people off the streets, in front of screens, and called if not to order then to attention. That is, why are we devoting our time to debating twitter when the role of other “Modern” media/apparatuses of popular assemblage (the public square, graffiti, satellite television, the hand-written placards, etc. ) are obviously of greater importance in giving architecture to whatever form of pubic society comes next. If you know of any current analyses of the role of Cairo’s unique urban topology and the dynamics of private/public that define the shift we are seeing I would love to read it.
More soon.
Benjamin
This is fantastic analysis Ben. I most appreciate it!