“The belief that ‘revolutions’ in communication technologies will lead to radical social and political change predates the Internet, of course.”
– Albrecht Hofheinz
Albrecht Hofheinz is an associate professor at the University of Oslo at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages. In his article Nextopia? Beyond Revolution 2.0 for the International Journal for Communication (2011), he explains that new media is consistently thought of as revolutionary technology, as was the telegraph, telephone and television. The main difference between the Internet and its various platforms is that it allows for more communication between peers, strengthens more critical attitudes towards established authorities and is less limited by space and time. Clay Shirky, a prominent writer in residence at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, further distinguishes the Internet from other technologies since “members of the former audience […] can now also be producers and not consumers” in his TedTalk “How Social Media Can Make History” (Shirky). Shirky advocates that the virtue of the Internet is that everyone is a producer, introducing the concept of makerism. Social media effectively democratizes our society by allowing everyone to be involved in ‘makerism,’ lessening the gaps between those in and under power.
Twitter has become a way for the online community to share instantaneous updates of protests, most prominently the Arab Spring. Members of media and political science academia have been questioning whether the use of social media was the true reason for the success of Arab Spring movements. Former United States Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for example, argues that the Internet enhances democracy and countries that ban websites have “opportunity costs for trying to be open for business but closed for free expression – costs to a nation’s education system, political stability, social mobility, and economic potential” (Clinton). One the other hand, Kentaro Toyama, a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, points out “we have free speech online because we have free speech offline, not the other way around” (Toyama). Toyama’s comment poses a pressing question: can and should everyone have access to social media if this access doesn’t reflect their political structure? Should people be given the freedom to create, where power is controlled and not meant for everyone to have?
Politicians and scholars that advocate for the open use of social media suggest it could be a tool to fight against oppressive regimes, allowing people to build democracy within their countries. The concrete effect of social media is linked to how people are informed of news. Walter Lippmann, author of Public Opinion published in 1922, argued that democracy does not work because humans are driven by self-interest and therefore the elite should govern and citizens should be mere spectators. John Dewey responded to Lippmann’s claims with his book The New Republic, where he proposes that human interaction through communication makes democracy flourish (Rosenstiel). Most of the journalism and information distribution in popular media outlets throughout the 20th century worked within Lippman’s democracy theory, where citizens were mere spectators of news. Although these theories of democracy were mostly outdated, media scholars have re-appropriated it to today’s information sharing. As a result of social media, people are able to actively participate in journalism instead of stepping back and watching events happen, which in turn results in a more democratic process.
This conceptual debate leads into the conversation scholars have on the power of Twitter as a micro blog used for micro-journalism, during demonstrations and political movements. Rune Saugman Andersen notes that:
“Citizen micro-journalism documents a situation through the collective whispers of a large mass of unknown reporters, rather than in the authoritative voice of on photojournalist or newspapers supported by recognized sources of credibility.”
The power of citizens to control their own information and disseminate information at a faster rate than daily newspapers gives them an advantage over traditional popular journalism, which is well depicted in Seismic Waves. However, micro-journalism requires no peer editing or verification and can therefore be an unreliable news source. Because of this, the “rise of social media… has raised new questions about such ‘old media’ values as the balance and interplay between speed and accuracy” (O’Connor, 124). Fact checking is rare within social media, even if there are comments questioning accuracy, thus sensationalism and hysteria can be profuse on Twitter. It can be disputed, however, that popular media’s journalism and newspapers are too slow and may not even be privy to the information that must be reported. If people have the opportunity to live feed imperative events, why not take advantage of it? Having a few people understand events deeply and confirm all the facts puts those people on a pedestal, unnecessarily. The validation of events can be done through the multiple perspectives coming from various Twitter users. Journalists should seize to be ‘gatekeepers’ of information and should merely provide an interpretation of the whole picture to help make sense of implications of these events, as the Twitter interface can become quite confusing to reconcile the entire story.
Through social media, particularly Twitter, online masses become the source for news outlets. This phenomenon occurred most notably in Iran during the 2009 Green Movement, a protest against the corruption of the elections that led to Mir-Hossein Moussavi’s loss and consequently a demand for more participatory democracy in Iran. International reporters had little to no entry into the country as Wolf Blitzer, a head CNN anchor, recalls that he used Twitter to “complete a view of what was unfolding in Iran,” (Ems, 723) as shown in Octavia Nasr’s multimedia article for CNN “Tear Gas and Twitter: Iranians take their protest online” . Andrew Sullivan from the Atlantic Monthly described tweets as the “raw data of history, as it happen… respected journalistic medium” (Ems, 723) Overall, social media’s influence comes from having the information and disseminating it when one is present in the events. This led the international community to start calling the Iranian upheaval and those that followed, including Tunisia and Egypt’s revolution, the ‘Twitter Revolution’. But, what was the real impact of social media on the success of these movements?
Within academia, there is an enthusiastic campaign to associate social media with the success of the Arab Spring, the ‘Magic Bullet Theory’. This theory “asserts that messages delivered through the mass media powerfully and directly influence the public,” (Berenger, 51) while really the connection between political changes and Twitter should be taken with some skepticism and analysis. For instance, there are 231 million people in the Middle East and North Africa, but only 23.8 million actually use Facebook and other social media outlets as shown in Middle Eastern Internet Statistics (Miniwatts). A minimal amount (about 10%) of citizens are using social media, and therefore are probably not involved in changing their country’s political status quo. It is possible that they don’t even want a more democratized system and perhaps social media is a false representation of people’s desires. Is democracy always for the better, if it is not what people want?
Consideration should be taken of whether social media is a beneficial platform for citizens. The theory of technological democratization is a cyber-optimistic lens that says that citizens’ access to the Internet will “restore and revitalize the public sphere” (Berenger, 47). However, it is contested by the theory of critical political economy proposing that the Internet “mimics the status quo and perpetuates the socio-economic machine that divides societies”. UNESCO’s New World Information and Communication committee supports this notion by deeming the Internet as a means to perpetuate “inequality between the information-rich global North and the information-poor South” (Berenger, 49). The use of social media and the devices to record these incidents in the Middle East are limited to the elite and therefore exacerbate the point that social media does not necessarily represent everyone in a population equally, making it less democratic.
There is little to no research done about the correlation between social media and democracy. Although it can be argued that democracy is not something that can be qualitatively measured, Christopher Kedzie, a researcher at RAND Corporation that conducts research for public policy, has done empirical research on how democracy is associated with information access and not economic development, which is shown below. Although the research looks into email and the Internet’s operations have surpassed electronic mail through social media, so the research is not as valid. Kedzie’s results and analysis proved his hypothesis that democracy has a linear relationship to interconnectivity, yet whether it can be translated to today’s social media is still an unanswered question.
The false representation of political interests is a recurring theme within the employment of social media for the broadcast of events. The Muslim Brotherhood, an Egyptian Sunni Islamist religious, social and political group, tweeted different messages in Arabic and English during the 2011 Egyptian Revolution as shown below:
Even though, the U.S. government discerned the incongruity between the messages, this incident still shows how the communication tool can be used to manipulate the image of events when seen from the outside. The argument that proliferation of messages can mold views can be supported by the role of media in the recent Israel-Palestine conflict. Celebrities started supporting Palestine and Gaza’s cause was elevated because the massacre of children was tweeted through photographs. On October 14th 2014, the United Kingdom recognized Palestine diplomatically, although symbolically, mainly due to the popular opinion that was amplified by Twitter’s #RecognizePalestine (Castle). Ironically, @UKParliament and @DavidCameron have tweeted nothing about the decision. So, what is the role of Twitter in civil movements?
The ultimate goal of the Arab Spring was to diminish the control that their government regimes had over their rights, to democratize. The use of Twitter to lead to this goal is not simple and entails a complex relationship. The “Twitter conversation about the Iranian protests occurred mostly among those in the West, and most likely was not used by Iranians to organize,” (Etling, 10) thus it is less of a tool for rallying and more of a tool for deliberation. Sometimes the information is put out of context and a large campaign emerges without the people understanding what is really happening on the ground, as seen in Iran and Israel-Palestine. It is not democratizing because it is giving a purpose to those that are external figures in the issue. Although, people present are involved through Twitter and it gives them a voice it may not be interpreted correctly and may not benefit them, it may not result in more democracy.
Government can take advantage of the following, literally and figuratively, that is created through Twitter for international political gain. The international community started supporting the Green Movement; they did this by making their profile pictures a green tint. The Iranian government continued to filter and censor the information being diffused through Twitter, in order to hinder the force of the protests. The United States government reacted by having Jared Cohen, a state department official, directly contact Twitter to “delay scheduled maintenance of its global network, which would have cut off service while Iranians were using Twitter to swap information and inform the outside world about the mushrooming protests around Tehran” (Landler). This strategic move by the U.S. government demonstrates how social media affects geopolitical affairs. More than that, it shows how the U.S. government “[uses] new media tools to exert power over their adversaries” (Ems, 724). P.J. Crowley, the assistant secretary of state for public affairs, would state that members of the American government “are proponents of freedom of expression,” and that “information should be used as a way to promote freedom of expression” (Landler).
The introduction of social media into the political sphere is relatively new and that is also why there is a lack of policy of how to deal with it in different circumstances, in order to favor the government’s interests. Ultimately, the politicians seem to still be in power by having control over information and the use of social media because they can open or close the flow of information as they wish, as if it were a faucet. Lindsay Ems, who writes for Sage Journals on Twitter’s place in the tussle: how old power struggles play out on a new stage, describes this dynamic perfectly:
“The free flow of information made possible by Twitter in Iran helped the Obama administration achieve its diplomatic goals. In Pittsburgh, limiting the flow of tweeted information by arresting users… helped it achieve its goals.”
Freedom of press and speech should be applied, as a means of democracy, but social media is so free that it could perhaps get society into a state of anarchy. Since social media is starting to bridge with policy and therefore it must be defined, through laws, how is should be used in order to fall under people’s rights. Social media can progress democracy to some extent, it allows for more participation but may not allow for everyone to be involved with no intervention. The future challenge is defining the role of social media, so that it is not abused and it fosters democracy.
Works Cited
Berenger, Ralph D. Social Media Go to War: Rage, Rebellion and Revolution in the Age of Twitter. Spokane, WA: Marquette, 2013. Print. Used the following chapters: Introduction by Ralph Berenger Citizen ‘Micro-journalism’: How #IranElection was exploited in Politics and Newspaper stories by Rune Saugman Andersen The Role of Contemporary Media in Political Transitions: Searching for a New Paradigm by Katharine R. Allen Conclusion
Castle, Stephen, and Jodi Rudoren. “A Symbolic Vote in Britain Recognizes a Palestinian State.” The New York Times 14 Oct. 2014: 1+. Print.
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