“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” (Clinton). On 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? Toyama’s statement reflects a skill called heresthetics, a world structured in favor of someone’s victory, where even social media has been constructed to perpetuate the success of democracy. Therefore, in places where speech is already free and diverse, social media keeps it going. Yet, social media isn’t necessarily the tool that transforms a system, it is merely a venue for expression not the cause of democracy.
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, since understanding one’s surroundings is the first step to advocating for change. 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 in the creation and the consumption of information. Having a news source is personal and public makes both the reader and writer sympathize in a human level, even if they come from different cultures, and therefore holds a stronger effect than having journalists objectively report on events. If individual stories are told poignantly and genuinely enough, others will want to help their cause. Twitter materializes an abstract concept of an issue with relatable faces leading to support. This phenomenon could be compared to how people know that there is famine in the world but numbers don’t convince them to donate or help, instead an anecdote of a famished child has the right amount of pathos to affect the viewer. Having the interaction between users happen immediately is much more powerful, which in turn results in a more unified movement for democracy.
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 citizens have the opportunity to document their own situation instead of relying on an authoritative voice of credibility from the press. 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. A lack of accuracy can greatly diminish the relationship between social media and democracy because the foundation of information is flawed. If people within a national or international issue don’t perceive it objectively they may sign on to something that doesn’t align with their views, and may be swept up by sensationalism and groupthink. The danger in using social media, as a news source, is that the information may just be the immediate assumption.
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? What is more beneficial to society can be argued both ways, uncontrolled panic can be detrimental to plans of action in various political movements yet false information can mislead the public. 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. Ultimately, social media should be simultaneously utilized with popular media, so that there is a balance of opinion and an interpretation of the facts. (O’Connor, 124).
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 make the public sphere thrive. However, it is contested by the theory of critical political economy proposing that the Internet just “mimics the status quo and perpetuates the socio-economic machine that divides societies” (Berenger, 47). 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. Only a few voices are being heard and may be skewing the odds in favor of already powerful elite. Social media isn’t that good at representing all viewpoints and as a result may not empower everyone. Even though, it empowers some, it may not be enough for social media to be identified as a promoter of fair and democratic values.
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 conflicting translations in this example may appear to be quite arbitrary, but it shows how social media may just be used as a means to keep up appearances. The status of ‘reality’ of social media can be taken advantage of instead of actually represent the course of events. Therefore, those that are astute enough can deliver and further their interests without being questioned, because Twitter is meant to be a feed of the current truth.
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 14, 2014, the United Kingdom recognized Palestine diplomatically, although symbolically, mainly due to the popular opinion that was amplified by Twitter’s #RecognizePalestine (Castle). Social media in this case and other conflicts create misconceptions of the situation and can affect the diplomatic climate in international relations. Foreigners following from the outside, if only looking at Twitter, do not grasp the entire issue at hand and may just follow one perspective, and therefore have a biased notion of events. This is dangerous because social media can create pressure from the public on government, as it did on the British administration, and may deter negotiations worldwide because of popular opinion. Although, popular opinion is directly related to democracy it may not express all of the viewpoints and the desires of the ones actually involved in the issue. Social media, therefore, can coerce unwanted results. So, what should be 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.
Nevertheless, Twitter may also allow for more investigation from the international community and possibly strip stereotypes of a system’s perfection. For instance, Brazil’s recent social protests highlighted some issues that were not apparent to the general public about the country’s political system. Tagging popular media outlets, such as CNN, instead of reporting in loco information may be a another positive way to accentuate the importance of certain issues:
Yet, this effort may also be futile as nothing really changed for the better in Brazil after the protests in the beginning of 2014. The attention given by the international media and Twitter to political movements doesn’t have positive results if there isn’t a structured group of leaders to take them t to the next level. Movements, like in Brazil, can remain in a superficial level of rage towards the system and die down. Although, people present in political movements are involved through Twitter and the social medium gives them a voice it may not be interpreted correctly and may not benefit them, as 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 allow for the #IranRevolution feed to continue and undermine the strength of the Iranian administration’s censorship. This strategic move by the U.S. government demonstrates how social media affects geopolitical affairs, as the United States helped provide information to the international public through Twitter, and consequently people were exposed to the movement and got on board. It demonstrates how the U.S. government “[uses] new media tools to exert power over their adversaries” (Ems, 724). More than that, it was the first time that a social media outlet was directly contacted to further a political strategy, showing how social media can affect international relations.
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. Coming back to the concept of heresthetics, governments may be manipulating the availability of information by having conflicting policies on the use of social media, and consequently containing their power. Social media is just a more volatile information outlet and although ideally it would act in accordance with democratic values, having contradicting opinions does not always benefit the interest of countries. A control of the freedom that social media provides is definitely a challenge for democratic countries, as they cannot censor its use and therefore may lose their ability to have heresthetics.
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
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