[governance] Fwd: The Twitter Revolution Must Die (by Ulises A. Mejias)

Mon Jan 31 05:41:21 EST 2011

Dear Fouad,

I agree with you.

Kind Regards,

Sala

On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 10:56 PM, Fouad Bajwa <fouadbajwa at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Frederick Noronha <fredericknoronha at gmail.com> Date: Mon, Jan
> 31, 2011 at 2:38 PM
>
> The Twitter Revolution Must Die
> January 30th, 2011 · 12 Comments
> photo by Alia Malek
>
> photo by Alia Malek
>
> 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.]
>
> http://blog.ulisesmejias.com/2011/01/30/the-twitter-revolution-must-die/
>
> Please see the original article at the link above, it contains useful
> links. Thanks to Ramnarayan.K <ramnarayan.k at gmail.com> for drawing
> attention to this via the GII-India mailing list. -FN
>
> Frederick Noronha :: +91-9822122436 :: +91-832-2409490
>
> --
> Regards.
> --------------------------
> Fouad Bajwa
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