I just went to a terrific, timely talk by visiting professor Michael Dobbs on social media's role in revolutions. It was a rare treat to be in a room with well-informed experts on media and politics and discuss something that was going on right at that moment. Dobbs gave many examples of the popular press claiming that social media, Twitter in particular, had precipitated the successful revolution in Tunisia and the still-in-progress revolution in Egypt. He brought up examples of techno-utopian views on the subject (e.g. Clay Shirky's TED talk on the revolutionary power of Twitter) as well as rebuttals such as Malcolm Gladwell's piece for the New Yorker.
One question that came to mind during his talk was: when assessing whether or not Twitter and social media are capable of facilitating revolutions, to what are comparing them? And by "we," I mean the users, the public, the press, the critics, anybody. Gladwell essentially compares Twitter and Facebook groups to real world activism. I think he does this because he believes (as do I) that a fair amount of social media activists think of their tweeting or Facebook-group-founding as more similar to participation in a protest than sitting at home passively in front of a television screen and watching it all unfold. They think they're being active, but Gladwell points out that they ultimately have little real power because, unlike civil rights protesters or other activists who actually changed our world, they are not making any real sacrifice; they are not risking much; they are not forming lasting bonds with people for whom they would make some real sacrifice (e.g. a large sum of money, risking one's life, etc). So that, Gladwell says is the key difference between real world protesters and virtual ones: shared sacrifice.
I basically think of online activism the way i think about online "friends": instead of just saying, "online _____ is no substitute for the real thing!", I think it presents us an opportunity to pull apart the real world phenomenon and ask what parts of it are duplicated by the online proxy, what parts of it aren't, and how those parts matter for outcomes of interest. So, what is the point of protesting?
First, its a way to devalue the ruling party's monopoly on physical force. If enough people get out there in the town square and don't back down after being physically threatened and assaulted, then the power to threaten and assault loses its meaning. There's also a "softer" power of protesting crowds: they can choose not to vote for someone, they can choose not to spend their money somewhere. Even if they don't live in a democracy, they can make it even more glaringly apparent to the outside world that they're living in a country that isn't even remotely democratic. Dobbs seemed skeptical that this could result in the overthrow of a repressive regime. It didn't work in Poland, it didn't work in Iran, and it probably wouldn't work here, not unless people make very real, significant sacrifices, ones that couldn't be done online.
Dobbs essentially said that Twitter is a way to share information. Like pamphlets distributed in other revolutions, they are a necessary but not sufficient criteria for revolution. Other things need to be in place: long-standing, easy-to-grasp grievances, for one. But I don't think social media is just a way to get information out. The difference has to do with social pressure. Television was and is quite good at presenting the spectacle of many people behaving a certain way. Combine this spectacle with many little nodes on a network behaving or expressing ideas in the same way and you've got the appearance of consensus, which is a powerful tool.
This gets me to the idea of a tipping point. There is a point at which the contagion of an idea rapidly speeds up, a point at which it seems like "everybody" is buying the same t-shirt or saying the same catch-phrase or using Facebook. These are all fairly benign trends, which makes sense. Buying a certain kind of t-shirt didn't involve much sacrifice: they're all pretty much the same to you, and if this one is popular, even if its a little more expensive, maybe you should buy it. Putting your life on the line or uprooting your family or risking your livelihood (all things that may be called for if you're participating in a revolution) involve significant risk. But those arguing against the revolutionary power of social media miss a key point: social pressure can convince you to make great sacrifices under the right circumstances.
Here's how I think it works. At the start, you need to have a group of people who are very similar to you, the Twitter user, and they have to be engaging in some activity that you were pretty close to doing. Then you might be convinced to do what they're doing. As the number of people doing that thing grows, it starts to matter less and less how similar those people are to you and how predisposed you were to act that way in the first place. When it comes to social pressure, there is an effect of sheer numbers. It doesn't replace or cancel out those other effects, but as the number grows, the effects of similarity and pre-disposition lessen. If you give people who want a revolution a sense that they can pull it off because there are so many other young, unemployed, pissed-off men who are ready to risk jail or a beating, then its more likely to happen than if you didn't give them that sense. This is something that pamphlets or television alone cannot do.
At the end of Dobbs talk, another professor pointed out how many billions of tourist dollars Egypt is losing each day. China's economy can withstand a repressive government, but it doesn't look like this one can. We'll just have to wait and see.
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