Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted 305
An anonymous reader writes "Social media is ill-suited to promoting real social change, argues Malcolm Gladwell in this article from The New Yorker magazine. He deftly debunks conventional wisdom surrounding the impact of Twitter, Facebook and other social media in driving systemic social change, comparing them to the organizational strategies of the 1960s civil rights movement. For example, the Montgomery bus boycott, he argues, was successful because it was driven by the disciplined and hierarchically organized NAACP. In contrast, a loose, social-media style network wouldn't have sustained the year long campaign. He concludes that social media promote social 'weak ties' which are not strong enough to motivate people to take big risks, such as imprisonment or attack, for social change."
But (Score:5, Insightful)
On the more subtle side, social media does influence the electorate, therefore affecting votes and possibly politicians. So even if it may not bring about drastic, almost revolutionary change, it will certainly influence politics.
Re:WTO? (Score:5, Insightful)
Which revolution did those protests successfully pull off? Did the 1999 protests in Seattle even meaningfully slow down the WTO, much less kill it?
Re:Exactly wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Just as soon as there is something similar in other countries...
expect governments to impose censorship measures [slashdot.org] against websites that host these types of services.
He has it all wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
They offer Communication not Administration (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Exactly wrong (Score:2, Insightful)
I just hope (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:WTO? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because protests actually affect anything in the slightest anymore?
In the heyday of protesting the huge protest was new, rare, impressive, and scary. News media outlets were limited and protests were big new(s), which amplified their impression, excitement, and scary nature (scary to those being protested against). And they protested things that actually, really mattered. War and peace, freedom and oppression.
But today?
At least in the US protests are a dime a dozen. Huge protests maybe a quarter a dozen. Decades of ever increasing protests for every single cause from global threats against humanity to legalizing pet ferrets, protests have lost their bite. They've lost it because protesting never had any real bite. The huge over use of protesting taught The Man that protests really don't mean anything...they don't really don't hurt...they are mostly all bark, no bite. In the flood of 24/7 news outlets, protests rarely get much if any attention. There's just too many for too stupid of causes for anyone to care to pay attention when real ones for real causes happen.
Social media "protests" may be too weak to have any real effect...but neither are actual, feet on the ground, protests.
Yes and no. (Score:4, Insightful)
While ad-hoc organization may not work, comparing it to the Montgomery Bus Boycott in the 50's, if they had Twitter, Facebook etc. the NAACP could've gotten their message out faster and in a more efficient way.
I mean, it did work well for the Obama Campaign.
Activism is dead (Score:5, Insightful)
Activism from the left is dead in the US. There's no significant, effective opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the concentration of wealth, the crushing of unions, the decline in wages, or the tax benefits enjoyed by Wall Street. (All of which would have been unacceptable to the Eisenhower administration, an indication of how far to the Right the US has moved.)
The activist organizations that accomplish anything are either on the Right, funded by big business, or church-based. Or they're purely self-interested, like gun owners and gays.
Much of '60s activism was powered by music. That's over. Today's musicians have near zero political effect.
lack of organization has its advantages (Score:4, Insightful)
If a group like the NAACP had tried the same stunts in a more dictatorial country, say Iran or Cuba, how long would they have lasted? How long would an actual organization survive with their leaders constantly arrested, tried and executed with in a week of founding the organization?
Twitter, Facebook and the like have the advantage of anonymity when organizing and implementing plans.
Re:Exactly wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's the relevant bit of the article:
In the Iranian case, meanwhile, the people tweeting about the demonstrations were almost all in the West. “It is time to get Twitter’s role in the events in Iran right,” Golnaz Esfandiari wrote, this past summer, in Foreign Policy. “Simply put: There was no Twitter Revolution inside Iran.” The cadre of prominent bloggers, like Andrew Sullivan, who championed the role of social media in Iran, Esfandiari continued, misunderstood the situation. “Western journalists who couldn’t reach—or didn’t bother reaching?—people on the ground in Iran simply scrolled through the English-language tweets post with tag #iranelection,” she wrote. “Through it all, no one seemed to wonder why people trying to coordinate protests in Iran would be writing in any language other than Farsi.”
So to summarize, the actual protests in Iran were being organized locally, whereas Twitter was simply used by Western media to cover the event because, well, Westerners don't live in Iran. I know it's not typical MOD for 'dotters to RTFA, but in this case, the article was well written and very thorough. I would highly suggest taking the time to read through the entire thing.
Because it won't happen. (Score:3, Insightful)
n/t
Re:Activism is dead (Score:5, Insightful)
All of which would have been unacceptable to the Eisenhower administration, an indication of how far to the Right the US has moved.
Forget Eisenhower, this shit would've offended Nixon.
THAT is a much better indication about what's wrong.
Re:WTO? (Score:1, Insightful)
The Battle of Seattle did nothing to slow down the WTO, the mass protests against the Gulf War did nothing at all. Mass protests against WTO, G8, etc do nothing but damage some property, get people arrested and hurt and get overtime for security forces.
Re:Prop 8 (Score:3, Insightful)
And what happened? Prop 8 passed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prop_8#Results [wikipedia.org]
Re:WTO? (Score:4, Insightful)
Very true.
The last protest I took part in was the worldwide march against the Iraq War. There were literally millions of people marching across the world. Most major cities globally had at least a few hundred thousand people all protesting against it. But the war happened anyway, and by and large the protests achieved absolutely nothing. Most politicians and pundits didn't even comment on them, at the time or since.
So forget popular protest. If you want to make a difference or change the world, buy a newspaper.
Re:Activism is dead (Score:5, Insightful)
Speak to Tony Blair and David Miliband (Score:5, Insightful)
Today he can't appear in public in the UK (the security would be too expensive) and his protégé David Miliband has just narrowly lost the chance of being the next Prime Minister, with many people thinking that his support for the war tipped the balance. Protests change public opinion, perhaps only a little, but sometimes decisively. You appear to be falling into the trap of so many USA citizens, of despising "soft power". But the values of your Founding Fathers are today being more undermined by the "soft power" of lobbyists and journalists than by any display of force.
Weak Social Links? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:WTO? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a very good point. The main reason for "democratic" popuplation to be manipulated to elect a certain establishment is to guarantee subsequent consent: "did not you _freely_ elected this?"
Re:WTO? (Score:5, Insightful)
Tea Party is having quite an impact I would say. Or do you not count is as a protest unless windows get broken and cars burned?
Re:WTO? (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Those who recognize problems and run away from them.
2) Those who recognize problems and fix them.
3) Those who don't recognize problems.
They world's always been a rough place. That hasn't stopped our species from doing some absolutely amazing things. Keeping your head down and hiding in a hole while those around you are beaten down is just pathetic.
Um... (Score:4, Insightful)
TeaParty
Q.E.D
I'm not commenting on the validity of the TeaParty movement at all, I'm just saying that it seems to be counter to what the author just said. It is shunned by the MSM and derogatorily referred to as "teabaggers" by many. Yet in spite of the vitriol against it, has sustained for well over a year. And even if you don't like it, you need to admit it is a juggernaut that is completely changing the political landscape. Even (R) people are running scared.
On a side note, thank you California voters for choosing two complete dumb turds for Governor and two more twits for Senate. I'm sure glad I vote third party.
Re:WTO? (Score:3, Insightful)
As for things getting worse, at dawn yesterday many of the streets around Placa Catalunya and La Ramblas still bore extensive graffiti, residue from fires, vandalized ATMs, broken windows and strewn litter. Today, apart from a few bits of graffiti, it's all gone and it's business as usual; the 29th might as well never have happened, with one exception. There's going to be a bill for all that extra policing, fire fighting and maintenance work (possibly at overtime rates since much of it seems to have been done overnight), and ultimately it's getting added onto the Spanish national debt.
Re:But (Score:3, Insightful)
On the more subtle side, social media does influence the electorate, therefore affecting votes and possibly politicians. So even if it may not bring about drastic, almost revolutionary change, it will certainly influence politics.
The only thing that has influenced politics in the last 50 years is summarized in a single line...In my sig.
Re:WTO? (Score:5, Insightful)
What I'm about to claim is a fairly subtle distinction, but bear with me as it makes a big difference.
Overuse of protests has not made protests weaker. You might say it has produced an increasing proportion of examples in which protests are ineffective. The distinction is in the causal relationships.
It isn't that using protests as an everyday tactic leads to weak protests. It's that protests are effective for certain types of cause. Use of protests against other types of causes will lead simultaniously to two symptoms: many protests, and weak protests. So yes, you see a correlation between frequency and weakness, but it is not because one causes the other.
The difference is, even today if 60's-style protest tactics were used against an appropriate opponent for an appropriate cause, they would work as they did then. A nonviolent sit-in draws much of its strength by painting a salient moral picture in the public eye. It creates a confrontation, and observers see one side peacefully asserting their position and being bullied by the other side. This can be used to mobilize public opinion.
But when you use the same tactics to oppose 'the man' not because he's the kind of person that would turn a fire hose on you, but because that's how you want to perceive him... well, then you have a problem. He never attacks you, never cedes the moral high ground, and the whole incident goes unnoticed.
The risk faced by the 60's activists was a key factor in their success, because their function was to shed light on exactly that risk as a symptom of the social status quo. Take that risk element away (by applying the tactics to the wrong kind of adversary) and you increase the number of protests - because it's easier to get people to join in - while reducing their effectiveness.
In part, this implies that the effectiveness of a protest is related to the character of the group being protested. Could the pro-segregation establishment have ignored the sit-ins to cause them to go away? Well, no, because of the alignment of those protests as a defiance of "the rules" - not just a statement of dissent. For four black students to sit at a "whites only" lunch counter, they were assured an aggressive response at some level because their protest, unchallenged, was not harmless to the status quo. For the establishment not to respond would be to concede - "you really can sit here".
But by contrast if a group stands outside an abortion clinic with picket signs, how does that force any response at all? Such a protest is usually ineffective not merely because it is perceived as a lesser threat to the establishment do to overexposure, but because it is a lesser threat by its own nature. Unlike a lunch counter sit-in, the only way for either side to "lose" in this confrontation is to be the first one to turn violent.
Re:Activism is dead (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:He has it all wrong. (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, you can use it as a communication tool. But that's it. The author's thesis seems to be that in order to have the commitment and discipline to actually have an effect, you have to have strong social ties. The kind that come from meeting and getting to know the people you're working with face to face.
Social media connections, on the other hand, are too weak to support anything like that. Would you risk your life because someone on Twitter told you to? Or someone on Slashdot?
"He concludes that social media promote social 'weak ties' which are not strong enough to motivate people to take big risks, such as imprisonment or attack, for social change."
I sincerely hope he's right.
Re:Activism is dead (Score:1, Insightful)
The time just isn't right for all of that stuff.
The wars? It's an all volunteer-service. True, poverty is often a motivating factor for those who join, but it's still a decision.
Unions? It's a mixed bag. In some cases, unions are a bigger enemy of the working class than the corporations. Don't believe me? Just look at Vallejo, California as a case study. If you weren't a cop or firefighter in Vallejo, you got soaked by the taxes for unionized public employees, until your city went bankrupt. Even if you were a cop or firefighter, some of you got let go when that happened. Net effect of the union? It soaked the working class tax payers, and it only helped people who were members of the union if they happened to work during that goldilocks period during which massive ammounts of wealth were transferred.
On the other hand, there are some industries where a union might help, but the tendancy for unions to get greedy and destroy the industry that gives them money in the first place ultimately doesn't serve the workers, does it?
Decline of wages? Tax benefits of wall street? It's all just a symtom of the corporate state, which people on the right and left both mistake for capitalism. The vast majority of Americans don't want to end capitalism--they want to reform and reinvigorate it. That's why the Left is a dud, and the "battle in Seattle" crowed failed to capture the imagination of the American people.
The right-wing Tea party movement contains some elements that react against the coporatism; but because it's a right-wing movement it will be too easily co-opted. America as a whole has failed to disambiguate corporatism and capitalism. In order for the Left to get any traction, it will have to re-examine itself. It will have to divorce itself from the unions, advocating for all workers without regard for organizational or political affiliation. After all, most Americans still work; a diminishing few are pulling down union wages for jobs a monkey could do, at the expense of the rest of us.
Re:Activism is dead (Score:1, Insightful)
Activism from the left is dead in the US. There's no significant, effective opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the concentration of wealth, the crushing of unions, the decline in wages, or the tax benefits enjoyed by Wall Street. (All of which would have been unacceptable to the Eisenhower administration, an indication of how far to the Right the US has moved.)
The activist organizations that accomplish anything are either on the Right, funded by big business, or church-based. Or they're purely self-interested, like gun owners and gays.
Much of '60s activism was powered by music. That's over. Today's musicians have near zero political effect.
Fascism is what happens when you give the government too much power. Good job "lefties".
The activists of the 60's had some good ideas about how humans should treat one another. However, the fallout of their ill-advised empowerment of the political establishment is destroying us today.
What they stupidly forgot is that the wealthy (individuals and corporations alike) control politicians and bureaucrats. When you empower government, the rich have a much easier time at controlling the overall system.
I don't understand how people who supposedly love freedom want the government to have more control over determining what freedom is.
The parties have converged.
Re:WTO? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Activism is dead (Score:2, Insightful)
I know it's very easy to rip on Nixon, but under his watch OSHA and the EPA were created, as well as opening trade with China. None of those would be considered right wing.
Re:Green sashes anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
I know a lot of iranian protestors who seemed convinced otherwise.
How'd that work for them now that Iran is a vibrant and bustling democracy?
Re:WTO? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, Fox News is having quite an impact. If they didn't want the Tea Party to achieve its aims, not only would it be totally ineffective, it probably wouldn't even exist. Of course, it's in their interests to portray the Tea Party movement rather than themselves as the important ones because that's easier to sell, but without Fox they'd be nothing.
In fact, there's a good argument that Fox News in effect created the Tea Parties.
Re:ping (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:WTO? (Score:3, Insightful)
See, the way I see it, there are three types of people in the world:
1) Those who recognize problems and run away from them.
2) Those who recognize problems and fix them.
3) Those who don't recognize problems.
You're completely ignoring the fourth group.
4) Those who recognize problems as an opportunity to gain more power for themselves.
Sadly, most politicians fall into that last category.
Re:WTO? (Score:2, Insightful)
No. Clearly they didn't light enough cars on fire.
Who, the protesters or the cops masquerading as protesters? :P
Re:Green sashes anyone? (Score:1, Insightful)
The civil rights movement of the '60s didn't work in a single year either.
Re:Yes and no. (Score:3, Insightful)
I somehow doubt all that many were swayed by Obama's use of social media. Probably about as many as were swayed by Clinton's sax playing on a talk show. Obama could have called it "the internets" and I would still have voted for him over anyone who would choose Palin for anything. Do I wish he were better? Of course. But I'll probably vote for him again, because I can't see that Palin or Huckabee or Gingrich could be good for my country.
4) The indifferent (Score:1, Insightful)
You miss a major group. The indifferent. No one can care about every single problem, especially when the validity and importance changes from person to person. I can live quite happily with the WTO if equitable global trade occupies, say the 190th most important thing to me. So I'm not about to go out and protest. Sign a petition? Sure. Might mean I'm slightly more than indifferent but not too much.
Again, in the context of the article, this category is the problem. Loose associations created through social media only foster indifferent connections.