After my last post I got an email from a reader with a number of very legitimate questions about my last post, mainly concerning social media during the Arab Spring and asking how our latest innovation in communications technology are any different from those in the past. Here was my response, I hope this clarifies some of my ambiguities in this far flung experiment I’ve got going on here:
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Hi *****,
I agree with you about the Arab Spring. It’s highly contested academic territory and perhaps not the best direction for me to head in. Besides, there are other things going on in the world right now that may make even more useful case studies, like the Icelandic revolution or the massive protests seen most heavily on the peripheries of ‘modern’ Europe (Spain, Greece, etc.).
The thing I guess I didn’t quite get across was that it isn’t the fact of social media but the speed and power of it that make it unique and astonishing. Think about how long it took for the movements you mentioned to gain traction, and think of how physically slow it was to plan, disseminate information, and so on. The fact that I can write anything I want and send it to anyone on the planet with internet instantly astounds me and screams for wildly new potential for the dissemination knowledge as well as alternative types of social organization. Admittedly internet usage is fairly low in most areas but generally not among those (the upper classes) who would typically assume leadership roles in their societies, if you believe that the idea of praxis exists or that movements come largely from those in the upper echelons of society.
It’s not that I believe social media simply gives people revolutionary potential, only that for the first time in the history of humankind can we deliver information instantly and do so globally. Riots in Portugal, for example, are filmed and up for everyone to see, if not streaming, then within hours of the event. THAT is revolutionary. That is the type of thing I believe can lead to changes in people’s everyday understanding of the world and a sense of solidarity for those trying to resist the status quo for one reason or another. One could argue that the printing press was more revolutionary…but for hundreds of years it was used mostly to produce a single book with a single point of view to the very few who were actually literate. We had to catch up with the technology of the printing press to make it a truly transformative means of communication. The same, I think holds true for the internet, but we caught up with it after twenty years or so. However I believe we’ve intersected with social media at just the right time in history for it to be of incredible use to an exponentially larger number of people (even if adjusted to the population of the medieval era).
Further, social media for the first time makes every person on the planet an author. It gives each of us a global voice that costs have until now made practically impossible. It enables so much more dialogue and makes the planet feel so much smaller, so much more like a community instead of disparate nation-states. My blog has had hits from almost ever nation on the planet over the past six months. Could you imagine publishing in 150 or so countries in the 70s? or even the 80s or 90s?
Thanks for the website, it has really come in handy. Feel free to get back to me if you’d like, and again I apologize for not responding a month sooner.
Take care,
Julian
Also, here is an Infographic about the history of social media starting with email in 1971 that she gave me and is pretty awesome: http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/history-of-social-media_b30226
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