Tunisia: Unfollowing the Twitter revolution

THE MEANS ARE THE MEDIUM, THE MESSAGE IS THE MESSAGE.

Unless your television is broken, you speak to no one, you lost your phone or some nefarious force turned off your Internet, you are aware of the recent protests and unrest in Tunisia and Egypt.Indeed, if you haven’t escaped the coverage of the events in North Africa, you too have been force fed by the media the idea that these protests are indeed “Twitter Revolutions.”First used to describe the unrest following the Moldovan parliamentary elections of 2009, this phrase — already dubious when first used — was gleefully reapplied in 2010 to Iran’s Green Movement. The Tunisian protests came to the fore once the use of Twitter was an exploitable fact, and now we’re seeing the same old game in Egypt. It’s a shame that “Twitter Revolution” is invoked every time there is the idea that social media is used to organize people, independent of actual use. This take on the story becomes a quirky novelty instead of people organizing — by all sorts of means — to affect incredible change in the world.

At first glance, “Twitter Revolution” is kind of neat. It smacks of the notion found in U.S. Weekly Magazine feature, “Celebrities: They’re just like us.” We’re supposed to think, “Weird foreign people use modern communications: They’re just like us.” It gives people from far away a tendency, a habit, a little bit of our own digital neurosis with which we can relate.

The phrase makes our time spent staring at our various screens seem like less a distraction and possibly a noble endeavor. Changing your Twitter profile picture to green in solidarity with Iranian protesters makes one feel involved, if not in actuality.

The illusion of participation in what is otherwise a spectator sport is why “Twitter Revolutions” persist.

Media constructs such as “Twitter Revolutions” take complex events involving complicated social and political issues and simplify them into status updates, hashtags and catch-phrases. In-depth reportage is lost to the meme.

“Superficial cliches” is Lolla Muhammed Nur’s take on “Twitter Revolutions,” stated in a Jan. 24 column for the Minnesota Daily called, “Tunisia’s revolution wasn’t televised.” It’s not difficult to agree.

Beyond oversimplifying important events, “Twitter Revolutions” break that age-old credo in journalism of not becoming a part of the story. In this aspect, it seems the media is convinced the medium is the message, and they’re a part of the medium.

The media love self-reference and a level of self-examination, this column being no exception.

By inserting Twitter and Facebook into coverage, news organizations and pundits are shoving extraneous media into stories that should otherwise be about what’s happening on the ground, not in cyberspace. If social media were not involved, how much coverage would communications receive, if any?

As evidenced in Egypt, the so-called “Twitter Revolution” perseveres even after the Internet was mostly shut off last Friday. People, forced to respire to pre-Internet technologies, are using “analog” means of communication and the protests keep growing. Sometimes, simply seeing others demonstrating in the street is enough to continue a revolution.

Could it be the technologies that brought us “Farmville” and the sitcom “$#*! My Dad Says” that are now a driving force behind geopolitical upheaval? Sure.

But, in the end, stories of revolution and change, hopefully for the better, are not about the means of communication, be they pamphlets, papers, calls or tweets.

Revolutions are about people, politics and ideas, and are too complex to be waged in 140 characters or less.

-February 2, 2011 by Mike Munzenrider

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Source: www.mndaily.com/2011/02/02/unfollowing-twitter-revolution (accessed on 02.02.10)

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion or position of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.