Posts Tagged ‘dissidents’

It’s been impossible to miss the discussion of the role that social media is playing in the current insurrection in Iran, but the risk of adding to the echo chamber, I want to posit two quick points that are largely being missed in the breathless media accounts:

1. Every modern political conflict will utilize digital technologies, and
   
2. Technologies are, at least in the short term, politically neutral.

In the past couple years, technology’s role in conflict in Ukraine, Burma, Kenya, Colombia, Moldova and now Iran has been given increasing coverage. Almost invariably someone will point to SMS, Twitter, Facebook, or some other digital technology and claim that it is having a determinative effect on the events unfolding.

Though there certainly needs to be more research in this area, I think the role of these technologies is often far overblown. In fact, calling this or any other large-scale social movement a “Twitter Revolution” is myopic and belittles the very real danger those involved are taking. Bullets may beat tweets, but people marching beats tweets, too.

Technology isn’t the main event in #IranElection because these technologies are now so deeply embedded in our societies that, without fail, they will be used in political conflict.

Secondly, although some very smart folks will disagree with me, I do not believe it makes sense to speak of SMS, Twitter, Facebook or Flickr as inclined to support a particular political view. They can certainly help dissidents: Ethan Zuckerman and Gaurav Mishra point out how Twitter’s main role is as a broadcast medium for sharing news from inside the Iran conflict. But looking closely, and you can see that smart oppressive regimes can make use of the same tools: Twitter and the Iran hashtags are being monitored by security services who are also creating false users to spread misinformation and propaganda.

This political neutrality is lost on Thomas Friedman, whose column today argues that the digital realm provides a sphere for moderates to gather and mobilize:

What is fascinating to me is the degree to which in Iran today — and in Lebanon — the more secular forces of moderation have used technologies like Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, blogging and text-messaging as their virtual mosque, as the place they can now gather, mobilize, plan, inform and energize their supporters, outside the grip of the state.

For the first time, the moderates, who were always stranded between authoritarian regimes that had all the powers of the state and Islamists who had all the powers of the mosque, now have their own place to come together and project power: the network. The Times reported that Moussavi’s fan group on Facebook alone has grown to more than 50,000 members. That’s surely more than any mosque could hold — which is why the government is now trying to block these sites.

Having spent the morning at the launch of the Berkman Center’s Arab blogosphere report, Friedman’s wishful thinking was all the more painful to read. While online tools are useful to marginalized groups if they have connectivity (and that’s a big if), they are just as useful to extremists.

Take, for example, the Muslim Brotherhood who are strongly represented in the Arab blogosphere. Or consider the numerous Jihadi websites and forum, often hidden behind passwords, that are a central gathering space for just the type of people Friedman claims have no need for the Internet. They, too, use what Friedman calls the “Virtual Mosque” (and perhaps it is fitting, because a Mosque can, of course, be a gathering point for moderates and extremists).

As Nicholas Kristof points out in his far more thoughtful column, some technologies would seem to have a higher marginal utility to dissidents – take Tor or Freegate – and the USA or others could promote those. (In fact, they have done so already, but they could do more.) However, these, too, will be used by pedophiles, terrorists and copyright infringers. As Jonathan Zittrain pointed out on Charlie Rose tonight and Rebecca MacKinnon writes in the WSJ, when we in the West push for limits to privacy or openness, often in the name of copyright enforcement, national security, or “to save the children,” we risk those dissidents who will certainly be using digital technology in their protests.

We would do well to recognize that technologies are neither determinative of political success, nor are they really worth the breathless reporting.

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In case you aren’t following them already, Gaurav Mishra, Evgeny Morozov, Ethan Zuckerman and Katrin Verclas are all doing fantastic work on these topics.