The role of social media in political revolutions are truly overrated and in fact very dangerous. Sure, social media makes it possible to connect people, but on the other hand it makes it easy for secret services in country's to simply list all the facebook-members and arrest them. For example, Belarus 2006, secret services screened all the demonstrators on a "Facebook-driven" flashmob, they compared all the taken photographs with facebookaccount and the next day all the demonstrators get arrested.
The twitter-revolution in Iran (2009) was a hype in Europe and America, but according to Al Jazeera Iran had only 60 active twitter-accounts. Today, the revolution is over, everything is back to normal again. In the last weak two "Green-revolution" activists were murdered by the Iran regime. A member of the American senate has introduced the idea to liberate Iran, Afghanistan and Irak just by providing internet connections. Reaction of comedian John Stewart: "Why send the army if we can rescue them with internet?"
Inspired by the developments in Egypt, people in Syria organized a facebook-driven demonstration last Friday. Nobody showed up, many people get arrested. Twitter and Facebook are not only for people a great tool to interact, but also a great tool for dictatorships to monitor their people. In the past, governments hired people to monitor their nation (Stasi), these days they simple go to Facebook and Twitter.
The next blog will be about internet media, and how we can all manipulate news.
This article is inspired en based on:
Evgeny Mozorov: The Net Delusion - How to liberate the World
De Groene Amsterdammer 2011/5
Volkskrant, Voetnoot Arnon Grunberg Voedingsbodem
Volkskrant, Voetnoot Arnon Grunberg Mediarevolutie
I understand your perspective and it has a dangerous aspect as well indead. I think that you take a big risk as an outspoken activist in those "conflict countries". A risk that doesn't depend on which kind of revolt you choose. In my opinion, the weakness of this kind of revolt is the accessibility of twitter. Journalist are always searching for the truth, but everybody can post on twitter. How do you know what's the truth? People like Mona are bringing the people closer to the truth through social media.
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