It’s not the Public Internet, It is the Internet Public
by Dave Parry
Last night Gladwell published this short piece for the New Yorker. Gladwell revisits his earlier essay which argued that the ties produced by social media (weak ties) are not as important as social ties produced by face to face iteration (strong ties), and thus social media is not a particularly advantageous platform for fermenting social change. While I disagree with much of that essay, it seems worth investigating/considering, the degree to which social ties produced by social media are substantially different from those which develop from relationships not mediated thru social media. Bizarrely though, his most recent post actually suggests something quite different. Rather than argue that social media has effects on social organization (replacing strong ties with weak ones), Gladwell argues that social media is of little to no-consequence:
“But surely the least interesting fact about them is that some of the protesters may (or may not) have at one point or another employed some of the tools of the new media to communicate with one another.”
The point for Gladwell is that asking how the revolution happens is the “least interesting” question one can ask. Again bizarrely this seems to contradict his earlier piece which argued that “how” a revolution happened was of crucial importance for understanding the nature of the ties people develop. It would seem that the only consistency between these pieces is an attempt to downplay the significance social media plays in social movements, indeed arguing that it either doesn’t help, or is of no relevance. The first Gladwell is worth considering, the second less so.
But where Gladwell misses in this second article is realizing that the discourse has shifted, moved beyond does social media cause a revolution, to how does the existence of social media change the warp and the woof of a social movement. This question is far more interesting, and far more important. The “Twitter Caused the Revolution” headlines have been more or less replaced by more nuanced accounts of “what role did social media play in these protests.” Few have been willing to argue that social media is not part of the equation here, or that social media’s role is not worth investigating. This strikes me as a fairly substantial shift from the “Iran = Twitter Revolution” headlines of a year and a half ago. Indeed, I have even detected a subtle shift from the Tunisia analysis, whereby understanding of social media’s role has become more nuanced and refined. I have spent the better part of two days now reading thoughts and blog posts from various places around the web attempting to learn what others have to say about these events and I see little evidence from academics and leading thinkers in the field that Twitter = democracy arguments are still alive. (Even CNET argued that there is no such thing as a social
To be sure “cyber-utopism” as a discourse is still a dangerous and prevalent myth. Indeed all one has to to is see recent comments by Iranian activist and noble prize winner Shirin Ebadi, who said, “So, I can tell you that thanks to technology dictators can’t get a good nights sleep,” to realize that the belief that social media = social justice is alive and well. Clinton’s 21st century statecraft ideology is alive and well.
I think it is also important to distinguish here between the analysis of social media and the Egypt uprising, I and you, are likely reading, and the one that still circulates amongst people who are not particularly and specifically invested in the matter. That is I think if you asked people who do not spend hours a day on Twitter, or reading articles on the web written by experts on the subject, the impression might be distinctly different. I have had numerous conversations (four in the airport alone on Sunday) with people who all articulated the belief that social media was largely responsible for the uprising, and that do to social media we are likely to see all of Africa revolt, and demand democracy, a cascade effect produced by the internet. Which is to say, that although the debate has for the large part moved past cyber-utopism, the effects of that debate still linger. And in this respect it is not the internet that matters so much as how we talk about the internet (see Thesis One of Morozov’s book).
But that doesn’t account for the most recent article by Gladwell, indeed it makes said article even more academically irresponsible by recasting and repeating a debate that most (all) experts have moved past. Gladwell misses an opportunity to help develop questions about the role of social media in pursuit of social justice, instead choosing to play the “nothing new here, move along” card. One doesn’t correct for the cyber-utopic discourse that still exists by utterly dismissing the effects of the medium under discussion. This just creates the “yes it is,” “no it isn’t” debate which has proved not only inadequate, but at least partly responsible for the less than effective social media foreign policy. We need better.
Read the Full Essay @ Profound Heterogeneity
by Dave Parry
Last night Gladwell published this short piece for the New Yorker. Gladwell revisits his earlier essay which argued that the ties produced by social media (weak ties) are not as important as social ties produced by face to face iteration (strong ties), and thus social media is not a particularly advantageous platform for fermenting social change. While I disagree with much of that essay, it seems worth investigating/considering, the degree to which social ties produced by social media are substantially different from those which develop from relationships not mediated thru social media. Bizarrely though, his most recent post actually suggests something quite different. Rather than argue that social media has effects on social organization (replacing strong ties with weak ones), Gladwell argues that social media is of little to no-consequence:
“But surely the least interesting fact about them is that some of the protesters may (or may not) have at one point or another employed some of the tools of the new media to communicate with one another.”
The point for Gladwell is that asking how the revolution happens is the “least interesting” question one can ask. Again bizarrely this seems to contradict his earlier piece which argued that “how” a revolution happened was of crucial importance for understanding the nature of the ties people develop. It would seem that the only consistency between these pieces is an attempt to downplay the significance social media plays in social movements, indeed arguing that it either doesn’t help, or is of no relevance. The first Gladwell is worth considering, the second less so.
But where Gladwell misses in this second article is realizing that the discourse has shifted, moved beyond does social media cause a revolution, to how does the existence of social media change the warp and the woof of a social movement. This question is far more interesting, and far more important. The “Twitter Caused the Revolution” headlines have been more or less replaced by more nuanced accounts of “what role did social media play in these protests.” Few have been willing to argue that social media is not part of the equation here, or that social media’s role is not worth investigating. This strikes me as a fairly substantial shift from the “Iran = Twitter Revolution” headlines of a year and a half ago. Indeed, I have even detected a subtle shift from the Tunisia analysis, whereby understanding of social media’s role has become more nuanced and refined. I have spent the better part of two days now reading thoughts and blog posts from various places around the web attempting to learn what others have to say about these events and I see little evidence from academics and leading thinkers in the field that Twitter = democracy arguments are still alive. (Even CNET argued that there is no such thing as a social
To be sure “cyber-utopism” as a discourse is still a dangerous and prevalent myth. Indeed all one has to to is see recent comments by Iranian activist and noble prize winner Shirin Ebadi, who said, “So, I can tell you that thanks to technology dictators can’t get a good nights sleep,” to realize that the belief that social media = social justice is alive and well. Clinton’s 21st century statecraft ideology is alive and well.
I think it is also important to distinguish here between the analysis of social media and the Egypt uprising, I and you, are likely reading, and the one that still circulates amongst people who are not particularly and specifically invested in the matter. That is I think if you asked people who do not spend hours a day on Twitter, or reading articles on the web written by experts on the subject, the impression might be distinctly different. I have had numerous conversations (four in the airport alone on Sunday) with people who all articulated the belief that social media was largely responsible for the uprising, and that do to social media we are likely to see all of Africa revolt, and demand democracy, a cascade effect produced by the internet. Which is to say, that although the debate has for the large part moved past cyber-utopism, the effects of that debate still linger. And in this respect it is not the internet that matters so much as how we talk about the internet (see Thesis One of Morozov’s book).
But that doesn’t account for the most recent article by Gladwell, indeed it makes said article even more academically irresponsible by recasting and repeating a debate that most (all) experts have moved past. Gladwell misses an opportunity to help develop questions about the role of social media in pursuit of social justice, instead choosing to play the “nothing new here, move along” card. One doesn’t correct for the cyber-utopic discourse that still exists by utterly dismissing the effects of the medium under discussion. This just creates the “yes it is,” “no it isn’t” debate which has proved not only inadequate, but at least partly responsible for the less than effective social media foreign policy. We need better.
Read the Full Essay @ Profound Heterogeneity
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