I’ll be sequestered in the industrial-sized kitchen of my co-op, chopping vegetables to make stir fry for my 27 roommates, but if you’re free, check out the live webcast at 6pm EST to find out how governments are using the Internet, how far their online spying has gone, and what the legal implications of state sponsored network espionage might be.
My biggest frustration with grad school so far has been how difficult it is to bring what’s happening in the real world of ICT and development into the classroom. With the exception of a few phenomenal professors, much of the SIPA academic world seems disconnected from the entire field. In my opinion, this is a sad mistake. It’s also why I am so excited about Policy Making in the Digital Age, a conference that The Morningside Post is sponsoring at Columbia in February.
My biggest frustration with grad school so far has been how difficult it is to bring what’s happening in the real world of ICT and development — mobile phones for health, Ushahidi, debates over what online privacy means for activists — into the classroom. With the exception of a few phenomenal professors, much of the SIPA academic world seems disconnected from the entire field. In my opinion, this is a sad mistake.
Policy Making in the Digital Age will bring together faculty and students at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs with the wider Columbia and New York City communities to explore trends and future implications in ICT and development, privacy issues, open governance, and humanitarian affairs.
We’re building a fantastic line-up of experts to discuss everything from how new media can help in crisis to the intersection of technology, business and culture in different countries. Know someone you think we should invite? Let us know at editor [at] themorningsidepost.com. Want to come? Mark your calendar for February 27, 2010, and check the conference site in late January for more details.
“This is it. The big one…. It’s Twitter.” For those of you who haven’t been following the media hype surrounding Iran’s is-it-or-isn’t-it-a “Twitter Revolution,” that’s Clay Shirky, speaking four days after the June 2009 presidential elections. Ouch. Awkward.
For those of you who haven’t been following the media hype surrounding Iran’s is-it-or-isn’t-it-a “Twitter Revolution,” that’s Clay Shirky, speaking four days after the June 2009 presidential elections.
Ouch. Awkward.
It’s not that Shirky was alone in his enthusiasm, nor was he the first to champion Twitter as a revolutionary force in Iranian politics. Andrew Sullivan of The Atlanticwrote of the protests, “You cannot stop people any longer. You cannot control them any longer. They can bypass your established media; they can broadcast to one another; they can organize as never before,” and the New York Timeschimed in with an article on how “new kinds of social media are challenging those traditional levers of state media control and allowing Iranians to find novel ways around the restrictions.”
It’s more that…well…nothing much has changed. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is still in power, and a recent study found that less than one percent of Iranians — 0.027 percent, precisely, though that number likely includes foreigners who changed their profile location last summer — are on Twitter.
Shirky shouldn’t feel too bad, though. Evgeny Morozov, who’s made quite a name for himself bashing “cyber utopians” for their uncritical love of all things social media, is responsible for the phrase “Twitter Revolution,” which he first applied to Moldova in April 2009. Boing Boing‘s Xeni Jardin appropriated the meme in GOOD magazine during Guatemala’s May 2009 political unrest. I myself am guilty of propagating it – on Twitter, no less – in Uganda after the September 2009 riots in Kampala.
Still, despite all the hype (and no matter how much we wish it were so), none of the so-called “revolutions” in Iran, Moldova, Guatemala or Uganda have lead to substantially different governments. Rather than reflecting actual politics, the Twitter Revolution seems to be largely a product of the media, both mainstream and social. “Western journalists shifted their focus from the role of Iranian people to the role of technology,” Ethan Zuckerman says of the June 2009 media coverage. In the October issue of Information Today, Morozov wondered if the emphasis on Twitter took critical focus away from the politics and history behind the event: “It certainly made an impact in how the events were covered in the West…. It probably stole from the protesters, because instead of discussing what was happening, a quarter of American media coverage was devoted to what so-and-so said on Twitter.”
I tend to agree with anthropologist Maximilian Forte, who conducted a study of the election-related tweets and related media coverage between June 13 and 17, 2009. Forte’s research led him to conclude: “This is indeed a ‘revolution’…but it’s for Twitter.”
Was Twitter a revolutionary force in Iran? I don’t think so. Was Iran a revolutionary force in how the average American views Twitter? Definitely, unquestionably yes. The Twitter Revolution — or revolutions, if we’re being fair to Moldova, Guatemala and Uganda — is the big one. Just not the one we were hoping for.
I’m taking a class on the social impact of mass media. Tonight we discussed the printing press, and how print lends — now less than before, but I think it still applies — a legitimacy to thought that ideas that haven’t been committed to paper lack.
Someone suggested that all new forms of media give increased levels of authority to the ideas they transmit — not just print, but radio and television as well.
I argued that this rule doesn’t hold for the Internet, and I was promptly shot down by a surprisingly large number of people in the class. Their points were:
The Internet isn’t a grand democratic commons. It’s highly elite.
People do believe everything they read on the Internet. One example was a newspaper in Bangladesh reprinting a full article from The Onion, not understanding that it was a joke.
I concede the first point. The Internet is definitely not a perfectly democratic commons, though I maintain that, compared to the highly expensive, highly rare (not to mention extremely heavy) printing press, it is far more accessible to the average citizen, whether we’re speaking domestically or globally. Though it requires access to a computer, Internet access can often be had cheaply or for free through government programs or at public libraries or Internet cafés.
More importantly, the cost of publication and distribution online is so comparatively small — and the amount of information published and distributed so comparatively great — that I believe it’s disingenuous to say that the Internet and the printing press endow ideas with the same authority. Being exceedingly careful to avoid value judgements, I submit that the blog is a very different beast than the Bible.
As for the second point, I would argue that the confusion over what is and is not a legitimate source online stems more from cultural — and here I include generational — differences than from a sense that all things online are true. Expecting accurate cross-cultural interpretations of satire is demanding quite a lot from journalists whose native language is likely not English, as is expecting accurate assessments of spam from someone who still thinks it comes in a can.
So. Am I totally wrong? And if so, why? I was born the same year Apple introduced the Macintosh and got my first e-mail account in sixth grade, so my knowledge of the Internet is primarily first-hand, rather than scholarly. Any articles to which you can refer me would be greatly appreciated, but I’m also looking for personal opinions. When did you first access the Internet? How? Where? Why? What did you think?
The comments are open, folks. Looking forward to your thoughts.
