On January 17, 2001, during the impeachment trial of
Philippine President Joseph Estrada, his loyalists in the Philippine Congress
voted to set aside key evidence against him. Less than two hours after the
decision, activists, with the help of forwarded text messages, were able to
organize a protest at major crossroads in Manila. Over the next few days, over
a million people responded. The public’s ability to coordinate such a massive
and rapid response – close to seven million text messages were sent that week –
so alarmed the country’s legislators that they reversed course and allowed the
evidence to be presented. … The event marked the first time that social media
had helped force out a national leader. On January 20, 2011, President Estrada
resigned.
The first widely recognized use of social media as a tool of
political change occurred in Moldova in 2009. Activists used Facebook,
LiveJournal (an electronic diary service/social network), and Twitter to
organize protests and bring attention to the political unrest in the former
Soviet republic.
Results of past upheavals in the Arab world highlight the
important role of social media. Social
media is less effective for political change in repressive regimes, but can be
highly effective in countering the dictates of biased media blocks in
democratic states.
Social Media’s Role
Manuel Castells has conceptualized how new network
configurations can lead to new political movements by allowing previously
disconnected, undeveloped political identities to take shape and rise to a
prominent position (Castells). This is particularly applicable to Arab
countries where religions and ethnic divides previously prevented networking.
“Many Arab regimes banned the creation of political parties and limited the
right to associate or create civil rights groups. This meant that there was
little space where religious, ethnic, and cultural groups could meet and
interact. … But social media has helped such groups discover one another and
break the psychological barrier of fear between them” (“Social Media Creating
Social Awareness”).
Political discussion in blogs presaged the turn of popular opinion
in both Tunisia and Egypt. In Tunisia, conversations about liberty, democracy
and revolution on blogs and on twitter often immediately preceded mass
protests” (“New Study Quantifies”).
Blogging is a way to give readers information – much better
than putting up posters or relying on printed broadsheets. It also conveys to
members the highly motivating realization that they have big numbers – people
who know their pro-democracy Facebook group has 70,000 members will be much
more excited and less fearful than people unaware they are part of a big group.
And it is an efficient way to transfer skills and information” (Rosenberg).
One of the leading social media movement proponents in the
US is New York University professor Clay Shirky, author of 'Here Comes Everybody'.
He believes that “the more promising way to think about social media is as
long-term tools that can strengthen civil society and the public sphere” and
“social media can compensate for the disadvantages of undisciplined groups by
reducing the costs of coordination. Larger, looser groups can now take on some
kinds of coordinated action, such as protest movements and public media
campaigns that were previously reserved for formal organizations. For political
movements, one of the main forms of coordination is what the military calls
‘shared awareness,’ the ability of each member of a group to not only
understand the situation at hand, but also understand that everyone else does
too. Social media increase shared awareness by propagating messages through social
networks. Political culture heightens the conservative dilemma by providing
cover for more political uses of social media. Tools specifically designed for
dissident use are politically easy for the state to shut down, whereas tools in
broad use become much harder to censor without risking politicizing the larger
group of otherwise apolitical actors” (Shirky). Regime shutdowns, which
technologically savvy protestors have proven to be fairly adept at subverting,
alert the international community to problems within countries.
“New media can have an impact by helping to transform
individuals and give them new competencies that empower them in politics. This
can be something as simple as taking a picture or a video with a smartphone,
uploading that image of that footage to YouTube” A second impact is “the way
that new media draws external attention from citizens and governments outside
the country or the region to that country or region to the place that is
experiencing protest or conflict”. In this sense, social media are a megaphone.
“It is difficult to prove that communication via new media or social media is
actually what brings people to the streets, especially in societies which have
relatively low degrees of Internet penetration and Internet access. Perhaps the
best illustration of the threat this information poses to authoritarian
governments is their reaction to it, states that have made a number of efforts
to rein in speech and Internet”.
Conclusion
Before the advent of social media, traditional media played
an important role in a democratic society. “The media is often referred to as
the fourth estate, more or less on the same altitude as the classical
democratic powers of the judiciary, the executive and the legislative.” Its
role is supposed to enlighten and inform the citizens so that they are in the
position to make reasonable political decisions.
Columnist Paulynn Sicam aptly said, “The bad old days seem
benign compared to what we see today. There is manipulation because there is a
lot of money to be made.”
For all that it does, social media is no “silver bullet”
when it comes to political change. “The use of social media tools – text
messaging, e-mail, photo-sharing, social network, blogging and the like – does
not have a single preordained outcome. Therefore attempts to outline their
effects on political action are too often reduced to dueling anecdotes”. Factors that seem to impact its successful
use include the size, ethnic diversity, and education levels of the population,
the existence of a modern telecommunications infrastructure, and the amount of
censorship used by existing regimes. Social media has limited impact at best on
an important factor affecting nascent revolutions – a regime’s willingness to
use force to squelch protests. Egyptian protests grew because the Army would
not turn against citizens engaged in peaceful protest. Iranian protests petered
out when leaders used force to crack down on those speaking out, both in public
and in the cybersphere.
Moving forward, the activities of social movements will gain
influence only to the extent that they are able to expose the biased opinions
of official media and prevent the manipulation of political processes by organized
political groups. Social media should therefore be able to weed out the chaff from
the grain among journalists.
