Book Review
Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism by Paolo Gerbaudo
For one thing, social media has different tools that connect us easier and quicker in this new technological era. The most common ones are Twitter and Facebook. Whereas Twitter provides information synchronically and allows people to share their feelings, Facebook is about creating profiles including personal information and connecting with familiar people. Both of these have a great impact on our daily lives, especially in terms of enabling online communication for gathering. Since I attended Gezi protests in Turkey in 2013, I had a chance to observe a protest formed by digital activism. Thus, I chose the book, Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism, by Paolo Gerbaudo which is published by Pluto Press to review. The author is a lecturer in Digital Culture and Society at King’s College London (Gerbaudo, 2012). In the book, he discusses how social media influences the public contribution into political social movements. He gives
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The first one is Egyptian Uprising, then Spanish indignados and finally comes Occupy Wall Street protests in the US. While clarifying his thoughts, Gerbaudo divides his book into five chapters in addition to the introduction and conclusion with 194 pages. In the chapters, he explains the three different protests in detail and how connectivity becomes collectivity. I have observed that the language of the book is informal, because besides the other sources, the author includes his own ideas written from first person. Moreover, I think he addresses to a specialized audience who uses social media for a political action, because he specifically chose the three of the protests from different parts of world that have similar strategies. I believe that I am one of those specialized audience as I participated in Gezi Park protests in which Twitter was widely
The issues of how technology is influencing our nation today has come into play with social media and surveillance in our personal lives. We use twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. to express our opinions on things and as a voice to inform people on what’s going on in today’s society. We have learned how to use the tools we’ve been given to change our lives forever; our government has access to all of our personal information in exchange for our protection against terrorism. In Bijan Stephen’s article on “Black Lives Matter” and Rebecca McKinnon’s chapter on “the Arab Spring”, they both touch on the power of technology in negative and positive ways.
The article named “spring awakening” wrote by Jose Vargas describes the impact of social media in converting the mentality of young Egyptian generations into bold and defend their inalienable rights as a citizen. This article justifies how social media can mobilize a tremendous number of people to stand up for their rights. The reasons that inspire my emotion is emerging of “Wael Ghonim” as a legendary vocal figure of action for change, revelation of social media as earthquake for change, and fundamental soci-political change.
Malcolm Gladwell’s article "Small Change: Why the Revolution Will not be Tweeted" raises a significant question about the prospective contribution of web-based social networking to the advent of progressive social movement and change. Gladwell bold declaration that "the revolution will not be tweeted" is reflective of his view that social media has no useful application in serious activism. Contrasting various elements of the “high-stakes” lunch-counter protests in Greensboro, North Carolina in the 1960’s with the “low-stakes” activism achieved through social media, Gladwell concludes that effective social movements powerful enough to impose change on longstanding societal forces require both “strong ties” among participants and the presence of a hierarchical organizations. In contrast, Gladwell characterizes the social networks as an interwoven web of "weak ties" that is inherently devoid of a hierarchy. Gladwell’s prerequisites for social movement are firmly based in strong body of sociological evidence, but his views regarding the nature of online social networks are laughably lacking in foresight and obstructed by a misleadingly selective body of evidence.
It introduces a preface followed by an introduction and three parts and she ends it off with an epilogue. Each part of the book is filled with stories and experiences from different people on how the internet has helped with protests. It starts off with the story of her grandmother being able to win a scholarship to go study in Istanbul and her family telling her that her education was over after the fifth grade, the author shows the hardship and the difficult times the Turkish were living in back in those days. During this first part of the book (Making a Movement) she introduces and talks about publics and social movements while trying to find patterns and similarities between the Gazi movements and the Zapatista. The reader is then taken on a trip through the lack of media access back in the day to twenty first century where twitter and other media platforms is changing the protest game. This is the second part of the book (A Protester’s Tool). This part focuses more on the technology aspect. During this section she moves away from the social movement and first-hand observations to redirect on the importance between internet and society. The reader receives first-hand accounts from the author herself and people who were all involved in the protests by either physically protesting or helping out through the media. In the third part (After the Movement), Zeynep goes more in-depth on the movements of protests leaders and how they deal with political power coming down on them. The book was written in first person and the tone throughout the book is so simple that anybody reading it will have no problem understanding the main
Andrew Calabrese, Virtual non-violence? Civil disobedience and political violence in the information age (2004) 6 Emerald Info 326 available at http://spot.colorado.edu/~calabres/Calabrese%20(civl%20dis).pdf
However, books and newspapers are not our sole source of the written word. Online blogs, articles, and newsletters now exist. Television and books have merged into one: the Internet. Revolutions, riots, and rebellions don’t just happen in our living rooms now, they happen on the go with us. On the subway, when we’re waiting in line at Subway, at our friend’s house as he talks about how he’s “way into subs.”
Technology has had a negative impact on this generation- we have lost and forgotten many things because of it. In Malcolm Gladwell’s “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted”, he discusses the difference between social media activism and “real” activism and the loss of human connection that he has identified. He believes that with social media activism, we lack the connections a community should have because we don’t get together in person- we are satisfied with being connected through technology. He also thinks that as time goes on, we will only get worse when referring to the ideas that we are delusional because the issues we fight about (such as getting phones taken away) aren’t as important as we think.
In America, protest has been used throughout history as a vehicle to change. Protests bring attention to issues that would or could be overlooked or ignored. A current protest receiving national attention in our media is the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protest. The Occupy Wall Street protest, along with other Occupy branch protests are essentially ineffective protests. When compared to successful protests in the past, they are not having as much success gaining public support. There are many reasons this could be the case. There is no clearly defined goal or a specified outcome resulting from the protests. They are managing their funds inefficiently and in many cities they are creating more problems than they are solving.
In “Civil Disobedience,” Thoreau uses the idea of humanity and machines throughout the essay. At one point, he uses them together, asking whether the soldiers marching toward a war they know to be unjust are “men at all,” or instead “small moveable forts and magazines” (77). The defining characteristic of men, for Thoreau, is their conscience. When these soldiers suppressed their conscience, they in turn reduced their humanity. Conscience is the God-given faculty by which people can decide right from wrong. While government pushes people to follow the law, Thoreau claims that people should rather govern themselves through conscience. Altogether, Thoreau develops the idea that conscience preserves humanity, while the law suppresses it.
Throughout Thoreau’s essay, he expressed his opinions and beliefs on the importance of civil disobedience in a society. He talked about how one must use his or her moral sense, conscience, to decide what is just and unjust. From here, Thoreau urged his readers to take action, to stop the machine from continuing its lifeless duty. His call to action is if a system is prone to corruption, the people must disobey it. This means that personal endangerment may be needed to do what is right. Going against the status quo to uphold justice and ethics is the basic message behind Thoreau’s essay.
Social movements come and go; they represent all manner of political aspirations, and aim to achieve their political objectives by influencing a particular target group’s opinion. Some groups reach out directly to just a few key decision makers or constituencies, while others act more indirectly by broadcasting their message to as wide an audience as possible. Popular forms of social media have played a significant influence in social movements throughout the last few years. Two prominent examples are Ai Weiwei’s use of the social platform: Twitter, and the use of Yik Yak at the University of Missouri. Social movements rely on the media for the mobilization of political support, validation in the mainstreams discourse, and opportunity to broaden
Whether it be the American Revolution or the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution or the Cuban Revolution, the term holds a universal definition - the deposition of an oppressive regime in exchange for a more desired government. Rebellions have pioneered many new techniques for distributing information and rallying support, such as Paine’s invigorating pamphlets or Lenin’s provocative speeches. More recently in the twentieth and twenty-first century, however, the pamphlets and commentaries of the past have subsided, and new forms of media have grown in effectiveness. Informing and assembling swifter than ever, social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube have unlocked limitless opportunities for the average citizen to become
The number of revolutions in the last 3 decades has increased, and seems to keep increasing. Civil unrest and protests brought many victims including civil and political figures throughout the world. In the era where technology is at the peak of its success, especially in communication technologies, mankind suffers from lack of communication. Problem is not caused by the technology itself, the problem is in human nature. I will continue with an analogy. Man invented the knife, which is very useful tool in our daily lives. The problem occurs when one thinks about the purposes that knife could be used. Story repeats itself with Newspapers and News Media. Technology improved the speed and the size that news can reach anywhere in couple of seconds. In a few seconds we can reach our friend at the other pole of the globe and receive pictures and live videos in response. We can send information, receive it and even create it in the artificial world. Life has become easier with technology. We can control our cell phones with voice command and reserve a table in the closest restaurant for dinner. Technology is everywhere in our lives, but if we think for a second the purposes we could use them for then the danger begins. In this short essay I will be talking about the struggle of mankind for freedom and the stages it went through. There are 3 parts to my paper. In the first part I will discuss the birth of World Wide Web and how the purpose of it went through changes. In the second part, I will be talking about birth of newspapers in the Web, precisely how it developed into an intermediate body that transfers information to people. Ultimately, I will discuss the Ukrainian revolution and the role of the news media in it and ho...
The purpose of this essay is to develop a further understanding of the impacts of social media in regards to the political debate. By looking at the topic of social media and the use rhetoric in response to politics in the 21st century, a deeper understanding of the issue can be established. Social media has become a primary source for the discussion of politics by the average citizen; whether through the sharing of articles, “memes”, advertisements or personal expository statements. As a result, large sums of information and ideas are spread rapidly to a wide variety of subjects. However, much of this information may not be accurate and could be misinterpreted. Consequently potentially misinformed citizens may not be able to make a properly
Social media can impact a life of an individual at many levels. On social media, each individual has the power to be influential and important. There is a freedom of expression on soci...