Dear Reader, forgive me for this interjection going beyond analysis,
Dear Expert, if I may have a moment of your precious time,
Malcolm Gladwell, the social media correspondent of The New Yorker has just posted the 438rd original smack-down of the "Twitter Revolution". In "Small Change --- Why The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted", Gladwell reveals to the reader, "The world, we are told, is in the midst of a revolution. The new tools of social media have reinvented social activism."
Really? Who exactly says that 21st-century activism gets its primary strength from social media? Gladwell cites:
1. Mark Pfeifle, "a former national-security adviser": “Without Twitter the people of Iran would not have felt empowered and confident to stand up for freedom and democracy.”
2. James Glassman, former Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, "[Social media] give the U.S. a significant competitive advantage over terrorists."
Silly statements, to be sure, but if Gladwell had done more than do a Google search of "Nonsense" "About" "Facebook" "Twitter", he might have realised that Pfeifle --- who handled "strategic communications" for George W. Bush --- is not on anyone's radar screen as an authority on Iran. And, with any significant correspondence with someone who has dealt with public diplomacy, he would have learned that Glassman is not considered to have been the sharpest administrator in the box when it came to the concept.
And that's it. Gladwell gives no evidence that he has spoken with any social activist --- in person, on the phone, or via a tweet. He offers no extract from an analysis from someone who has been involved with political conflict and social communications, be that on Iran, Israel-Palestine, China, Venezuela, Moldova (his straw-man, sound-bite case), or any other country on this planet.
All he does is stick his "expert" hand into the cookie jar of quotes from the 347 previous original commentaries. Ah, look, here is Evgeny Morozov rendering his verdict. Here is Golnaz Esfandiari's “Simply put: There was no Twitter Revolution inside Iran.”
Look, no activist with whom I worked, no activist with whom I have corresponded, no activist whom I have met in cyber-space, has ever said that Twitter is the Revolution. No one ever said Twitter is Social Activism.
Because it's not. Trust me, dude, we know that.
Activism consists of a lot of reading, a lot of discussion, more than a little arguing, the constant organising, more reading, more contacts, a cup of coffee to keep going. It consists not of moments or of days but of months and years of finding the will to do it all again because nothing easy.
It consists of far more than bashing out a superficial column on a Keyboard. Or a superficial column rebutting it.
We know that. We know that Twitter and Facebook and other social media are only tools. If the hard work is not done to establish and pursue a cause, they have no use.
But --- and here's the point that Gladwell never approaches --- as tools rather than as end in themselves, they are quite powerful. I won't recount for readers here, some of whom might have found this column through social media, how significant social media is in providing channels of information. Anyone who has been with EA for some time knows how we established ourselves as a front-line source on key topics; anyone who is new will soon discover that.
These are outlets, even if States try to shut them down, which do get the voices of the activists outside their countries. And these are outlets which spread news of those voices. And these are outlets which, in spreading that news, get the message back into those countries that the events, the causes, the anger and the hopes have been noticed by others.
Twitter, Facebook, and social media are not activism --- that is a nonsensical equation which is only of value to the weakest of pundits. But like technologies before them, they spread the news of that activism.
Mr Gladwell, to grab the moral high ground for his tut-tutting, opens his column by invoking the 1960 lunch-counter sit-in protests as "real" activism, let me indulge him. Would he have penned a column a few years later, after seeing footage of the water cannons and dogs being unleashed on civil rights demonstrators in Birmingham, scoffing, "The world, we are told, is in the midst of a revolution. The new tool of television has reinvented social activism."
Of course not. (Or at least I hope not.) Television was not the Civil Rights Movement. But a lot of people were moved out of passivity when the tool of television brought the violence against the activists into their living rooms. Not all of them were moved to back the Movement, but most recognised that changes were underway, and all the water cannons and dogs would not hold them back.
As I write, I wonder, "Why am I bothering?" After all, most of you who read EA know my views already and most of you, while not necessarily agreeing with my perspective on social media, probably came here via that route. And Mr Gladwell's wisdom is unlikely to be of concern to an activist who is dealing with more important matters in a location like Iran.
Well, I was prompted to write this --- dare I say ironically? --- by a "tweet". "Abuaardvark", better known as Marc Lynch, one of the best-known US-based analysts on the Middle East, had sent out the 140-character message, "Why the revolution will not be tweeted, by Gladwell / our USIP [US Institute for Peace] report better written."
In the Washington circles who define foreign policy, that's an endorsement. In fact, it's a circular endorsement. Lynch likes Gladwell and plugs the US Institute for Peace. The US Institute for Peace name-checks Evgeny Morozov. Morozov is cited by Gladwell, as is Esfandiari. Esfandiari was also involved with the US Institute for Peace panel. And on it goes....
Not one of the people in this analytic group-hug, apart from Esfandiari, has been involved in grass-roots observation of Iran. But all of them are involved, in some way, in defining what we should think about Iran.
So the counter-myth circulates. There was no Twitter Revolution. Indeed there was no Revolution at all. Indeed there was....
Well, what was there? What happened not only in the dramatic days after June 2009 but in the months afterwards? What is continuing to happen now in the incredibly complex political, economic, and social developments?
Trashing Twitter is a short-cut that means you can avoid confrontation with those questions. So much easier, rather than using social media to identify Iranian sources --- newspapers, websites, videos, voice --- to use the "reliable" messengers of The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and, I guess, The New Yorker.
Fine, do it. Do it amongst yourselves, Mr/Ms Experts. But please, for the rest of us, don't pronounce on what we should and should not do.
And please, if you --- like Mr Gladwell --- invoke "activism" to elevate your remarks, do not pronounce that you are replacing the activists whom, for some reason, you never notice in your judgements on the "Twitter Revolution".
You are not.
Best wishes,
Scott Lucas
