Week 8 Readings: New Media Activism in the Ukraine
For this week’s blog post I will be focusing on the role of new media in political activism.
Castells (2010) states that new media is primarily used as an organisation tool by existing social movements. Some key features of new media as an organisational tool include:
New media is primarily used as a tool to collect and mobilise crowds
New media can create a sense of community, and togetherness, which helps overcome fear
New media organisation often lacks a hierarchical structure of organisation, instead being decentralised often without leaders
New media creates a space for discussion and debate
The Ukraine riots are a great recent example of new media use within a political movement as described above. The Social Media and Political Participation (SMaPP) lab from New York University studied social media use in the Ukraine to see how it was used during the riots.
Facebook was hypothesized to be primarily used for two purposes:
To provide information to those not participating in the riots and generate support and discussion; and
To coordinate those protesters who were on the ground
SMaPP came to this conclusion based off the content and language of the posts. The posts on Facebook were entirely in Ukrainian, and showed videos and pictures of protesters clashing violently with police in order to generate discussion and support. The coordination posts told protesters where they could refresh themselves and offered tips on how to avoid police harassment.
Twitter was used less, but was used for different purpose. SMaPP came to the conclusion that twitter was used mainly to communicate with an international audience. They found that the language of the tweets was spread out in different languages, including Ukrainian, English and Russian. Tweets spiked around major events, and hashtags were used to spread news of events.
Differing views of effectiveness
Gladwell (2010) criticises new media as a tool for social activism. Gladwell believes that new media favours ‘weak-tie’ connections over the ‘strong-tie’ connections that characterise traditional political movements. These weak tie-connections are inherent in the way social media platforms work. Twitter and Facebook connect us with people we have don’t know well or at all.
Gladwell continues that while these weak tie connections enable large numbers to mobilise for campaigns, it only works for easy campaigns, such as petitions. For social change within a difficult campaign, strong tie connections within established communities are required, along with the hierarchy and camaraderie they provide.
Shirky (2011) takes a more positive view, hypothesizing that social media is better viewed as a long-term tool that can strengthen civil society and the public sphere, and that “social media tools are not a replacement for real-world, action, but a way to coordinate it.”
Shirky continues with the idea that social media gives the networked population greater access to information and the opportunity to engage in public speech. These freedoms enable loosely coordinated publics to ‘demand change’.
To bring it together, we have commentary from Greg Satell, a Ukrainian expat journalist now working in the US. Satell comments that while social media has given groups an enhanced ability to disrupt, there is still no clear formula for bridging the gap between disruption and legitimacy. Satell agrees with Gladwell that hierarchy does play a crucial role in organising sustained action, and that it is yet to be seen whether new media orientated social movements will offer sustained action.
New media can be used to empower and organise loosely coordinated publics, but it remains to be seen if purely new media organised networks can sustain change in the long run.
References:
Shirky, Clay. 2011. “The Political Power of Social Media: Technology, the Public Sphere, and Political Change.” Foreign Affairs 90:1. Available at:http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67038/clay-shirky/the-political-power-of-social-media
Castells, Manuel. 2012. Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Gladwell, Malcom. 2010. “Small Change: Why the Revolution will not be Tweeted.” The New Yorker, October 4. Available at: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all
Pable Barbera and Megan Metzger. 2013.”How Ukrainian Protester are Using Twitter and Facebook.” The Washington Post, December 4. Available at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2013/12/04/strategic-use-of-facebook-and-twitter-in-ukrainian-protests/
Greg Satell. 2014. “If You Doubt That Social Media Has Changed the World, Take a Look at Ukraine.” Forbes, January 8. Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2014/01/18/if-you-doubt-that-social-media-has-changed-the-world-take-a-look-at-ukraine/
