Of course, at the top level, there is no such thing as a "Twitter" Revolution; Twitter as a technology itself doesn't make revolutions for anybody except Robert Scoble, who can make or break i-pad sales in Silicon Valley through sheer massiveness of automated-API-followers, and for epi-phenomena like the very determined young African Americans fighting daily for funky hashtag primacy. But the real moral of every Twitter Revolution is that Twitter doesn't make revolutions; people do. Yet increasingly, they make them *with* Twitter that they are on more than they are off. As citizens' movements increasingly use Twitter, there's an interesting resistance they face, not only from authoritarians using the same tools, but from a concerted clique of academics and think-tank pundits developing a theory of non-Twitter relevance that is either a subset of debunking of techno-utopianism or a sub-set of statism -- or both.
I can never tell whether Evgeny Morozov's bitter and cynical jihad against "i-pod liberalism" like this piece utterly discounting use of Twitter in Kyrgyzstan this week is in fact a much-needed corrective to the outrageously inflated Singularist techno-utopianism from Silicon Valley and its works -- a crusade I myself readily take part in on my own blog -- or whether in fact it pours water on the mills of the authoritarians using social media in sinister ways, because it concedes their power, and becomes quiescent in leaving the low ground to them -- for some strange reason. I'm also seeing more and more that Morozov has at least an academic stake in keeping afloat his theory of lumpen proletarian non-twittering analog masses who always fail and always get beaten by sophisticated commie or post-commie smoothies who run the state telelevision broadcasting system, and can shut off the cell phones on the one or two state providers in one switch, and of course close the Live Journals and Youtubes with the next mouse click. The question is: why? Can't he keep an open mind?
When Morozov approaches each event in the world named "a Twitter Revolution," he brings not only a healthy debunking of the techno-utopianism I debunk even more heartily (and without the TED elitism), he brings a political message: don't believe in Twitter, and people's revolutions using Twitter, believe in authoritarians who gain the upperhand. "Work with the smart New Class of neo-perestroika liberals like me," he seems to say, "avoiding the excesses of technological populism that might actually empower a grassroots movement here and there, and let's keep the establishment in charge of the tools." Indeed, the New Class has to keep conceding the authoritarian Old Class of Bolsheviks that they are going to replace incrementally, because if they don't, there is no reason for their existence, and the grassroots sweep them away.
Let's start with the *facts* about Kyrgyzstan, as clearly Morozov was busy writing a book and not on Twitter watching what was happening. As linking tweets is very time-consuming, browse through my back pages in @catfitz on Twitter to get an idea. From the first minutes of the violence breaking out, there were indeed people sending tweets from Kyrgyzstan as a search of the system shows. They were Kyrgyz exiles in Europe who were getting calls or emails from people inside the country; they were Westerners who work as mainstream or freelance reporters within Kyrgyzstan; they were simply people who read Russian and could read the news sites of the existing Kyrgyz independent media on sites like akipress.org; they were Kyrgyz geeks who are the early adapters in each of these countries who mainly tweet about software issues, but who at times like this, if they happen to be in the area, will at least tweet, "I live in the center and I don't see a !@#$ thing" or "I see smoke coming out of the government building". All this stuff *is* the Twitter Revolution. The Twitter Revolution isn't people at the barricades, with a club on their head, stopping to pull a sophisticated mobile phone from their pocket with a nifty Twitter API and tweet to the millions waiting to hear what's happening. Maybe a few did this; but that's not how it works. The Twitter Revolution is that some people who never used the media begin to use it; others who were on it use it for covering events previously of little interest; still others learn about the events and participate them. Because Twitter Revolutions are more meta and subtle in this way, those cynically taking only a literal and linear view of Twitter like Morozov can't see it.
And I don't mean to invoke magic circle woo woo here, that the Twitter devs are making a Better World. Long before Morozov found it fashionable, I was explaining that it wasn't Twitter that got the American student out of the Egyptian jail, it was decades of U.S. aid to Egypt. Even so, it became a social phenomenon and part of a social revolution.
In Kyrgyzstan, anyone who was part of the writing/thinking/observing intelligentsia would definitely go to the few more or less open news sites to get news, adding news or views in the comments perhaps (some of them were shut down on the eve of the turmoil); or on their mobiles -- people do have mobiles -- or on their emails (Kyrgyz human rights activists have sent out daily notices on email for years).What Evgeny doesn't want to see, because of the prism through which he is looking at this now, is that a synapse jump takes place, as it did with the Moscow metro suicide bombing and Moldova and of course Iran. People who never heard of Twitter, but have a phone and have a computer, suddenly start a twitter account to see what's happening. They find it's a useful way to keep touch with friends and keep using it, but they tend to paste to each other not live accounts from real independent reporters at the scene, which might be scarce, but online news or even official news -- many people will feel comfortable and safe and trusting of Twittering the Minister of Health's report of 68 dead people, but they won't tweet speculative politicized comments for various reasons and even scold those who do.
There was a lot of twitter action, and a lot of *interesting* Twitter action, yet snarky Evgeny and his comrade Chris came on to sneer at it. First, Evgeny retweets Chris' cynical pronounciation on events only a few hours old, unburdened by any actual review of any actual twitter stream, because he likely didn't friend dozens of Kyrgyz who were on twitter, from geeks to opposition, as people like me did ages ago. So he had no stream. Your impression of Twitter in the window before the hashtag is agreed upon by the amorphous mob and becomes coherent literally depends on whether you thought to follow the right people. Evgeny tells Chris that he will name this revo "Bish-tech" -- a knock on the fact that people *thought* it involved Twitter when it didn't, as the technology wasn't there. Ha ha. Except it was.
There's no question that Twitter made it possible for exiles and opposition to come together and find sympathy from the international community, and for someone like me observing events in this part of the world and writing on them to instantly connect to someone trustworthy and knowledgeable in real time and then to expand to his contacts very quickly and find other links to other news and build up the holistic body of knowledge, opinion, and facts that makes a Twitter wave (better than a Google wave in a number of ways).
Soon there was the predictable rant about #CNN fail and #Time fail -- the belief that these old media outlets are slower than Twitter. This time, they weren't really; CNN had an i-reporter videotape up long before others even on the scene; while NGO media like EurasiaNet also had videos up, this wasn't so much "citizens' media" was it was independent NGO media organized to be on the scene and cover events professionally, not in an amateur and spontaneous manner.
One can only urge Evgeny to stop getting confused by the facts and go read the #freekg and #newkg and such hashtags and see the actual story. Of course Twitter, in combination with websites of online news and Youtube, was indeed used for organizing -- the druzhinniki put videos up on Youtube calling for volunteers; there were calls on Twitter with phones and places to meet.
As noted: Twitters don't make revolutions; people do. Twitter is a tool; it's not magic. The use of the tool may not be central to a revolution -- obviously with this particular round, bazookas as well as tulip-talk were vital to bashing in the gates of the corrupt leader's citadel and taking over. But Twitter mattered *too* and increasingly. You can't say "a few thousand twitterers don't affect the situation and talk to themselves" when it truly is a remarkable window into history in the making. If you are watching enough people and have the patience to sift you see all kinds of things -- opposition leaders that look pretty nasty who you aren't happy about taking charge because they are deflecting criticism of violence; calls of a lot of people on this opposition to do more and really restore order; pleas and begging from the new government to cut them some slack; resignation from Russians who feel this is a time to leave another stan as they may find themselves not welcome; westerners arguing whether the new government is a tool of Moscow or a tool of Washington. All pieces of the picture. All part of journalism and history to be looked at. Not the only or even the best way to cover a story, but unique and interesting and increasingly important.
Not so for Evgeny. For him, the fact that authoritarians can switch off Twitter or Live Journal becomes a death warrant on their social significance. Worse, he imagines that because they can seize control of the same social media tools and corrupt the information or disinform or lie, they win.
In this Blood Red Tulip Revolution, as Scott Horton has called it, the provocateurs were readily identifiable. There were people sending out false reports of 50,000 Bakiyev supporters marching from the South; there people claiming certain stores were destroyed when they weren't; even without Twitter and Live Journal, which aren't important as they are in Russia and elsewhere, the false story of the Minister of Interior being beaten to death got legs -- on old media of wire services and online newspapers.
Yet people push back hard. They start questioning the information and wondering why people with new accounts and no followers suddenly show up with cryptic names and yet claim to have deep knowledge of the system. Somebody with a credible name who already existed on Twitter, or who can emerge on Twitter with an already recognizable website, quickly gets a greater following than the fake provocateurs. The suspiciousness of course is poisoning, as some people get falsely suspected, or hate begins to churn, as it did first among some Kyrgyz and Western leftists who were certain the U.S. was backing Bakiyev (it wasn't) because of the military base, then among Kyrgyz against some Chinese twitterers using the #freekg hashtag that one twitterer characterized as "spam" merely because it was in Chinese and not readable to non-Chinese.
I wrote extensively about the role of Twitter during the Moscow metro bombing, concluding that social media failed, not old media failed (the usual mantra) because people mainly tweeted official sources and independent reporting was very scarce. Yet that great debunker of utopians @evgenymorozov was nowhere to be found, neither confirming or denying the role of Twitter in this huge event in the region he comes from. The "Twitter Revolution" here would take various forms -- whether the suicide bombing movements would use it (they didn't); whether independent reporters would construct an alternative narrative to officials on Twitter (they did a little bit); whether authoritarians in the government would seize social media to stay in charge (they did somewhat, but more as a factor of already owning all the official media, and having the power to secure the area with armed forces.) So much for Morozov's theories again; Twitter is always --and increasingly -- important to get some people connected and to get some news out, but it will be uneven and surge up and down depending on other factors -- existing control of the media being the main one, in my view, even more important than the percentage of people connected to the Internet or with phones.
If you don't see the world cynically as made up of powerful authoritarians who cannot ever be successfully challenged, than the power of one twitterer doesn't matter. But there were quite a few coming out of Kyrgyzstan. The most important citizen's use of Twitter arguably was the creation or activization of the account held by Roza Otunbayeva, who went from being merely an opposition member to being the interim government leader taking charge. She made a call for order and druzhinniki; she began to post announcements of a press conference and that drove people to opposition sites (some which remained closed) to see the transcript (which RIA Novosti seemed to have gotten first) -- that was tremendously important. Roza's Twitter account wasn't just some affectation or little-used fad -- it was a very important statement to the world: recognize me, including me in the stream, follow me - a validation. She has followers from Kyrgyzstan; but she also has followers from the State Department or the EU or major news media who will use the news from that account, which might be sparse, along with other live spot news from her physical appearances or reports on the ground, to find out what's happening.
Whatever Otunbayeva's fate and how she turns out to be -- liberal or authoritarian -- her use of Twitter to consolidate power is so noted, and political scientists continuing to sneer at Twitter as unimportant or only used by sinister-minded states is as silly as claiming the Internet or the telephone have no role in social movements and current events.
Morozov is also wrong about the degree to which Kyrgyzstan "penetrated" to those who never heard of it.
The comments forms of newspapers -- among the main outlets in Central Asia for free speech, especially for those without the means or funds to start an Internet page or the willingness to be exposed on Live Journal continuously -- were the most important form of "new media" that significantly spread awareness of Kyrgyzstan. What might have been a little-read piece by Cliff Levy in the Times got a 100 comments from people who were so ignorant they thought there was oil being extracted by the U.S. in Kyrgyzstan (there isn't) -- but who got an opinion once they heard "American base" and "propped up dictator" because it fit a preconceived meme. Lots of ordinary people on Twitter tuned in to #freekg just to see what this latest version of "America befriending dictators abroad" might be all about, with some blogs pumping that meme for all its worth. Social media doesn't make for *accurate* coverage or discussion, but it makes for more penetration and the ability of many people at many levels to discuss and debate and contradict each other. This in turn creates a kind of social pressure, and the U.S. Government, especially with Gov 2.0 media policy, can't leave a home page for the US Embassy--Bishkek up for long that only had an outdated picture of Hillary unveiling a children's book, but would have to start making some kind of statement -- a wan one at first, and one that twitterers then pushed to clarify. This is all part of the Twitter Revolution too -- more people with send a tweet than call a Congressman.
I don't suffer from the pervasive liberal bias. I know these guys in Eurasia get together at weekend seminars and plot how they will use these tools for evil, antipodes of the geek #barcamp planning utopian assistance to people in Haiti with APIs on cell phones. Yet the situation isn't static. People push back. Some of the authoritarians defect. It's fluid. And it's all on Twitter.
Meanwhile, all Morozov can do is sneer, as he did in his contribution of a forwarding of a snide comment by @xeus:
Revolutions not aided by Twitter: Kyrgyzstan. Non-revolutions not aided by Twitter: Iran (via @xeus)
Of course Iran was a revolution, the most important in decades in the Middle East, and definitely aided by twitter, although as much in the diaspora and the sympathetic Western intelligentsia as inside the country. And is Kyrgyzstan's Red Blood Tulip reprise a revolution? I'm waiting to see who gets the fuel concession for Manas, and who can manage to subsidize or beat back Russia's gas price hike. Then we'll know.
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