[-empyre-] New Media and the Middle East

[Ulises Mejias]

I'm looking forward to learning more about the work this month's guests are
doing.

In light of how the demonstrations in Tunisia and Egypt (and Iran, earlier)
are being labeled Twitter or Facebook Revolutions, I'm interested in the
ways in which these Web 2.0 tools are incorporated into artistic practices,
and the tension this creates between the interests of the public, the
artist, and the corporations that own and control these tools.

To clarify where I am coming from, I would like to share the following
statement, which I think is pertinent to our discussion. For hyperlink
citations and images, see
http://blog.ulisesmejias.com/2011/01/30/the-twitter-revolution-must-die/

THE TWITTER REVOLUTION MUST DIE

Have you ever heard of the Leica Revolution? No?

That’s probably because folks who don’t know anything about “branding”
insist on calling it the Mexican Revolution. An estimated two million people
died in the long struggle (1910-1920) to overthrow a despotic government and
bring about reform. But why shouldn’t we re-name the revolution not after a
nation or its people, but after the “social media” that had such a great
impact in making the struggle known all over the world: the photographic
camera? Even better, let’s name the revolution not after the medium itself,
but after the manufacturer of the cameras that were carried by people like
Hugo Brehme to document the atrocities of war. Viva Leica, cabrones!

My sarcasm is, of course, a thinly veiled attempt to point out how absurd it
is to refer to events in Iran, Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere as the Twitter
Revolution, the Facebook Revolution, and so on. What we call things, the
names we use to identify them, has incredible symbolic power, and I, for
one, refuse to associate corporate brands with struggles for human dignity.
I agree with Jillian York when she says:

“… I am glad that Tunisians were able to utilize social media to bring
attention to their plight.  But I will not dishonor the memory of Mohamed
Bouazizi–or the 65 others that died on the streets for their cause–by
dubbing this anything but a human revolution.”

Granted, as Joss Hands points out, there appears to be more skepticism than
support for the idea that tools like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are
primarily responsible for igniting the uprisings in question. But that
hasn’t stopped the internet intelligentsia from engaging in lengthy
arguments about the role that technology is playing in these historic
developments. One camp, comprised of people like Clay Shirky, seem to make
allowances for what Cory Doctorow calls the “internet’s special power to
connect and liberate.” On the other side, authors like Ethan Zuckerman,
Malcolm Gladwell and Evgeny Morozov have proposed that while digital media
can play a role in organizing social movements, it cannot be counted on to
build lasting alliances, or even protect net activists once authorities
start using the same tools to crack down on dissent.

Both sides are, perhaps, engaging in a bit of technological determinism–one
by embellishing the agency of technology, the other by diminishing it. The
truth, as always, is somewhere in between, and philosophers of technology
settled the dispute of whether technology shapes society (technological
determinism) or society shapes technology (cultural materialism) a while
ago: the fact is that technology and society mutually and continually
determine each other.

So why does the image of a revolution enabled by social media continue to
grab headlines and spark the interest of Western audiences, and what are the
dangers of employing such imagery? My fear is that the hype about a
Twitter/Facebook/YouTube revolution performs two functions: first, it
depoliticizes our understanding of the conflicts, and second, it whitewashes
the role of capitalism in suppressing democracy.

To elaborate, the discourse of a social media revolution is a form of
self-focused empathy in which we imagine the other (in this case, a Muslim
other) to be nothing more than a projection of our own desires, a
depoliticized instant in our own becoming. What a strong affirmation of
ourselves it is to believe that people engaged in a desperate struggle for
human dignity are using the same Web 2.0 products we are using! That we are
able to form this empathy largely on the basis of consumerism demonstrates
the extent to which we have bought into the notion that democracy is a
by-product of media products for self-expression, and that the corporations
that create such media products would never side with governments against
their own people.

It is time to abandon this fantasy, and to realize that although the
internet’s original architecture encouraged openness, it is becoming
increasingly privatized and centralized. While it is true that an internet
controlled by a handful of media conglomerates can still be used to promote
democracy (as people are doing in Tunisia, Egypt, and all over the world),
we need to reconsider the role that social media corporations like Facebook
and Twitter will play in these struggles.

The clearest way to understand this role is to simply look at the past and
current role that corporations have played in “facilitating” democracy
elsewhere. Consider the above image of the tear gas canister fired against
Egyptians demanding democracy. The can is labeled Made in U.S.A.

But surely it would be a gross calumny to suggest that ICT are on the same
level as tear gas, right? Well, perhaps not. Today, our exports encompass
not only weapons of war and riot control used to keep in power corrupt
leaders, but tools of internet surveillance like Narusinsight, produced by a
subsidiary of Boeing and used by the Egyptian government to track down and
“disappear” dissidents.

Even without citing examples of specific Web companies that have aided
governments in the surveillance and persecution of their citizens (Jillian
York documents some of these examples), my point is simply that the emerging
market structure of the internet is threatening its potential to be used by
people as a tool for democracy. The more monopolies (a market structure
characterized by a single seller) control access and infrastructure, and the
more monopsonies (a market structure characterized by a single buyer)
control aggregation and distribution of user-generated content, the easier
it is going to be for authorities to pull the plug, as just happened in
Egypt.

I’m reminded of the first so-called Internet Revolution. Almost a hundred
years after the original Mexican Revolution, the Zapatista Army of National
Liberation launched an uprising in southern Mexico to try to address some of
the injustices that the first revolution didn’t fix, and that remain
unsolved to this day. But back in 1994, Subcomandante Marcos and the rest of
the EZLN didn’t have Facebook profiles, or use Twitter to communicate or
organize. Maybe their movement would have been more effective if they had.
Or maybe it managed to stay alive because of the decentralized nature of the
networks the EZLN and their supporters used.

My point is this: as digital networks grow and become more centralized and
privatized, they increase opportunities for participation, but they also
increase inequality, and make it easier for authorities to control them.

Thus, the real challenge is going to be figuring out how to continue the
struggle after the network has been shut off. In fact, the struggle is going
to be against those who own and control the network. If the fight can’t
continue without Facebook and Twitter, then it is doomed. But I suspect the
people of Iran, Tunisia and Egypt (unlike us) already know this, out of
sheer necessity.

[Ulises A. Mejias is assistant professor at the State University of New
York, College at Oswego. His book, The Limits of Nodes: Unmapping the
Digital Network, is under review by publishers.]
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