I received press credentials for the World Press Freedom Day 2011 conference in DC. Normally, I would relish the opportunity to spend a few days with journalists and bloggers who are writing the first draft of history, and network with “clicktivists” who are using social media to bring about social change.
On Saturday, union members and their allies rallied from coast to coast. Hundreds turned out in Philadelphia's Love Park to show solidarity with the people of Wisconsin.
The speakers at this evening's panel discussion, “Covering Egypt: The Media and the Revolution,” would likely dismiss any comparison between Madison and Cairo.
The panel discussion will focus on the trending topic of digital media and the popular uprising in Egypt. The panelists will include Jeffrey Ghannam, author of a new report, “Social Media in the Arab World: Leading up to the Uprisings of 2011.”
Wael Ghonim, the 30-year-old Google executive who became the face of the people's revolution in Egypt, was interviewed on CBS' “60 Minutes.”
Ghonim told CBS News correspondent Harry Smith:
If there was no social networks, it would have never been sparked. Because the whole thing before the revolution was the most critical thing. Without Facebook, without Twitter, without Google, without YouTube, this would have never happened
Block the whole Internet, you're gonna really frustrate people. One of the strategic mistakes of this regime was blocking Facebook. One of the reasons why they are no longer in power now is that they blocked Facebook. Why? Because they have told four million people that they are scared like hell from the revolution by blocking Facebook. They forced everyone who's just, you know, waiting to read the news on Facebook, they forced them to go to the street to be part of this. So really, like, if I want to thank one, thank anyone for all of this, I would thank our stupid regime.
Ghonim's message to any autocratic leader who might be watching:
He should freak out. He seriously should freak out.
The uprisings in the Arab World show that powerful forces can come out of nowhere and turn traditional assumptions on their heads.
The game-changing events were triggered by a “black swan,” Mohamed Bouazizi, a street vendor who decided he had enough. When Bouazizi set himself on fire, he sparked a movement for political and economic reform that toppled one regime and left Hosni Mubarak teetering on the brink.
It's maddening that pollsters, political analysts and pundits think they can predict the outcome of the 2012 presidential election.
National Journal columnist Charlie Cook recently wrote:
The events that have transpired recently in Egypt and other countries in the Middle East should remind all of us about the danger of pretending that we know how the 2012 presidential election will unfold. We can study polls, historical election data, the Electoral College map, the growth in the gross domestic product, the stubborn unemployment rate, and changes in real disposable income all we want, but we have to recognize that unexpected events will happen.
In a 2007 book, Lebanese philosopher and mathematician Nassim Taleb postulated that most great events and discoveries can't be predicted, only explained in retrospect. He called the concept the “black swan” theory since no one would expect to see such a bird. “First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.”
Cook continued:
Too often, people are focused on the “October surprise,” an incredibly cynical view most often found among extreme partisans on both sides who assume that there is absolutely nothing that those in the other party wouldn’t do, no depth they wouldn’t stoop to, if they think it will win the election. This view assumes that strategists can control events and how they are perceived, a very bold assumption, in my view. My advice is to forget the October surprise and fear the black swan.
John C Abell, New York Bureau Chief for Wired.com, moderated the discussion. Abell noted the role of social media is being debated in many quarters, including the pages of the New York Times and the New Yorker, where Malcolm Gladwell, author of “The Tipping Point,” holds court. The debate begs the question: Why?
Abell said Gladwell is “staking out a position that no one is arguing against. No one is arguing that social media has created new behavior.”
Adam Penenberg, a journalism professor at New York University, agreed:
Gladwell is arguing with himself. No one thinks social media caused the revolution. It's an accelerant.
Micah Sifry, co-founder and executive editor of the Personal Democracy Forum, cut Gladwell to the quick: “I think Malcolm Gladwell hit his tipping point with that essay.” Ouch.
Penenberg drew parallels to the civil rights movement. He observed that civil rights activists “would have used cell phones if they had them. All of this stuff are tools. They accelerate the social networks we already had, that used to be called friends.”
Penenberg's observation echoed comments Roland Martin made on his TV One talk show, “Washington Watch.” Martin said:
When you look at social media and young people driving this whole agenda, it certainly reminds me of the civil rights movement, where people are saying,“Okay. We are tired of inequality.” And it’s just sort of just spreading like wildfire.
The panelists agreed that “it was the usual kinds of things that start these uprisings.” Economic hardship, including the rising cost of food, and the fear the world is passing them by are the root causes of the Arab uprisings.
In Tunisia, the uprising was sparked by Mohamed Bouazizi, a street vendor who set himself on fire.
Sifry said there were “two vectors”: a sense of hopelessness and rising connectivity. The number of Egyptians who have cell phones has increased 60 percent in the last two years.
While all of the speakers were informative and engaging, I listened with keen interest to Susannah Vila, Director of Content and Outreach for Movements.org.
In 2008, I attended the Alliance for Youth Movements first annual summit at Columbia Law School. I have no doubt that some of the young Egyptians I met two years ago are among the “Facebook youth” in Tahrir (Liberation) Square.
Vila said social media “catalyzed” what was already happening on the ground:
It's a lot easier to get a critical mass of people because there's been an increase in the number of people on Facebook and Twitter.
We now know that Facebook page was created by Wael Ghonim, a 30-year-old Google executive who was arrested on Jan. 28. The Daily Beast reported Ghonim's page “sounded the call” for the popular uprising:
The Facebook page that Ghonim ran sounded the call for the initial protest on January 25. As the page’s following approached 400,000 people, and word of the event spread, it hosted a constant stream of news, photo and video, downloadable flyers, and emotional entreaties for all Egyptians to join the push.
The takeaway: Young people are sick and tired of being sick and tired of political repression and lack of opportunities. But alienation and anger were not enough to spark the popular uprisings. The Facebook youth used the new tools to organize and amplify their voices. Social media as an accelerator was less important once people took to the streets.
I am in NYC for Social Media Week, a mash-up of policy wonks, geeks, industry leaders and activists.
There are more events than time in the day. I will stay on the social media and social change track. Fittingly, the first event I will cover focuses on the “Internet and Uprisings in the Arab World.”
Some of Rich's old media colleagues get it. The New York Times reports that Facebook is “the social networking tool of choice for human rights activists in Egypt.”
The Times further reports:
While it is almost impossible to isolate the impact of social media tools from the general swirl of events that set off the popular uprisings across the Middle East, there is little doubt that they provided a new means for ordinary people to connect with human rights advocates trying to amass support against police abuse, torture and the Mubarak government’s permanent emergency laws allowing people to be jailed without charges.
Smokey Fontaine, Chief Content Officer of NewsOne.com/Interactive One, discussed the impact of social media with TV One's Roland Martin. Fontaine observed:
Egyptian authorities tried to cut off all Internet access. They tried to cut off all text messaging. They tried to cut off any way for their country's citizens to access the rest of the world. Unfortunately, that initiative did not succeed. There were satellite ISPs that went up. There were proxies that went up. So folks were able to get their message out, no matter what.
Fontaine added:
Flickr has over 10,000 images direct from Egyptian cities where all these protests are happening. YouTube has used their CitizenTube channel really, really effectively to curate all the information from real people that’s coming from the ground, and it’s helping drive the news story.
