Does social media really help us understand the protests?
| 08:37 UK time, Wednesday, 23 February 2011
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This topic was discussed on World Have Your Say on 23 February 2011.ÌýListen to the programme.
The ongoing protests across the Middle East and Africa are still dominating online conversations. We will be doing our best to bring you the latest about what is going on in these places and you can follow this for regular updates throughout the day.
As well as this, the last few weeks have highlighted a number of talking points, one of which has been the importance of social media in these protests.
Ben Allen is in Dubai, where a conference has been organised to discuss how important things like Twitter and Facebook have been. This is what the have to say:
While some have portrayed these programs as "game changers" creating a whole new paradigm for mobilization, others have placed them in the same social context as photocopy and fax machines, cassette tapes, radio and other media which, in their own day, empowered uprisings and revolutions.
Referring to Libya, says social media has been invaluable as a source of information about what is happening.
The importance of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube in a completely closed society like Libya-a country which, unlike Egypt and Bahrain, journalists generally cannot access-cannot be overstated.
In this Clay Shirky argues that social media can help accelerate the process
Social media doesn't necessarily change the social dynamic...it just speeds it up.
, president of North Eastern State Universirty, also says that social media is playing an important role in connecting people.
One reality is that we have a potent new tool of domestic change and international influence - social media that are connecting real people in a common cause.
This argues that the importance of social media is in its ability to facilitate communication between groups of people
The point isn't the medium used. The point is that now we have more media at our fingertips than ever, which makes it much harder to shut down mass communication and organization than ever. The point is also that, with all of these new technologies, there are more forces encouraging people to communicate, expand networks and come together, that there is now a degree of inevitability to social change. We might find that social media don't always make the best tools for organizing a mass movement (considering that tech savvy governments like Iran can monitor them and weed out the dangerous), but they have become a crucial source of information.
But not everyone agrees, this says that social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, are being given too much credit.
Writing about the Tunisian revolution, social media expert is more sceptical about the significance of Twitter
To call this a "Twitter revolution" or even a "WikiLeaks revolution" demonstrates that we haven't learned anything from past experiences in Moldova and Iran. Evgeny Morozov's question-"Would this revolution have happened if there were no Facebook and Twitter?"-says it all. And in this case, yes, I-like most Tunisians to whom I've posed this question-believe that this would have happened without the Internet.
Writing in Tech Crunch, says the desire by some to elevate the importance of social media is distracting from what is really important:
While it's plain that these things were part of the process, I think the mindset of the online world creates a risk of overstating their importance, and elevating something useful, even powerful, to the status of essential.
This piece from the also warns against over hyping the importance of social media.
People with a grievance will always find ways to communicate with each other. How they choose to do it is less interesting, in the end, than why they were driven to do it in the first place.
So has social media been a crucial part of the success of these protests? Is it more important for those of us following what is happening than for the people involved in the protests? What about the dangers of misinformation and manipulation? Is social media a help or a hindrance?
