http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2011/02/16/recap-social-media-and-egypt/
"Recap: Social Media and Egypt's Revolution." This article gives an overview of how twitter and facebook were used in Egypt.
http://socialmediaclub.org/blogs/social-media-journal/facebook-twitter-social-change-movements-and-regime-change-revolutions
"Facebook, Twitter, Social Change Movements and Regime-change Revolutions." This article views the social web as "a catalyst to slowly change the social context" rather than just a tool of communication. "[T]the role of the social web as a coordination tool is much less important in a regime change revolution than in a social change movement."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/digitaltrends/20110225/tc_digitaltrends/studysaysinternetmakesyouthmoreengagedcitizens
"Study Says Internet Makes Youth More Engaged Citizens." "Put social networking tools in the hands of youth, and they are more likely to engage in their government." The Internet is good and it helps people.
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67325/malcolm-gladwell-and-clay-shirky/from-innovation-to-revolution
"From Innovation to Revolution." This is a little point-counterpoint between Gladwell and Shirky. Shirky wins.
Internet Collective Action is people organizing in a nonhierarchical manner to accomplish a particular goal. The reward is in the doing, and how much or how little anyone participates is completely voluntary, depending on their abilities and commitment to the goal. By this process amazing things can be accomplished. ICA will grow so long as the Internet is free. http://www.lisamcpherson.org/pc.htm is an example of ICA.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
Social Media and Revolution
http://www.digitaltonto.com/2011/social-media-and-revolution/
"Again, this doesn’t make a tweet a heroic act, nor does it mean that significant social action can’t be taken in the absence of social media and, it must be said, I haven’t heard anybody arguing in favor of such notions. Nevertheless, social media and other communication technologies are helping to shape the political landscape in important ways."
This is a great article from Greg Satell, who apparently was part of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. He reviews how social media worked then and now, and gives some comparative thoughts between Ukraine's and Egypt's revolutions. Good stuff. And more poking at Gladwell.
"Again, this doesn’t make a tweet a heroic act, nor does it mean that significant social action can’t be taken in the absence of social media and, it must be said, I haven’t heard anybody arguing in favor of such notions. Nevertheless, social media and other communication technologies are helping to shape the political landscape in important ways."
This is a great article from Greg Satell, who apparently was part of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. He reviews how social media worked then and now, and gives some comparative thoughts between Ukraine's and Egypt's revolutions. Good stuff. And more poking at Gladwell.
Some of the internet crowd who started Egyptian protests
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/02/21/egypt.internet.revolution/index.html?hpt=C1
"The online organizers in Egypt are quick to spread credit. No single person, group, Facebook page or political party planned this movement. It just happened, they said. Partly in response to the events in Tunisia. Partly by years and years of lingering economic, social and human rights problems.
And even within the blogging and social-media-activist community, there were several efforts. A group called the April 6 Youth Movement had been leading internet-driven protests since at least 2008. It also had a hand in rallying people in January.
Saleh, the young man who grew up yearning for an internet connection, said he was amazed at the degree to which the internet played a role in the movement."
See also:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/elshaheeed.co.uk
"The online organizers in Egypt are quick to spread credit. No single person, group, Facebook page or political party planned this movement. It just happened, they said. Partly in response to the events in Tunisia. Partly by years and years of lingering economic, social and human rights problems.
And even within the blogging and social-media-activist community, there were several efforts. A group called the April 6 Youth Movement had been leading internet-driven protests since at least 2008. It also had a hand in rallying people in January.
Saleh, the young man who grew up yearning for an internet connection, said he was amazed at the degree to which the internet played a role in the movement."
See also:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/elshaheeed.co.uk
Sunday, February 20, 2011
The experts I turned to for ICA knowledge
There are people who specialize in aspects of Internet collective action. I'll list the ones I know about and have learned from.
Clay Shirky is perhaps the most forward thinking and innovative expert in the field. He has two books: Here Comes Everybody, and Cognitive Surplus. I recommend both.
Howard Rheingold started at the beginnings of the Internet with The Well. His book Smart Mobs helped me make sense of Anonymous.
Kevin Kelly was also an early pre-Internet person. His book Out of Control is long but instructive on why non-hierarchical activity works.
Don Tapscott wrote Grown Up Digital, about how a generation that has grown up with the Internet thinks differently than us old folks. He also wrote Wikinomics, which I haven't read.
James Surowiecki I don't know much about but really liked his book The Wisdom of Crowds.
These are the people I turned to when I was trying to make sense out of Project Chanology in 2009. My article is at http://www.lisamcpherson.org/pc.htm
Clay Shirky is perhaps the most forward thinking and innovative expert in the field. He has two books: Here Comes Everybody, and Cognitive Surplus. I recommend both.
Howard Rheingold started at the beginnings of the Internet with The Well. His book Smart Mobs helped me make sense of Anonymous.
Kevin Kelly was also an early pre-Internet person. His book Out of Control is long but instructive on why non-hierarchical activity works.
Don Tapscott wrote Grown Up Digital, about how a generation that has grown up with the Internet thinks differently than us old folks. He also wrote Wikinomics, which I haven't read.
James Surowiecki I don't know much about but really liked his book The Wisdom of Crowds.
These are the people I turned to when I was trying to make sense out of Project Chanology in 2009. My article is at http://www.lisamcpherson.org/pc.htm
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Maybe that's not a collective action after all?
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/16/945768/-The-HB-Gary-Email-That-Should-Concern-Us-All
"According to an embedded MS Word document found in one of the HB Gary emails, it involves creating an army of sockpuppets, with sophisticated 'persona management' software that allows a small team of only a few people to appear to be many, while keeping the personas from accidentally cross-contaminating each other. Then, to top it off, the team can actually automate some functions so one persona can appear to be an entire Brooks Brothers riot online."
Ok, this is kind of scary. It's apparently possible to make it look on a forum, or facebook, or other places online that there is a large group of people promoting one viewpoint or idea, when in fact it's possibly just one person with some fancy software. But even scarier than that, "the US Gov. is attempting to use this kind of technology. But it appears from the solicitation it is contracted for use in foreign theaters like Afghanistan and Iraq."
So, what to think of this? Will this destroy any credibility of an online chat group's concensus? Can one person sway a conversation on a forum by simply out sock-puppeting all conversation? Very bad. Very scary. But I assume there will be ways to expose such actions in the future. Or at least I hope so.
"According to an embedded MS Word document found in one of the HB Gary emails, it involves creating an army of sockpuppets, with sophisticated 'persona management' software that allows a small team of only a few people to appear to be many, while keeping the personas from accidentally cross-contaminating each other. Then, to top it off, the team can actually automate some functions so one persona can appear to be an entire Brooks Brothers riot online."
Ok, this is kind of scary. It's apparently possible to make it look on a forum, or facebook, or other places online that there is a large group of people promoting one viewpoint or idea, when in fact it's possibly just one person with some fancy software. But even scarier than that, "the US Gov. is attempting to use this kind of technology. But it appears from the solicitation it is contracted for use in foreign theaters like Afghanistan and Iraq."
So, what to think of this? Will this destroy any credibility of an online chat group's concensus? Can one person sway a conversation on a forum by simply out sock-puppeting all conversation? Very bad. Very scary. But I assume there will be ways to expose such actions in the future. Or at least I hope so.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Malcolm Gladwell gets it SO WRONG!
I liked Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point. It has nice gems like "Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push - in just the right place - it can be tipped." (p. 259)
But a few months ago Gladwell wrote a New Yorker magazine article titled "Small Change." In it he argues that new social media like Facebook and Twitter are not important nor useful for social protest. These tools provide "weak tie" relations, while Gladwell claims that effective protesters require "strong tie" relationships amongst themselves. He claims that "weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism."
This is true, I suppose. But consider the group Project Chanology, which in 2008 chose to protest against the Church of Scientology. At the first protest, most people there did not even know each other. In Phoenix, where I protested, many of the people had never seen each other before, and had perhaps only briefly chatted on a chat room, or looked at a web site for times and directions. Project Chanology came out of the group Anonymous, so it makes perfect sense that these people didn't know each other in real life. Yet Project Chanology has continued from then until today. You could say these were not just weak ties, they were practically no ties!
Gladwell does say that weak ties are useful; "There is strength in weak ties, as the sociologist Mark Granovetter has observed. Our acquaintances—not our friends—are our greatest source of new ideas and information."
Well now it's a few months later. Tunisia and Egypt got rid of their years-long entrenched despots. And guess what? They used new social media extensively! And for that matter, so did Project Chanology, which maybe Gladwell hadn't heard of. So he got it wrong, horribly wrong. And now people just make fun of him. http://www.malcolmgladwellbookgenerator.com/ I especially like The Tripping Point.
But a few months ago Gladwell wrote a New Yorker magazine article titled "Small Change." In it he argues that new social media like Facebook and Twitter are not important nor useful for social protest. These tools provide "weak tie" relations, while Gladwell claims that effective protesters require "strong tie" relationships amongst themselves. He claims that "weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism."
This is true, I suppose. But consider the group Project Chanology, which in 2008 chose to protest against the Church of Scientology. At the first protest, most people there did not even know each other. In Phoenix, where I protested, many of the people had never seen each other before, and had perhaps only briefly chatted on a chat room, or looked at a web site for times and directions. Project Chanology came out of the group Anonymous, so it makes perfect sense that these people didn't know each other in real life. Yet Project Chanology has continued from then until today. You could say these were not just weak ties, they were practically no ties!
Gladwell does say that weak ties are useful; "There is strength in weak ties, as the sociologist Mark Granovetter has observed. Our acquaintances—not our friends—are our greatest source of new ideas and information."
Well now it's a few months later. Tunisia and Egypt got rid of their years-long entrenched despots. And guess what? They used new social media extensively! And for that matter, so did Project Chanology, which maybe Gladwell hadn't heard of. So he got it wrong, horribly wrong. And now people just make fun of him. http://www.malcolmgladwellbookgenerator.com/ I especially like The Tripping Point.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
the economic leverage of Egyptian protesters
http://www.truth-out.org/why-mubarak-fell-the-sometimes-incredible-power-nonviolent-protest67770
" If you want to avoid future foreign policy Obaminations, be aware that nonviolent protest has the potential to strangle even the most brutal regime, if it can definitively threaten the viability of its core industries. In these circumstances, a mass movement equipped with fearsome weapons of mass disruption can topple a tyrant equipped with fearsome weapons of mass destruction."
While this is not about ICA, I wanted to point to it to show how complex some collective actions can be. This article discusses the economic leverage that the protesters in Egypt had. They shut down tourism, which is a huge section of Egyptian economy, almost instantly. Toward the end, the Suez Canal was threatened with closure. These economic strangulations turned the business class against Mubarak. And as the author points out, such leverage is not always available to protesters.
So it is not just that you have the right tools, but you also need a pliable situation to give you more leverage as well. And a lot more variables besides.
" If you want to avoid future foreign policy Obaminations, be aware that nonviolent protest has the potential to strangle even the most brutal regime, if it can definitively threaten the viability of its core industries. In these circumstances, a mass movement equipped with fearsome weapons of mass disruption can topple a tyrant equipped with fearsome weapons of mass destruction."
While this is not about ICA, I wanted to point to it to show how complex some collective actions can be. This article discusses the economic leverage that the protesters in Egypt had. They shut down tourism, which is a huge section of Egyptian economy, almost instantly. Toward the end, the Suez Canal was threatened with closure. These economic strangulations turned the business class against Mubarak. And as the author points out, such leverage is not always available to protesters.
So it is not just that you have the right tools, but you also need a pliable situation to give you more leverage as well. And a lot more variables besides.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Is a leader inevitable in ICA?
http://technosociology.org/?p=366&cpage=1
University of Maryland Sociology professor Zeynep Tufekci thinks you need a leader. She says that "it is wrong to assume that open networks 'naturally' facilitate 'leaderless' or horizontal structures. On the contrary, an examination of dynamics in such networks, and many examples from history, show that such set-ups often quickly evolve into very hierarchical and ossified networks not in spite of, but because of, their initial open nature."
Dr. Tufeckci tries to show that leaderless collective actions naturally end up with a leader coming to the top. I disagree, but maybe because we're talking about different things. Citing the current Egyptian revolution, she shows a graph of the most read tweeters who are involved in the revolution. By this I assume she thinks that Wael Ghonim should be considered a "leader" because he is followed the most on twitter.com. She also cites the "iron law of oligarchy" which states that after enough time in any organization "a group of insiders emerge and vigorously defend their turf, and almost always succeed."
A leader has authority within the group to make decisions for the group. Of course, I want to use Project Chanology as my example. Is there someone within Project Chanology who has authority within the group to make decisions for everybody else? No. And by design there never will be. Locally, there are people with more influence who make decisions that are usually followed, but even there no one has a position from which to wield any authority other than the rest of the group saying "ok." If the rest of the group said no, that has not changed any hierarchical position or decision-making system. It has probably wounded someone's ego, however.
Dr. Tufekci, I believe, seems to think that a collective action must naturally grow to a desire to gain power and control for itself. This is not true. Project Chanology has one simple goal, expose Scientology's evil side. It has no desire nor mechanism to take over Scientology, or to become some legal entity with a board of directors and bank account. It is simply like-minded people working together to accomplish a simple goal. Once that goal is achieved, Project Chanology ends. IF Project Chanology wanted to continue on from there, then Dr. Tufekci might be correct. But part of the definition of an Internet collective action for me is that it is leaderless, has a simple goal, and will dissolve once its goal is accomplished. Which reminds me, I should work on a tight definition of ICA...
University of Maryland Sociology professor Zeynep Tufekci thinks you need a leader. She says that "it is wrong to assume that open networks 'naturally' facilitate 'leaderless' or horizontal structures. On the contrary, an examination of dynamics in such networks, and many examples from history, show that such set-ups often quickly evolve into very hierarchical and ossified networks not in spite of, but because of, their initial open nature."
Dr. Tufeckci tries to show that leaderless collective actions naturally end up with a leader coming to the top. I disagree, but maybe because we're talking about different things. Citing the current Egyptian revolution, she shows a graph of the most read tweeters who are involved in the revolution. By this I assume she thinks that Wael Ghonim should be considered a "leader" because he is followed the most on twitter.com. She also cites the "iron law of oligarchy" which states that after enough time in any organization "a group of insiders emerge and vigorously defend their turf, and almost always succeed."
A leader has authority within the group to make decisions for the group. Of course, I want to use Project Chanology as my example. Is there someone within Project Chanology who has authority within the group to make decisions for everybody else? No. And by design there never will be. Locally, there are people with more influence who make decisions that are usually followed, but even there no one has a position from which to wield any authority other than the rest of the group saying "ok." If the rest of the group said no, that has not changed any hierarchical position or decision-making system. It has probably wounded someone's ego, however.
Dr. Tufekci, I believe, seems to think that a collective action must naturally grow to a desire to gain power and control for itself. This is not true. Project Chanology has one simple goal, expose Scientology's evil side. It has no desire nor mechanism to take over Scientology, or to become some legal entity with a board of directors and bank account. It is simply like-minded people working together to accomplish a simple goal. Once that goal is achieved, Project Chanology ends. IF Project Chanology wanted to continue on from there, then Dr. Tufekci might be correct. But part of the definition of an Internet collective action for me is that it is leaderless, has a simple goal, and will dissolve once its goal is accomplished. Which reminds me, I should work on a tight definition of ICA...
Friday, February 11, 2011
Pentagon didn't see Egyptian revolt coming.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/02/pentagon-predict-egypt-unrest/
"In the last three years, America’s military and intelligence agencies have spent more than $125 million on computer models that are supposed to forecast political unrest. It’s the latest episode in Washington’s four-decade dalliance with future-spotting programs. But if any of these algorithms saw the upheaval in Egypt coming, the spooks and the generals are keeping the predictions very quiet. Instead, the head of the CIA is getting hauled in front of Congress, making calls about Egypt’s future based on what he read in the press, and getting proven wrong hours later."
In my article on Project Chanology, I concluded that "In summary, collective action is easy to form and easy to do when it is Internet based. This makes collective action more likely and potentially more powerful once begun As more and more of these Internet based collective actions succeed in their established goals, such success will breed attempts at imitation. If Project Chanology succeeds in pressuring the Church of Scientology into significantly altering its methods or its strength, more people will look at Anonymous' actions and history for ideas on how to mirror their success. Project Chanology already shows the surprising speed and size that such collective actions can take. Such actions should be expected more and more in the near future, but it will not be possible to predict their creation."
Even those trying to organize such protests don't know for sure if it will work or not, because it's up to the decision of many individuals whether they see the value of the endeavor or not. So I don't think you CAN predict such things, nor make a model to help you predict. But the more times Internet collective action succeeds, the more likely it will be used again.
"In the last three years, America’s military and intelligence agencies have spent more than $125 million on computer models that are supposed to forecast political unrest. It’s the latest episode in Washington’s four-decade dalliance with future-spotting programs. But if any of these algorithms saw the upheaval in Egypt coming, the spooks and the generals are keeping the predictions very quiet. Instead, the head of the CIA is getting hauled in front of Congress, making calls about Egypt’s future based on what he read in the press, and getting proven wrong hours later."
In my article on Project Chanology, I concluded that "In summary, collective action is easy to form and easy to do when it is Internet based. This makes collective action more likely and potentially more powerful once begun As more and more of these Internet based collective actions succeed in their established goals, such success will breed attempts at imitation. If Project Chanology succeeds in pressuring the Church of Scientology into significantly altering its methods or its strength, more people will look at Anonymous' actions and history for ideas on how to mirror their success. Project Chanology already shows the surprising speed and size that such collective actions can take. Such actions should be expected more and more in the near future, but it will not be possible to predict their creation."
Even those trying to organize such protests don't know for sure if it will work or not, because it's up to the decision of many individuals whether they see the value of the endeavor or not. So I don't think you CAN predict such things, nor make a model to help you predict. But the more times Internet collective action succeeds, the more likely it will be used again.
Some of the collective in Egypt that won today
Unions
http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/forces-behind-egyptian-revolution
April 6 Youth Movement
http://6aprilmove.blogspot.com/
ElShaheed
http://www.newsweek.com/2011/01/30/el-shaheed-the-mysterious-anonymous-behind-egypt-s-revolt.html
Asmaa Mahfouz
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgjIgMdsEuk
and on, and on. This will be a very long list when the history of the Egyptian Revolution is written. Internet collective action was a big part of it.
http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/forces-behind-egyptian-revolution
April 6 Youth Movement
http://6aprilmove.blogspot.com/
ElShaheed
http://www.newsweek.com/2011/01/30/el-shaheed-the-mysterious-anonymous-behind-egypt-s-revolt.html
Asmaa Mahfouz
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgjIgMdsEuk
and on, and on. This will be a very long list when the history of the Egyptian Revolution is written. Internet collective action was a big part of it.
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