Teaching Conversations
Social Media & Revolution
Our first topic: In the wake of recent revolutions and popular protests in Moldova, Iran, Tunisia, and Egypt, there has been a lot of speculation about the relationship between these social uprisings, authoritarian states, and social media applications such Facebook and Twitter. How might you examine this relationship in an undergrad media studies class? Have you come across any texts, articles, or podcasts you’d recommend? Any ideas for special assignments or exercises?
You can join this conversation in two ways. The best way is to contribute a new post, making sure to mark “teaching conversations” as a category (you can cross-list with other categories by checking more than one). Or you can comment in reply to one of the posts below. The site administrators will convert your comments into a post so that it will be searchable in the future.
Consuming the revolts
Frank Rich’s NYT column from Feb.5, “Wallflowers at the Revolution,” provides a nice entrance into the debates around media coverage of the uprisings in the Middle East, particularly in terms of the use of social networking technologies. Rich argues in part that the emphasis in the American media on the use of Facebook and Twitter for organizing is a “form of implicit, simplistic Western chauvinism.”
PDFThe revolution was not televised
Here’s the January 22, 2011 episode of Al Jazeera English’s Listening Post that examines the role of social media and satellite technologies in Tunisia, as well as Western news outlets’ slow response.
One worthy blog posting for stimulating discussion on this topic is Jay Rosen’s post on “The ‘Twitter Can’t Topple Dictators’ Article.” Rosen cites numerous examples of well-known journalists trying to debunk the supposedly common notion that social media in themselves undermine authoritarian regimes. From Rosen’s view, these articles are all fighting straw figure ghosts – no one serious really makes these claims. I’m not so sure he’s right about this, even if the claim is not made that explicitly, attributing a democratic telos to social media has a long history. Nonetheless, Rosen’s post is a good read with lots of examples. Omri Ceren‘s blog has a thought-provoking rejoinder to Rosen, suggesting that it’s Rosen himself who is reducing nuanced arguments made by the authors he cites. Ceren also provides many examples of the “twitter is revolutionary” article.
