Social Networking

My blog posting this week will focus mainly on the article by Shirky (2011) that discusses the role of social media in democracy. The reason I’m focusing on this article is because I find it to be incredibly timely considering the recent liberation of Egypt. It’s almost as if the author was able to look into the future to predict that the protests in Egypt would result in Mubarak being ousted from power. It’s uncommon for an academic to get lucky enough to have historic events give life to his or her research, but Shirky had an idea and capitalized on it at exactly the right time.

The article opens with the following question: Do digital tools enhance democracy? Shirky’s answer is as follows: “these tools probably do not hurt in the short run and might help in the long run -- and that they have the most dramatic effects in states where a public sphere already constrains the actions of the government.” This is a natural question addressing a theme that the mainstream media seems to have finally picked up on.

It would be interesting to see if social media as a political tool in foreign nations, or political action outside of a two-party system, democratic atmosphere becomes a theme in the media. In the vein of Arceneaux and Smith Weiss’s study, the coverage of Facebook’s role in the Egypt protests would fall under what the authors called the civic use category. Would future research find this theme to be positive or negative? I expect this theme to be huge over the next year with the impending instability in the Middle East.

At first glance, it seems that social networking will play a huge role in the coverage of Egypt and more than likely any future revolutions that arise in the Middle East. I was watching Egypt coverage on CNN all day on Friday as Mubarak announced that he would step down. I noticed that CNN gave major credit to Facebook as an organizer of the protests in Egypt. I don’t say that they gave credit to Facebook as a tool in the organization of the protests, but they actually seemed to personify Facebook as if it in itself was solely responsible for Egypt’s freedom.

Shirky would say, and I would agree, that social media cannot be held responsible for political change as CNN suggested, but instead should be thought of as a complementary tool that encourages motivated people to motivate quickly and in a more coordinated manner than they would without social media. Though it would be easy to jump up and say, “look what Facebook did in Egypt!,” it is not entirely realistic. People have found ways to motivate groups well before social media existed. Indeed, Shirky outlines the various ways that mediums such as the printing press and the photo copier have aided in organizing movements. Still, social media can drastically decrease the time it takes to disseminate valuable information. Egypt’s liberation was brought about in 18 days! This would arguably have taken much longer without the help of the Internet. In addition to speed, Shirky states that social media’s most valuable asset in organizing movements is that it can “compensate for the disadvantages of undisciplined groups by reducing the costs of coordination.” So it seems Shirky is ahead of the curve in thinking how social media can aid in political movements through the organization of protests. Certainly he is ahead of CNN.