the power of social media:Egypt and Facebook

Facebook has become one of the primary tools for activists to co-ordinate protests,communicate and share information. It successful helped in bringing down the Mubarak regime and continues to be used in this manner by people in countries that feel that it is time for a change.


"Dictators are toppled by people, not by media platforms. But Egyptian activists, especially the young, clearly harnessed the power and potential of social media, leading to the mass mobilizations in Tahrir Square and throughout Egypt. The Mubarak regime recognized early on that social media could loosen its grip on power. The government began disrupting Facebook and Twitter as protesters hit the streets on Jan. 25 before shutting down the Internet two days later."


(http://omdsource.com/news/social-media-plays-role-in-egypt-some-expected-in-iran/)

Many interesting things have come about from this use of Facebook. There are two notable things, the degree in which Facebook has been attributed to the revolution being one.

When asked,Ghonim, a 30-year-old Google executive who became a symbol of the country’s democratic uprising , told CNN's Wolf Blitzer ..“This revolution started online...This revolution started on Facebook.”

Even an Egyptian father Jamal Ibrahim has reportedly named his newborn daughter "Facebook" to honor the social media site's role in Egypt's revolution. He wanted to express "his gratitude about the victories the youth of 25th of January have achieved and chose" and chose this form.

(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/21/baby-named-facebook-egypt_n_825934.html)

The second notable point is how Facebook is downplaying its role in the uprising.

"The reasons? It doesn't want to be viewed as a political football, for one thing, and for another, there are business concerns. A report in The New York Times says that Facebook:

... finds itself under countervailing pressures after the uprisings in the Middle East. While it has become one of the primary tools for activists to mobilize protests and share information, Facebook does not want to be seen as picking sides for fear that some countries — like Syria, where it just gained a foothold — would impose restrictions on its use or more closely monitor users, according to some company executives who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing internal business."

It seems however way anyone wants to play it, the cogs have been set in motion and Facebook is set to be utilised as a tool for change in the foreseeable future with other revolts already brewing in Libya,Tunisia and Yemen.

Technopanic!

In my research about moral panics and social media I came across numerous articles that use the term "Technopanic." This is the term used to describe the panic around contemporary technology. In the 2008 essay by Alice Marwick entitled The MySpace Moral Panic, she states the characteristics of Technopanics:

"First, they focus on new media forms, which currently take the form of computer–mediated technologies. Second, technopanics generally pathologize young people’s use of this media, like hacking, file-sharing, or playing violent video games. Third, this cultural anxiety manifests itself in an attempt to modify or regulate young people’s behavior, either by controlling young people or the creators or producers of media products."



I would now like to discuss the panic over Myspace. This panic was based around online predators."The technopanic over “online predators” is remarkably similar to the cyberporn panic; both are fueled by media coverage, both rely on the idea of harm to children as the justification for Internet content restriction, and both have resulted in carefully crafted legislation to circumvent First Amendment concerns."(http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2152/1966)

MySpace was said to be a site that made it easy for "online predators" to make contact with minors. It was also argued that social network sites "generally lower cultural expectations around privacy, encouraging children to expose more of their lives online."

"This panic brought about the The Delete Online Predators Act (DOPA). This act would involve schools and libraries banning children from accessing social networking sites. The act was passed in July 2006 by the U.S. House of Representatives.
The bill, if enacted, would amend the Communications Act of 1934, requiring schools and libraries that receive E-rate funding to protect minors from online predators in the absence of parental supervision when using "Commercial Social Networking Websites" and "Chat Rooms". The bill would prohibit schools and libraries from providing access to these types of websites to minors or create restrictions to use of these type of sites. The bill also would require the institutions to be capable of disabling the restrictions for "use by an adult or by minors with adult supervision to enable access for educational purposes."

The bill is considered controversial because according to its critics the bill could limit access to a wide range of websites, including many with harmless and educational material. Arguments for the bill focus on the fear of adults contacting children on MySpace and similar websites. Many Internet websites, however (ranging from Yahoo to Slashdot to Amazon.com), allow user accounts, public profiles, and user forums, in accord with the bill's definition of "social networking". The bill places the onus upon the Federal Communications Commission to provide clarification."

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deleting_Online_Predators_Act_of_2006)

As of 2007 this act seems to be dead legislation. It seems that like all other panics they reach a point where they begin to decrease or pass.

I found many interesting points in the essay posted on facebook,
Techno-Panic Cycles (and How the Latest Privacy Scare Fits In):

Why Do Techno-Panics Pass?

To be clear, there are no clear boundaries with techno-panics. They do not just suddenly begin and end, and it is impossible to gauge their relative severity since no metric or yardstick exists to measure them against. Nonetheless, these techno-panics certainly seem to have peaks and valleys in terms of public / political / media attention.

Just a few years ago, for example, the online predator panic reached a fever pitch and “stranger danger” reports were all over the media. As a result, legislation banning social networking sites in publicly funded schools and libraries was introduced, and state attorneys general proposed mandatory online age verification schemes for the Internet to segregate adults and children online. And then, it seems, the fever passed. I couldn’t tell you exactly what week or month it happened — and in many ways some of those fears still exist out there — but it’s clear that the panic about online predation has subsided greatly. I’d like to think that education and awareness helped debunk some of the myths that were fueling that particular panic, just as I’d like to believe that education and awareness helped deflate the fear bubbles that surrounded previous panics.

While I don’t want to entirely discount that possibility, I’m convinced another more cynical explanation may exist: New techno-panics simply crowd-out old techno-panics. There may be several explanations for this:

• Perhaps there is only so much fear-mongering our minds can handle at any given time.
• Perhaps it is becuase the media gets myopically focused on one panic and then hammers it till all the fear has been squeezed out of it such that they have to move on.
• Perhaps it is because a new technology comes along that spooks politicians and the media even more than the previous one they were demonizing.
• Or perhaps all of those factors combine to limit the duration of panics.

Regardless, it seems evident that moral panics and techno-panics have always been with us and will always be with us. From the waltz to rock and roll to rap music, from movies to comic books to video games, from radio and television to the Internet and social networking websites — every new media format or technology spawns a fresh debate about the potential negative effects it might have on society or our kids in particular. An excellent recent report by the U.K. government entitled Safer Children in a Digital World noted that “New media are often met by public concern about their impact on society and anxiety and polarisation of the debate can lead to emotive calls for action.” Indeed, each of the media technologies or communications platforms mentioned above was either regulated or threatened with regulation at some point in its history.

(http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150095472156218&comments)

Other interesting links:

A Fifteenth Century Technopanic About The Horrors Of The Printing Press

http://www.danah.org/papers/MySpaceDOPA.html

Catfish

"It felt [too perfect] to us also, as we were making it. We're very lucky. We look back at our experience and everything leads to [the moment we discovered things were not what they seemed]. As filmmakers we were ready; we felt like we spent our lives preparing to be ready, and it just happened to be me who shares the office with my brother and my producing partner."
-Ariel Schulman.


This film left me with some doubts about it's authenticity. Although it is claimed by the makers to be 100% real, the timing and sheer coincindences seem to be too vast. But as it is clear from the quote above that even those invovled at the time felt that it was "too perfect" ,then just maybe it really was a mix of good timing and luck. Either way it is a very intriguing piece of film making and demonstrates the power the internet gives us to "be" whoever or whatever we wish to be.

This power allows us to do and say things without the same risks or consequences that we would otherwise experience in real life. We can mould our identities to fit that of any gender,age or creed as seen in Catfish. We can use these identities to manipulate peoples opinions,feelings and relationships if we so wish. It is astonishing to realise that this level of reality distortion can be achieved with a few simple clicks of the mouse and some time spent creating a fake profile.

In the context of this film you feel sorry for the character Angela who has fabricated all these identities. Her motives appear to be driven by the desperate need for escapism from her own tough reality as opposed to a desire to manipulate and decieve others for the mere sake of it.

Overall I greatly enjoyed watching this documentary, be it real or fabricated. Maybe it is a good thing that we question it... After all wasn't its theme to highlight the need to question everything and to not blindly believe that what we are simply told; especially in these times when technologies supported by the internet can clearly serve as such a powerful mask for us to mould and then hide behind.


Yaniv Schulman: [First lines] If this is your documentary, you're doing a bad job.
Ariel Schulman: Why?
Yaniv Schulman: Because you're catching me when I don't want to talk about things.
Ariel Schulman: How should we do it?
Yaniv Schulman: Set it up, organise a time with me, put together some materials, emails, we'll get the Facebook conversations printed out and we'll really talk about it.