Egypt (anonymous photo from Reddit)

The recent uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt have rekindled the discussion about the role of social networks, and triggered a speech by Secretary Clinton about Internet freedom. The speech emphasizes that it is the people who change regimes, but access to the Internet must be protected. Heedless governments continue to look for ways to restrict access and online anonymity, or even use the Internet as a weapon. Corporations look the other way when it comes to censorship.

The movement called the Orange Revolution in Ukraine made some use of cell phones, but its impact was very limited. In Iran (2009) the so called Green Movement spoiled the eagerly awaited Twitter Revolution. Those who argued that the social network factor was an illusion were mostly right. Even if there was a real movement among tweeters, it was foreign. The wish to see Teheran´s regime overcome by committed bloggers and tweeps was stronger than reality.  But new events have unfolded recently…

In May 2011, the 15-M movement (#spanishrevolution) grew in the midst of the European debt and unemployment crisis. Not surprisingly, the main players were not politicians, but “digital natives,” i.e. young people who grew up with ubiquitous Internet as an everyday reality. The 15M is homegrown, grass-roots movement, and going strong.

Mubarak´s government decided to block Internet access for several days at the beginning of the Tahrir Square protest. The purported reason was that activists organized themselves using social networks. Once access was gone, people tried to post telephone conversations using tweets to circumvent the blockade. Of course, mainstream media made the case that political changes are born in social networks.

Madrid 15M Protest (photo by Oscar Howell, 2011)

During the “Spanish Spring” the 15-M started within social networks, pushed mostly by young activists, and it reached the public sphere when the Puerta del Sol in Madrid was taken by a cheering crowd. Citizens of all ages joined the movement to protest against a system they judge unjust. In a matter of days, the mass media gave the movement prime space, contributing thereby to the defeat of the ruling party in local elections. The organization and management of the 15-M crowds and sit-ins using social networks has been pitch-perfect.

Although it is true that technology by itself cannot change societies, it is also a fact that digital communication is power. It is power to maintain the status quo or change outdated structures, the power to spread ideas or suppress uncomfortable messages. Neutrality of technology enters the realm of political and social manipulation. And out of manipulation will emerge the character that social networks and the Internet may have in the future.

Every citizen with a mobile phone and/or an Internet connection is already a potential and probably effective political agent. Are we facing the “wiki-revolution”, a term used by Manuel Castells? I do not think that social movements follow the wiki´s mash-up logic, but they do follow the logic of efficient cooperation within the real and emergent possibilities of each person. Social networks make possible a political system with better capacity for reaction and mobilization. Availability of information in real time allows an autonomous assessment of political sentiment, in a system that I term a democracy with feedback.

With real-time politics, it is evident that a portion of the public space, and the discussion about political and social issues, have migrated to the social networks, where new minorities claim leadership and influence the natives. Those apolitical youths of yesteryear are now the “outraged” citizens of systems dominated by gerontocracies seeking to perpetuate the status. Because of them, a new form of democratic participation is slowly emerging, one that renounces representation or intermediation. Traditional politics has neglected the online public space. Here communication is less important, and the conversation matters.

In the Arab world, the increasing number of young people stripped of economic opportunities must endure governments that cling to power by tradition or through dictatorships (Egypt). In the European society, the decreasing number of young people carries the weight of a population that is ageing fast, but monopolizes power and excludes them from privileges (Spain). Fostered by inter-generational conflict, digital natives’ ideas and concerns flow into the public space in a different way. They don´t wait to be represented by local politicians or to be instructed by the mass media. Social networks are their chosen means of communication, organization and political action.

So, protests, riots and revolutions get that technology-driven tinge that causes perplexity. However, it is just the skepticism of the generation in power that faces the use of tools that they are barely starting to understand. Digital natives stand up to the TV and mass media generation. The sit-ins, the springs, the new Woodstocks may have become a hashtag.

Internet and politics is a combination with urgency and impact. Today it will have effects on how we understand freedom of speech:  will it be guaranteed, if a person can be heard by millions at almost no cost or effort? It will also affect the Internet´s capacity to continue to be an open and innovative space. Any path seems possible: from a barlowian utopia of a cyberspace with no government or borders, to the fenced gardens of the realistic Jonathan Zittrain.

Our ability today to tolerate the anarchy of digital natives will define the social technologies that other generations will inherit. During the “eG8” summit in France the issue of imposing state controls over the Internet was already addressed, in an attempt to prepare the future for political control over cyberspace. Such a cyberspace would be devoid of the openness that enabled digital natives to spread their protests. But it will not only constrain the culprits, it will mean deterioration for civil society, commerce and innovation, regardless of age, creed or state. So, wake up, the new anarchy of the digital natives may be after all not a bad idea, we may have to learn to love the bomb.

Twitter: @ohowell

photo by @acampadasol via web

 Unemployment is a more protracted problem. It has long been argued that the social security system in Europe creates structural unemployment, which is not harmful. But the statistics in Spain reach today numbers beyond “structural”: a general unemployment rate of ca. 20% and a rate of 45% in the group of young people 25 or younger. Such dismal figures coupled with an ageing population and an expensive social system has created a political crisis.

The weakened leftist government of the PSOE started May with an electoral race to select municipal leaders and presidents of the autonomous communities, widely regarded as a popular referendum on the ability of the government to manage the situation. However, the situation turned into a popular protest movement that started within the social networks and developed into an effective form of digital activism that brought out thousands of people to take the main square in Madrid (Puerta del Sol) on May 15th.
The same digital activism that made 15-M possible, now with the attention of the mass media, created similar movements in several Spanish cities, and it spread to European countries and beyond. Young and old alike took part in the sit-ins. The message was one of civic engagement, of taking responsibility and of “indignation”, influenced by the manifest by Stéphane Hessel “Indignáos!.” (Time for Outrage!)

The 15-M movement has camped in Sol for more than 3 weeks and has created a micro-environment of political discussion and decision making. Sol is a place where among the disorder of a protest young people run around maintaining order and cleanliness, pleading not to drink alcohol, distributing food and water, tending to children and providing health services; and discussing all sorts of political issues in sessions (the topics range from immigration to green energy). However, the camp has been marred by people that do not care for activism and have “nowhere to go” (the okupas and other “tribes”) and the need to move on with the movement at a new level. Proposals to spread the movement to local meetings in barrios coordinated by social networks or to have a form of online-assembly and parliament are direct consequences of online activism, but none has taken form yet.

No clear outcome is in sight, but the 15-M phenomenon will have an impact in the emerging political form called “digital activism”. Further, it will test the degree of its power to transform a traditional democratic system into one that may be open to online forms of discussion. Such discussions are in real time and can be used to analyze popular sentiment and the perception of measures in the systems, what could become a system of feedback democracy.

The interest lies in that Spain is not an isolated case. The role of online and social networks have been central in many of the recent movements in Egypt (Tahrir Square revolution), Libya, Syria, Tunisia, and in the political campaigns of Antanas Mockus in Colombia, the anti-violence protests in Mexico (#mxhastalamadre) and of course the presidential campaign of Obama. Its real influence, if any, is difficult to measure and there is precious little data to go around. New research has to be done to be able to answer many questions. The social network companies themselves, if they are becoming a platform for political agitation and mobilization, more over a new kind of public space for free speech and political debate, will have to consider at some point the need to make information from its databases widely available to researchers. This would probably raise questions about the role of such companies in a global society, and the need for regulation and control.

But for now the interest in focused in the ability of a group of young people to use a new medium, and a new way of talking, listening and acting, to obtain the political power necessary to affect non-violent change in a society that in its most basic structures, still lives under the paradigm of broadcasting, television, mass media and top-down control of information and power. Will the change from consumer to “prosumer”, the change from audience to speaker, transform the political landscape and allow some new powerful form of civic engagement? Or will the system of media control make sure that digital activism remains a curiosity flower in a huge garden tended by one chief gardener?

Up to this point the pastiche with the Python skit has turned to be an excellent metaphor for the 15-M. In the Python short, the cardinals that embody the Spanish Inquisition are unable to decide how many weapons they have at their disposal, and have to start over again and again. The torture methods of the pythonesque inquisition turn out to be nice and ineffective: cushions and comfy chairs. The 15-M movement is struggling with a way to find consensus amid a myriad of voices and influences, and further to maintain its commitment to non-inflammatory, self-deprecating methods. Both dilemmas of effective political activism, that may be its undoing.