10,000 hours: Seth Godin comments on Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book Outliers. He doubts Gladwell’s magic 10k hours thesis.
Politics is Viral AND Local: Colin Delany emphasizes the importance of local communities for online campaigns.
Good advice from writers to start the new year: Lisa Gold suggests a few new year resolutions for writers.
The Edge Annual Question 2009: The always inspiring “Edge Annual Question 2009”. This time: “What Will Change Everything?”
What Erick Said by Patrick Ruffini: Great post by Patrick Ruffini on the need for techonogists in political parties to provide the foundations for political campaigns. He also adds some nice observations about the problems of old-school political communicators to adapt to “the culture of the Web”.
Rebuilding the Party: The Technology by Erick Erickson: Technology and conservative parties: The problems and what to do about them.
David Plouffe: The Obama Campaign Used Grassroots Data and Computer Modeling to Allocate Resources in Real Time by Colin Delany: Interesting article on how political campaigns can collect their own polling data and so improve the base for their descion making.
Foreign Friends: from a service-centric to an object-centric social web by Jyri Engeström: A great conceptional piece by Jyri Engeström about the un-walling of the micro-blogging feeds and other social media gardens.
Looks like I actually will be able to get some reading done between christmas and new year. It’s about time. The ratio of read to unread books in my flat has become rather embarrassing. So this is the list:
Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age by Larry M. Bartels
Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era 1829-1877 by Walter A. McDougall
The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000 by Peter Brown
Hayek’s Challenge: An Intellectual Biography of F. A. Hayek by Bruce Caldwell
and finally
Die Philosophie Karl Poppers by Herbert Keuth
Well, at least that’s the plan.
Are you planning to do some reading? If so, what’s on your list?
“Daemon” by Leinad Zeraus, a pseudonym by the author Daniel Suarez, is a great piece of speculative fiction. It reads like a worst case scenario of a networked society gone spectacularly wrong.
The death of Über-Game-Designer Matthew Sobol sets a surprising chain of events in motion. Before his death Sobol designed a computer program that automatically scans the internet for news of his death. After his death this daemon starts automatic protocols which in the end destabilize the global economy and challenge national security.
With his novel Daniel Suarez emphasizes different aspects of our time which are usually ignored by so-called serious fiction. Suarez’ characters are mostly digitally natives who are battling an older generation who fondly plays with the idea of “shutting down the internet”. He shows the emerging culture of Multiplayer Video Games and weaves them as a different layer into reality, a layer which remains invisible to most onlookers. Yet the author does not restrict his story to the digital realm. He also addresses issues of the ongoing privatization of security and shows a world which is increasingly governed by global corporations.
“Daemon” reads at times like a dramatization of non-fiction books on computer security, sociology, economics and futurology. The author points among others to works by P. W. Singer, Kevin Phillips and Jared Diamond. This stylistic device reminds of Neal Stephenson who anchored his “Baroque Cycle” on the works by the French historian Fernand Braudel. This process is greatly entertaining because it shows the rather abstract ideas of non-fiction writers in glorious technicolor. It also gives the novels more relevance and grounding in present day science then can be normally expected from fictional work.
Initially Suarez self-published his novel. The success of “Daemon” let the Penguin books imprint Dutton to acquire the rights to Daemon and its sequel Freedom TM.
Recently Suarez gave a talk about his book at the Long Now Foundation. There is a video of the event at Fora TV.
It’s been quite a while since I returned from the conference “Social Web – Towards Networked Protest Politics?” in Siegen. So it seems high time for a little roundup.
The topic of the conference was the influence which different forms and uses of Social Media have on the practice of political activists. The papers covered an extensive range of theoretical and practical approaches to this question. A comprehensive account of the presentations can be found on netzpolitik (day 1, day 2).
The talk I enjoyed most was given by Richard Rogers. In his talk Rogers examined methodological questions regarding the research practices in online spaces. Rogers emphasized the necessity to develop research designs that take the nature of online interactions into account. A simple adoption of offline research practices would possibly lead to a distortion between research and reality. A short account of Rogers’ talk can be found on irevolution.
In the afternoon of the first conference day I shared a panel with Myra von Ondarza who talked about “The Euroblogosphere: Advent of a Social Movement or Source for Expert Information”, Christina Neumeyer and Celina Raffl who presented their research on “Facebook for Protest? Assessing the Potential of Social Software for Political Activism Exemplified on the FARC Countermovement” and Azi Lev-On who held a presentation on “Social Movements and the Web 2.0 Phenomenon: Conceptual Links”. An account of these presentations can be found on irevolution.
During this panel I presented the paper “Twittering Activists: The Uses of Twitter for Political Activism”.
In this paper I argue that Twitter has quite unintentionally become an useful tool for political activists. What started out as a hedonistic tool for self-expression has developed into a tool which influences public opinion and helps with the organization of small groups. In this paper I use four examples of the effects of Twitter usage during late 2007 and early 2008 to illustrate this point.
The examples are the reactions in the Twitterverse to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the Twittering during the Sarah Lacy Mark Zuckerberg interview at the 2008 SXSW, the use of Twitter during the San Diego wildfires in October 2007 and the get-out-of-jail Twittering by James Karl Buck. In my eyes these examples clearly show four different types of possibilities for political activists:
1. Twittering facilitates the fast distribution of information to a local or global community of interest.
2. The use of Twitter-Feeds can be a powerful open backchannel to actively monitor and comment on current events.
3. The use of Twitter can be an efficient way to organize and coordinate small groups for collective action and protests.
4. The use of Twitter can establish a remote presence for a group of activists.
This Wordle word cloud should give you a short impression of the paper.
The conference was a very pleasant experience. The talks were interesting and provided many new perspectives for further reading and research. And the really interesting conversations happened, as always, during the coffee breaks and lunches. I want to thank the organizing team Sigrid Baringhorst, Veronika Kneip, Annegret März and Johanna Niesyto for the invitation to the conference and for their organizing efforts and skills.
Quite some time ago I visited a screening of Kenneth Branagh‘s movie version of The Magic Flute. The visuals of the movie were great and the music as always great fun. Unfortunately there was trouble with the projection and so the aspect ratio was slightly screwed. But those are the delights of independent movie houses. Although the movie was made in 2006 it has been quite as hassle to see it in Germany. It toured for almost two years through different festivals until it received a limited release in Germany. So the troubles with the aspect ratio didn’t bother me that much, since it was great to finally see the movie.
Unfortunately I was not all that taken by this interpretation of Mozart’s Zauberflöte. The movie starts great. Kenneth Branagh and his coauthor Stephen Fry set the action in a fantasy world, highly reminiscent of Europe at the time of the first world war. A meadow Wordsworth used to dream of is pierced by a network of trenches belonging to two opposing armies. Those armies attack each other to the soaring tunes of Mozart’s overture. At the end of this battle Tamino finds himself disoriented on the devastated battlefield. From here on The Magic Flute takes its course.
Kenneth Branagh accompanies the opera with dazzling visuals. He chooses a visual style that keeps reminding that the action is taking place in a heightened reality. This is a logical continuation of Branagh’s visual work on Love’s Labour’s Lost, where the images were modeled on the pictures of the French artist Fragonard, and As You Like It where Branagh invoked the forrest of Arden with the same approach. Now, in the realm of opera Branagh pulls all the stops. And it works beautifully. “The Magic Flute”? shows Mozart’™s “Die Zauberflöte”? in the highly personal images of Kenneth Branagh.
The novelist, actor, director, show master, blogger, twitterer, podcaster and wearer of many other hats Stephen Fry wrote the english libretto for “The Magic Flute”?, and unfortunately here the troubles of the film start. Unfortunately because I greatly admire Fry’s work, especially his movie Bright Young Things, which to me is one of the great movies set in the early 20th century. Fry’s libretto reminds in word choice and mannerisms of the great operettas by Gilbert and Sullivan. At times it feels like one is watching a “Gilbert and Sullivan Go to War” matinee. While this works for the Papageno scenes it seems quite out of place in the Sarastro scenes. To me in those scenes the movie looses track and its makers consciously seem to choose to ignore the nature of their source material.
Sarastro, in the original libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder, is a high priest. He forces Tamino to undergo three trials to be accepted in Sarastro’s pseudo-egyptian-free-mason-style cult. Those trials are important because they show Tamino’s spiritual development. He moves away from a worldly frame of mind, as represented by the Queen of the Night towards an enlightened state of spirituality, as represented by Sarastro. Branagh and Fry completely secularize Sarastro. Instead of a high priest, he is a healer and head of an army. His scenes do not take place in a temple of wisdom, but in a Walt Disney version of Cinderella’s castle. Sarastro’s high priests are army officers and the important aria “Marsch der Priester, O Isis und Osiris”? changes completely in character. Instead of invoking the spirit of these ancient egyptian gods in his temple of wisdom, Sarastro stands in a cemetery in front of a multicultural wall of death and sings about the wisdom of his forefathers.
The admittedly highly convoluted and ambiguous spirituality of Mozart’s opera is completely ignored and substituted by a cheap and easy brand of internationalism. Branagh and Fry try to take the easy way out. Instead of confronting the more difficult and possibly controversial side of their material they settle for a candy-store version of Schikaneder’s libretto. This is especially unfortunate because the complete second half of the opera hinges on those spiritual questions. Tamino’s trials loose every meaning if they are not understood as part of a spiritual test of his character. The way Branagh and Fry choose to play it in their version makes those tests part of an ultimately unconvincing quest for a ceasefire between the armies. If you play it like that Tamino’s toils make little to no sense. While “Die Zauberflöte”? remains highly ambiguous on who is right and who is wrong, on who is good and who is evil, “The Magic Flute”? leaves not doubt: The Queen of the Night is an evil warmonger while the healer Sarastro is a good and caring pacifist, who is forced to fight a war against his will.
While I liked the audacity of the undertaking, bringing Mozart’s opera in Branagh’s dazzling visuals on the screen, in “The Magic Flute”? I missed those elements that in my eyes make “Die Zauberflöte”? such a great work of art. Now it is definitely time to check out Ingmar Bergman’s production of “Die Zauberflöte”? of 1974. Let’s see how he deals in his Trollföjten with the same material.
Andreas Jungherr (2008) “Twittering Activists: the Uses of Twitter for Political Activism”. Paper presented at “Social Web: Towards Networked Protest Politics?” Organized by the SFB Changing Protest and Media Cultures SFB/FK 615 Media Upheavals University of Siegen, Germany on 7-8 November.
Twittering Activists: The Uses of Twitter for Political Activism
by Andreas Jungherr
2008/11/05
slightly copyedited version
2010/03/16
A Paper presented at
“Social Web: Towards Networked Protest Politics?”
Changing Protest and Media Cultures SFB/FK 615 Media Upheavals
University of Siegen, Germany
November 7, 2008
For a short glance at the argument have a look at the presentation. The full paper can be found below.
Abstract
Social web applications have proven to be disruptive in different fields of social life. One of the most successful applications of the last year has been the microblogging service Twitter. This paper uses four short case studies to illustrate the possible uses of microblogging for political activist.
Motivation
Social web applications like Facebook, Flickr and Twitter, have lowered the organizing costs for communities dramatically (Shirky: 2008). These lowered costs should vitalize social movements. Those cost benefits should show the greatest effects for small groups of activists or communities without a large organizational machinery. Especially spontaneous social activism around transient topics on a local level should profit from the ready availability of social applications. Those applications can be used to achieve tasks, which until recently, demanded large organizations and considerable resources.
Often social media applications are used by early adopters merely for hedonistic purposes. But when reaching a critical threshold in ease of use and distribution some of these applications get chosen by activists as tools for social action (Zuckerman: 2008). During 2007 the use of the social media application Twitter, a “social networking and microblogging service utilizing instant messaging, SMS or a web interface” (help.twitter.com: FAQ), has spread widely. Over the last months the use of Twitter has proven disruptive in a number of different fields: journalism (Howlett: 2008), conferences and business gatherings (Owyang: 2008), emergency proceedings in reaction to natural disasters (Poulsen: 2007) and even political activism (Simon: 2008). These events show that Twitter has become a useful tool for the organization of social movements. To understand the potential uses of Twitter for political activists the observer has to look closer at these disruptions.
The emergence of social web applications is a new phenomenon. At this stage of scientific enquiry it is vital to understand the uses and effects of different social web applications for different forms of social organizations. This paper analyses the uses of one of the most successful web applications, Twitter, in four short case studies which show different possibilities for the use of Twitter by political activists.
Incident #1) After the Assassination of Benazir Bhutto the news of this event traveled with amazing speed through the community of Twitter users, even overtaking the speed by which the blogosphere was reacting (Howlett: 2008). This incident shows the potential for political activists to distribute highly volatile information through Twitter.
Incident #2) At the 2008 SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, the journalist Sarah Lacy interviewed Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg in a keynote presentation. During this interview a large group of Twitter users in the audience started to share their, mostly negative, reactions to Sarah Lacy’s interview style in real time on their respective Twitter-Feeds. Parts of the audience were using Twitter as an open backchannel to an event they shared. Their criticism was first raised and amplified on their Twitter-Feeds before they expressed their criticism at the keynote presentation itself (Owyang: 2008). This incident shows the potential for political activists to use Twitter as a powerful backchannel to social events.
Incident #3) During the San Diego wildfires in October 2007 volunteers and journalists started to use Twitter. Via Twitter they distributed live updates on the position of fires and orchestrated collective action (Poulsen: 2007). This incident shows that political activists can use Twitter to efficiently coordinate social action and protests.
Incident #4) In April 2008 the American journalism student James Karl Buck covered political protests in Egypt. During his work he was arrested by the Egyptian police. Via SMS he posted the word “Arrested” on his Twitter-Feed. Friends and colleagues of his monitored his Twitter-Feed and could secure his release in a matter of hours (Simon: 2008). This incident shows that political activists can use Twitter to monitor each other’s situation and in doing so increase their security.
These case studies show clearly four possibilities which are open to political activists who are using Twitter:
Lesson #1) Microblogging facilitates the fast distribution of information to a local or global community of interest.
Lesson #2) The use of microblogging feeds can be a powerful open backchannel to actively monitor and comment on current events.
Lesson #3) The use of Twitter can be an efficient way to organize and coordinate small groups for collective action and protests.
Lesson #4) The use of Twitter can establish a remote presence for a group of activists.
These case studies show that political activists can use the social web application Twitter as a tool in their communication strategy and in the organization of social movements. Twitter does not lend itself to every task at hand. Its design and the way it is commonly used suggest specific uses of Twitter for political activists to achieve tasks that were until recently only possible for large organizations with considerable resources.
Methodology
The social web and social applications are rather new phenomena. This makes a comprehensive scientific discussion of the potential of microblogging for political activists difficult. Microblogging tools like Twitter have not yet become standard tools in the communication strategy of groups who are trying to influence political processes. Especially large institutions like political parties seem very hesitant to integrate these new tools in their communication strategies. Still there exist isolated use-cases which carry lessons for those who try to influence public opinion or who try to organize collective action. This paper uses four events and the reactions to them on the microblogging platform Twitter to show exemplarily four different possibilities for activists to use microblogging tools to better achieve their goals.
The aim of this paper is not to give a how-to version to political activism via Twitter. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to the demands of different groups and environments. Each group has to assess the possibilities and limitations of microblogging for their specific purposes. A communication solution which can be perfect for a local politician trying to connect with her constituency could be of no use to a group of human rights activists trying to increase their voice. Each situation and each aim needs a customized communication strategy. The promise of microblogging lies in its short form and its adaptability to different situations and different needs.
The following case studies serve to showcase some of the possibilities of microblogging in various communication contexts. They are by no means comprehensive and only serve as an indication for the possibilities of the use of microblogging to influence public opinion or to organize collective action. In fact each documented attempt by political activists to use Twitter or a comparable service can serve as an experiment on the possibilities of microblogging and only further our understanding of the interactions between the social web, public opinion and collective action.
This is also the time to shortly address a challenge which the processes here described hold for democratic societies. While democratic societies rightly applaud the chance that through microblogging dissenting opinions in oppressed societies can increasingly be voiced, microblogging also holds the real possibility for extremist fringe groups in established democracies to use the same communication tools to achieve their goals and thereby destabilize established democracies. This challenge has to be addressed in the future.
What is Twitter?
Twitter is a microblogging service which went live in October 2006 (Obviously: 2007). Twitter allows its users to post messages of up to 140 characters to a personal message feed. Users have the possibility to syndicate feeds by other users. This means they are notified through different communication channels if a feed, which a user has syndicated, is updated. This syndication is called “following”. A user who syndicated a given feed is called “follower”. On the profile pages of any given user, there is a list of all the users who are following her, and all the users she is following herself.
Users can either choose to monitor their syndicated feeds through the web portal of Twitter or through different desktop or mobile phone applications through which they are also able to update their own feeds. In the past it was also possible to be informed of selected Twitter-Feeds through SMS. Today this is only possible in selected countries (Twitter Blog: 2008). Still, there is a strong immediacy of Twitter updates and to the fast distribution of information through Twitter. The self selection of users who decide to follow a given feed leads to network effects. A group of followers of a given feed often form a community of interest. This facilitates the dissemination of news through these communities.
Twitter users have also the possibility to add keywords to their messages. The “#” sign at the beginning of a word signals a keyword (Twitter Fan Wiki: 2008). This convention enables users to monitor special keywords. Even if they do not follow all the feeds of users which post on a given topic they can monitor the respective messages. Especially during the 2008 American presidential election campaign different third party applications used this convention to offer different mashups and mappings of political messages in the Twitterverse (see for example: Election 2008; or: Politweets).
Twitter is not the only microblogging application available for use. There are a number of other services comparable to Twitter (see for example: identi.ca; Jaiku; Plurk or Pownce). Still, Twitter is the most widely used microblogging service. As of November 2008 there are probably around 3 million Twitter accounts in use (TwitDir: 2008). The events described in this paper happened on and with Twitter. But this does not mean the lessons drawn from these incidents neccessarily only apply to the use of Twitter. on the contrary, it is reasonable to assume these processes, although observed on Twitter, also apply to the use of microblogging applications in general.
Since Twitter is a rather new phenomenon a convention for the academic citation of Twitter-Feeds is not yet clearly established. This paper adopts a convention from Twitter itself, where if a user is directly addressed her user name gets preceded by the sign “@”. Therefor if the feed of a given user is cited in this paper the citation is given through her username preceded by “@” (i. e. @username).
The Incidents
The following incidents took place between late 2007 and early 2008. They are chosen for the amount of documentation that is available on them and their appropriateness to serve as a showcase for the possibilities the use of microblogging tools hold for political activists.
Incident #1) The Assassination of Benazir Bhutto
On December 27, 2007 the world was shocked by the events in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. The leader of the Pakistani opposition party Pakistan Peoples Party, Benazir Bhutto was killed in a suicide attack during a political rally (BBC News: 2007). The news coverage by the established media outlets was heavily supplemented by news from local bloggers (Gahran: 2007). This mutual dependency between established media and the blogosphere is not new, instead it is rather typical for the uneasy relationship between the two. What was new this time around, was the introduction of a third element: microblogging. Local Twitterers, like Dr. Awab Alvi (@teeth) or social media consultant Dina Mehta (@dina, Mehta: 2007) started to monitor local and international media outlets and posted their observations and comments on their Twitter-Feeds and blogs. Prominent Twitterers like Dave Winer (@davewiner), Laura Finton (@pistachio) and Dennis Howlett (@dahowlett) started also to to post snippets of different news sources to their respective Twitter-Feeds. From then on the Twitterverse was abuzz with discussion on the events in Rawalpindi and their possible repercussions (Howlett: 2008).
The reason for the immediacy and intencity of this discussion lies in the nature of Twitter and of microblogging in general. Since Twitter is a tool mainly used to receive personal updates by a community of interest, news hits faster. Many users of Twitter use applications that show recent Tweets on the user’s desktop. Instead of having to actively visit the site of a given news outlet, or a news aggregation site, or instead of actively checking one’s RSS Feeds to find the news of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, any Twitter user connected to the power users like Winer, Finton or Howlett was informed immediately of the events in Pakistan. Also an immediate reaction was further facilitated through the brevity of Twitter messages. Instead of having to publish a balanced blog post on the events Twitterers could comment in messages of 140 characters or less. What these comments may have lacked in depth or balance they made up for through immediacy. And with each of these comments on Twitter the news of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination spread further through the Twitterverse.
This incident holds the first lesson on the use of microblogging for political activists:
Lesson #1) Microblogging facilitates the fast distribution of information to a local or global community of interest.
One of the major concerns of political activists is to enable a fast distribution of in their view relevant information to a community of interest. Before the advent of blogs this was rather difficult and cost intensive since one had to either go through established media channels or self-publish the information in costly publications. This situation started to change through the growing relevance of the blogosphere and easy syndication through RSS. The use of microblogging applications holds further promise for political activists. Information now travels even faster than through blogs and through the communal nature between groups of Twitterers news that gets adopted by a Twitterer for her feed carries with it an implicit endorsement and therefore gains in social relevance for the followers of this Twitterer. The chance of further distribution of this information therefore rises, as compared to information contained in an anonymous press release.
Microblogging is important for political activists since through it they can distribute information faster and can attach social significance to it.
Incident #2) The 2008 SXSW Lacy / Zuckerberg keynote
The annual South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas holds special significance for the success story that is Twitter. At the 2007 meeting of this conference there was a presentation by the Twitter development team. More importantly, during the conference a number of participants started to use Twitter to share opinions on the presentations or to meet up. This widespread adoption of Twitter amongst SXSW participants became a milestone in the spread of the application (Calore: 2007). The high density of Twitter users at the same event one year later made the incident at the 2008 SXSW possible.
One of the highly aticipated events during the 2008 meeting of the South by Southwest conference was a moderated keynote address with the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The event was scheduled as an interview between Zuckerberg and the business journalist Sarah Lacy (@sarahcuda). What started out as a highlight of the conference became an infamous example of a keynote gone wrong.
Already during the opening questions a group of Twitter users started to share their, mostly negative reactions, to Sarah Lacy’s interview style, in real time on their Twitter-Feeds. The comments ranged from specific objections to questions or answers to personal insults against the interviewer. Other twittering audience members started to join in and soon the negative opinions in the Twitterverse spilled over in the conference room, when audience members started to actively and vocally expressed their criticism during the keynote itself (Owyang: 2008). After the dust settled some of the twittering critics felt their criticism during the keynote to be excessive and some even publicly apologized for their behavior (Scoble: 2008). There are different explanations for the event. Some commentators seek the reason in the business oriented questions by Sarah Lacy and the technology centered interests of the audience (Solis: 2008). Others think that Twitter functioned as an echo chamber of the negative opinions and facilitated the emergence of a twittering mob (Hinckley: 2008).
While the exact reasons for this event remain unclear, this incident holds the second lesson on the use of microblogging for political activists:
Lesson #2) The use of microblogging feeds can be a powerful open backchannel to actively monitor and comment on current events.
Until now it had been difficult for political activists to establish a communication sphere in which opinions could be voiced in real time by every participant of a social event. Until now this running commentary had to be provided by a proxy. For example a pair of journalists that were commenting on the course of a shared social event, like for example a political rally or a sports event. Through the easy use of microblogging applications like Twitter it is now very easy for users to comment and receive comments in real time during social events. An additional example for this possibility is the use of Twitter during the 2008 American presidential campaign. There was the attempt to provide a running commentary on the televised debates of the two presidential candidates (Current). In this active backchanneling of social events lies a chance for political activists to create a communication sphere where it is possible voice opinions which would remain otherwise unheard off in the public discourse.
Microblogging is important for political activists since through its easy use as an open communication backchannel political activists can establish echo chambers for opinions that would otherwise appear isolated and maybe even disappear from the public discourse.
Incident #3) San Diego wildfires
In October 2007 San Diego fell victim to disastrous wildfires. Since residential areas were in danger, San Diego citizens depended on real time news coverage on the ever changing location of the fires and rescue procedures. The established media outlets could not satisfy this urgent need for current information. So two residents, Nate Ritter (@nateritter) and Dan Tentler (@viss) started to post real time updates with information on the fires and rescue proceedings to their personal Twitter-Feeds. On their feeds they aggregated news from the official media outlets, as well as information gathered by neighbors and friends who monitored the developments on the street. Through this their Twitter-Feeds became an information backbone to the community (Poulsen: 2007).
The San Diego events hold the third lesson for political activists regarding the use of microblogging services:
Lesson #3) The use of Twitter can be an efficient way to organize and coordinate small groups for collective action and protests.
As seen in San Diego, Twitter can serve as an easy tool to establish a fast and cheap resource for crowd resourcing. Political activists equipped with mobile communication devices become intelligent sensors who are able to monitor in real time events. This can be the monitoring of natural disasters, the monitoring of rescue procedures (Poulsen: 2007) or the monitoring of elections (see for example: Twitter Vote Report). Through the observance of communication conventions, like the inclusion of agreed-upon keywords, it is possible for each community member to monitor the messages of other users on the given event. On the basis of this situation awareness groups of political activists can be coordinated and even take coordinated action in seemingly chaotic situations. This makes Twitter to an excellent crowd sourcing and tool for political activists.
Microblogging is important for political activists, since microblogging feeds can be used to monitor events in real time and coordinate collective action.
Incident #4) James Karl Buck twitters in Egypt
During anti-government protests in Egypt in April 2008, the American journalism student James Karl Buck was arrested by the Egyptian police. Still on the way to the police station, Buck managed to use his cell phone and send a SMS. With this SMS he updated his personal Twitter Feed with just one word “Arrested”. Friends and colleagues of James Karl Buck monitored his Twitter-Feed and could secure his release from an Egyptian jail in a matter of hours, although they were miles away (Simon: 2008).
This incident clearly holds the fourth lesson for political activists regarding the use of microblogging services:
Lesson #4) The use of Twitter can establish a remote presence for a group of activists.
Through the routine use of Twitter political activists are able to establish a virtual presence for each member of the group no matter where that person is located. It is also possible for other people interested in or sympathetic to the group to participate in the community on Twitter. Through this groups of activists can increase their reach beyond directly involved people. As seen in this incident, it is also possible for political activists to activate certain pre formulated procedures at the publication of a specific message. Twitter serves in this case as a distribution channel for cues for action to communities, send by individuals.
Microblogging is important for political activists since it enables community members to monitor their respective situation effortlessly. This increases the security of political activists considerably.
Conclusion
This paper tried to use four events which occurred during late 2007 and early 2008 to illustrate the potential the use of microblogging applications holds for political activists. Out of the presented incidents four lesson for political activists were derived. These lessons are:
Lesson #1) Microblogging facilitates the fast distribution of information to a local or global community of interest: Microblogging is important for political activists since through it they can distribute information faster and can attach social significance to it.
Lesson #2) The use of microblogging feeds can be a powerful open backchannel to actively monitor and comment on current events: Microblogging is important for political activists since through its easy use as an open communication backchannel political activists can establish echo chambers for opinions that would otherwise appear isolated and maybe even disappear from the public discourse.
Lesson #3) The use of Twitter can be an efficient way to organize and coordinate small groups for collective action and protests: Microblogging is important for political activists, since microblogging feeds can be used to monitor events in real time and coordinate collective action.
Lesson #4) The use of Twitter can establish a presence for a group of activists: Microblogging is important for political activists since it enables community members to monitor their respective situation effortlessly. This increases the security of political activists considerably.
These lessons do not cover all possible uses of microblogging for political activists. At this stage, it is not yet possible to account for all these possibilities. All we can do this early in the game is to actively search for exemplary events, which illustrate the potential of microblogging. There remain difficulties. While it is useful to analyze events after the fact, categorize them and systematically compare them to similar events, the academic understanding of this phenomenon remains incomplete. To accurately assess the potential of microblogging for political activists, scientists have to incorporate operational aspects in their analysis. To do this they have to closely accompany groups of political activists who try to incorporate microblogging into their communication strategy.
Right now is not the time for comprehensive accounts of the possible uses of microblogging for political activists and the effects this may or may not have for societies. Right now is the time for tinkering. The real challenge does not yet lie with the scientists. The real challenge lies with political activists. Theirs is the possibility to adapt microblogging tools for their needs and thereby uncover the hidden potentials for social change that lie still dormant in the widespread adoption of this technology. We as scientists can accompany them on their way be it as tinkerers or as reflective observers.
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Gahran, Amy: Bhutto Assassination News via Blogs, Twitter. 2007/12/27. Retrieved: 2008/11/04.
help.twitter.com: FAQ. Retrieved: 2008/11/05.
Hinckley, Kee: Anatomy of a Mob: The Lacy/Zuckerberg Interview. 2008/03/17. Retrieved: 2008/11/05.
Howlett, Dennis: Benazir Bhutto assassinated: Twitter’s utility. 2007/12/27. Retrieved: 2008/04/26.
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Blick auf die Wallfahrtskirche Marienthal bei Geisenheim.
Ein Marienkreuz oberhalb der Wallfahrtskirche Marienthal bei Geisenheim.
Detail einer Kreuzigungsgruppe aus der Schule von Hans Backoffen an der Rückseite des Rheingauer Doms in Geisenheim.
Ein Grabstein in der Nähe des Rheingauer Doms in Geisenheim.
Alle Bilder cc Andreas Jungherr.
To Seth Godin we are living in a new world. A world where success does not depend on doing things the way they were done in the past. A world where playing it safe actually means betting the house. A world where the best way to success is to break with everything that seemed true yesterday and to do exactly the opposite today. In this world only through embracing the chance of failure one can achieve success.
This is the background for the new book by Seth Godin “Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us“. In this book Godin declares the tribe to the next successful form of social organization and demands of his reader to rise to the challenge and form a tribe around an idea.
To Godin tribes are:
“a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea.” (Tribes 2008: 1).
This is a fairly wide definition, but Godin differentiates further between tribes that embrace change and those that oppose it.
To him tribes that formed in the past around an idea run the danger of perpetuating an institution in the hope of keeping an old idea alive in spite of changing times. In his eyes these tribes are doomed.
Instead, to Godin, a tribe has to become a micromovement to be successful.
Godin identifies six principles for a micromovement:
1. Transparency
2. The Movement has to be bigger than its leader
3. Movements that grow thrive
4. Movements are most successful if they clearly differentiate themselves from the status quo
5. Excluding Outsiders
6. Enabling Followers to be more successful
Only through this openness to change and the active participation of its members a tribe can be successful, so Godin.
To become and remain a micromovement tribes need leaders. In Godins eyes these leaders are we, the readers. To Godin leaders differentiate themselves through the conscious decision to lead a tribe, instead only to participate in a movement. They are motivated by curiosity and a desire for change. Their ability to lead, their charisma, is derived from their uncompromising faith in the core of their movement. The narrative of this faith gives the followers something to believe in and something to work for. With his short manifesto Godin tries to infuse the reader with the passion and confidence to make that decision and to step up and lead his own tribe.
For Godin, today is the time for heretics in leadership positions. A chaotic present and a future where seemingly anything goes, lead the market to embrace change. In the past curiosity and the desire to change the status quo seemed frightening because this attitude lead to the possibility of failure and with this it threatened success. Today it’s different. Godin argues, that since success is more and more based on change of the status quo and unpredictable factors, the market demands heretics as leaders. Heretics whose radical challenge to the status quo were in the past anathema to investors are in Godins eyes necessary.
In this short book Godin thinks out loud about leadership in a time of change and the ties that bind subgroups in a society which differentiates itself ever increasingly along the long tails of interest, practice, place and ideas. This book is not so much an analysis of leadership, small group behavior or organization in times of the social web (try for this “Herd” by Mark Earls and “Here Comes Everybody” by Clay Shirky), it is clearly a book of ideas. Herein it reminds of the short books by Tom Peters on leadership and talent. Godin tries to inspire the reader and move him to action.
A great shortcut to the ideas of “Tribes” is this interview between Seth Godin and the blogger and cartoonist Hugh MacLeod.
In 2004 the French blogger and serial entrepreneur Loïc Le Meur [loiclemeur] posted on his blog 10 Reasons why Should a Politician Blog. For him blogs are a great way for politicians to start closer and deeper conversations with their constituencies. Le Meur’s reasons are convincing and blogs have proven their value as communication tools (see for example: How Companies Blog. Yet German politicians seem hesitant to use blogs.
The German journalist Christian Stöcker writes on German politicians and the net:
Das politische Netz hierzulande ist in einem erbärmlichen Zustand, die paar politisch orientierten Weblogs, die es gibt, haben kaum Leser, eine Debattenkultur existiert so gut wie nicht. Deutschlands Blogger sind immer noch zu einem großen Teil damit beschäftigt, entweder über den eigenen Alltag oder über das Bloggen selbst zu bloggen. Und die deutsche Politik betrachtet das Netz vor allem als etwas, das es zukontrollieren, reglementieren und überwachen gilt – und ist ansonsten weitgehend frei von Kenntnissen über das Medium der Zukunft.
This is not only a German phenomenon. In the article Political Blogs: Why the Internet Frightens Politicians the author states:
The internet frightens politicians. They can’t control it, so they see it as a threat; websites and blogs are time-consuming and dangerous, containing words that could later be held against them. What other explanation can there be for the fact that only 30 out of 650 MPs in Parliament have blogs?
The advocates for the status-quo are quick to find reasons why blogs do not matter as a tool in the political communication kit:
Blogs would be no part of the serious political discourse of the established media and even poison the political discussion through extreme partisanship (see as an example for this reasoning: A Parody of Democracy by Oliver Kamm).
The conversations on a blog would lead to a loss of control for the politician (see as an example for this reasoning the analyses: Blogs im Dienst politischer Kommunikation).
A blog would simply be a waste of time since the number of readers would be too small to play a significant role on election night (A recent Harris Poll seems to support this argument, stating that only 22 percent of US citizens regularly read political blogs. Although, this percentage is probably high in comparison to other contries). This critique seems to me quite shortsighted. In the coming days, I will explore the possibilities of web-based political communication and discourse by further examining the usefulness of blogging for politicians.
The first post in this series will deal with the nature of conversations on blogs. I will take a closer look on how professionals in different career paths use blogs to connect with communities in their fields. Accordingly, I focus on professional and career blogs, i.e. blogs that are maintained by professionals in different fields for means of professional development. In turn, I will disregard news aggregation blogs, gossip blogs or mere diary blogs. Professional blogs most closely resemble the genre, tone, and conditions under which politicians would blog.
It is save to assume that blogs are here to stay. What started out as a way to log one’s private thoughts in a public confessional has grown into a tool for social change. Professionals in different fields use blogs to connect with their audience. Novelists accompany their books with blogs (see for example the blog by the English novelist Neil Gaiman). Journalists embrace blogs and use them as an open notebooks during their work on more traditional articles (see for example the blog by The Atlantic corespondent James Fallows or even as a substitute for work in more traditional media outlets (see for example Mike Smithson’s blog Political Betting). Corporations try to connect to their customer base through personal blogs by employees (see for different corporate uses of blogs this post by Steve Rubel [steverubel]). Political Activists use blogs as a tool to surpass censorship and to break the information monopoly of their respective governments (see for example Global Voices an aggregate site for blogs by political activists).
Why do these professionals with jobs and already busy schedules decide to blog? The Überblogger Robert Scoble [scobleizer] writes on his reasons for blogging:
I blog for a few reasons: 1) I’m a geek and love telling people about cool things I’ve found. 2) If I put them on my blog, I know that Google will be able to help me find them later on. 3) It lets me have a conversation with a wide variety of people every evening. 4) After reading me, readers of my blog often teach me more than I knew on a specific topic. 5) I’ve been given a certain amount of “Google Juice”? and I enjoy pointing at people and sharing my GooglePower. Even folks I don’t always agree with (you do notice that by linking to Microsoft’s competitors I’m helping out their ranking in Google, don’t you?) 6) I like telling stories about people and situations I’ve been in thanks to my view of the high-tech industry. 7) I am impelled to write it. Translation: I’m addicted. I want to write down some of my history and keep track of interesting things I’ve done so that I can go back and enjoy them later on (and so my son, wife, and family can stay involved in my life too). 9) I enjoy learning about conversational marketing. I really do believe that blogging will someday be a “new PR arm”? of most major corporations. By blogging every day, I can learn a set of “best practices”? that I can teach to others at Microsoft and at other corporations. 10) I’m a news hound and enjoy reporting things before other people (or now, services like Technorati or Daypop) can get to them.
Thus, Scoble’s motives are delivering a service to the community of interest that formed around his blog and the sheer joy of communicating with his readers. His blog is not just about getting his message out or selling stuff to customers.
Another reason for blogging is learning. The Social Media Analyst Jeremiah Owyang [jowyang] states the paramount reason for his blogging:
It helps me learn: every topic I post on, someone will add additional thoughts in the comments, so more is gleaned than just me mouthing off. In fact, I get over 7 comments per post on average, so that’s at least a few more perspectives that just mine.
Some non-fiction authors even accompany their writing process with regular blog postings and extensive discussions with their readers; these discussions often influence their work in progress.
A good example for this scenario is the blog The Long Tail by Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson that he established as a collection of open research notes during his work on his book The Long Tail, a process that he decided to continue in his work on his new project Free. In a blogpost in 2006, Anderson stated how the blog and the discussions it started helped his work on the book:
Part of the reason the book is successful, I believe, is because as I was writing it the smart readers of this blog helped improve the ideas, catch my errors and suggest dozens of applications and dimensions of the Long Tail I never would have thought of myself. So today’s recognition is also a recognition of the power of tapping collective intelligence. I couldn’t have done it without you!
Earlier in 2008, the blogger Hugh MacLeod [gapingvoid] started to develop his ideas on Social Objects on his blog and in his Twitter-Feed. His three posts on the topic Social Objects for Beginners 2007/12/31, Why the Social Object is the Future of Marketing 2008/01/02 and The Social Marker – The Social Object on Steroids 2008/01/16 with their respective comment-sections are perfect examples for the process of group learning. Here we witness how the author and the readership of his blog develop a new idea through intensive dialogue conducted in an online envorinment.
These examples show that the power of blogs lie in the power of the conversations they start. These conversations allow the rapid prototyping of ideas and concepts. An idea can be stated by an author, tested by a community of interest and if necessary further developed. All this in a manner of days if not hours.
As our survey shows, several scholars, political analysts, and writers of fiction have acknowledged and embraced the benefits of blogging and incorporated them into their works. Meanwhile, the Net itself has long become an outlet for more philosophically motivated posts. In 1999, Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls [searls] and David Weinberger [dweinberger] wrote in their still radical Cluetrain Manifesto about this process:
While the outcome of these debates did not invariably constitute wisdom for the ages, the process by which they took place was honing a razor-sharp sense of collective potential. The conversation was not only engaging, interesting, exciting – it was effective. Tools and techniques emerged with a speed that broke all precedents. As would soon become obvious, the Net was a powerful multiplier for intellectual capital. (The Cluetrain Manifesto. 2000. p. 5).
While this statement was relevant for websites and online-forum discussions, it is even more relevant for blogs. Blogs made it even easier to publish on the web than HTML. For instance, micro-blogging tools like Twitter increase the speed of online conversations even further.
Still, there is a flip side to these positive notions. Not all commentators see a force for intellectual progress in online conversations. For example, Adam Curtis, a director of political documentaries, calls bloggers bullies:
Quite frankly, it’s quite clear that what bloggers are is bullies — they’re deeply emotional, they’re bullies, and they often don’t get out enough. And they are parasitic upon already existing sources of information — instead of leading to a new plurality or a new richness, [online conversation] leads to a growing simplicity. The bloggers from one side act to try to force mainstream media one way, the others try to force it the other way. So what the mainstream media ends up doing is it nervously tries to steer a course between these polarized extremes.
This negative view on the blogosphere was recently reinforced through a case of conference twittering. An audience, connected through the micro-blogging service Twitter, turned hostile during a podium discussion that was moderated by the journalist, Sarah Lacy [sarahcuda] (for two accounts of the event see: The “Nuclear Disaster”? At SXSW Was Nothing More Than A Witch Burning and Audience of Twittering Assholes).
Should politicians choose to become part of this often volatile online conversation? How can they use the benefits of a closely connected community and yet stay clear of hostile and partisan online behavior? In the coming days, I will explore these questions in greater detail. Meanwhile feel free to chime in.
I want to thank Damien Schlarb, who proofread this post and so ensured that it roughly resembles English.
