Revolution 2.0 for Dummies.

From some of the stuff being written right now, you would think the Egyptians (and Algerians?) were totally unable to run a revolution without Twitter and Facebook. On TechCrunch we have Alexia Tsotsis saying "Mubarak Shut Down The Internet, And The Internet Paid Him In Kind":

It has become fashionable amongst Western media and armchair foreign policy experts (hi Malcolm) to dismiss the idea that what happened in Egypt was a digital revolution mainly because most people associate Facebook and Twitter with the mundane over-sharing of what you ate for breakfast. That and the fact that its been pretty damn hard to pin down what exactly causes revolutions. This belief isn’t helped by the truth that a ton of social media noise did not actually lead to a regime change in Iran during #IranElection.

But the many who said that social media was no match for Mubarak’s stubbornness and the fact that his dictatorship had been there for thirty years overlooked one key thing. #Egypt wasn’t just about Facebook and Twitter, it was about the Internet as a whole.

I started writing about Egypt because I was moved by an email we received on January 27th, with only a subject line, “Re: URGENT: Egypt blocks text messaging as well” and no body.

(The "Hi Malcolm" bit there was a sideswipe at Malcolm Gladwell, who is anathema in Revolution 2.0 circles for arguing that social media, with its focus on weak ties, cannot catalyse a revolution on its own and needs People)

Anyway, it has become fashionable amongst Western new media and armchair social media experts (Hi Alexia) to dismiss the idea that what happened in Egypt was a People's Revolution (or, as one of the comments put it - "Mubarak Shut Down The People, And The People Paid Him In Kind"). The role of mobile, TV, word of mouth, posters etc etc - and just motivated people - are also largely ignored in the rush to Revolution 2.0.

Look at the numbers - Internet penetration in Egypt is still very low (c 16%), whereas mobile (71%) and TV (90%, though not all can get Al Jazeera - but I'd bet nearly everyone knows somewhere that can) is much higher - or are the Revolution 2.0 crowd claiming that its only the Internet enabled in Egypt who made the revolutuion happen? Also, its an inconvenient truth that the 'Net was shut down over the critical periods as well, but oddly enough the Egyptian revolution carried on (as did Al Jazeera) thus disproving (I would have thought) the whole thesis from the first.

It was far more clear that the revolution would, in fact, be Televised.....

Also, one wonders how the French, Russians, Mexicans et al managed to have revolutions without even a telephone dial-up connection to rub together. How did the Eastern Europeans and South Africans do it in the 1980s and 90s Before Facebook? Unfortuntely for the Revolution 2.0 crowd, it is easier to prove that revolutions happened before Social Media, rather than vice versa.

Next on TechCrunch Leena Rao on Wael Ghonim:

Google MENA Marketing Executive Wael Ghonim spoke to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer about his perspective on the situation. Ghonim had been previously been detained and blindfolded for 12 days for organizing protests against the Mubarak government, and was only released earlier this week. Ghonim, who has been a figurehead for the movement against the Egyptian government, told Blitzer “If you want to liberate a government, give them the internet.”

Ghonim, is of course, referring to the fact much of this revolution was organized on Twitter and Facebook (similar to the Tunisian protests). Ghonim was believed to have hosted the first Facebook page that organized the January 25th protests. When Blitzer asked “Tunisia, then Egypt, what’s next?,” Ghonim replied succinctly “Ask Facebook.”

He went on to personally thank Mark Zuckerberg, and said he’d love to meet Facebook’s CEO. Ghonim says that he’s looking forward to getting back to his work at Google but he plans to write a book, “Revolution 2.0″ about the role of social media and the internet in political demonstration. There’s no doubt that social media has changed political activism irrevocably, and this moment will surely be a historic moment for Facebook and Twitter.

Far be it for me to knock the work Wael put in, for him I only have respect (I am more knocking those who take it as an argument that the Net was the only factor, something even Wael is upset by) but may I respectfully suggest he was only seeing a small part of a far bigger picture (for example, the picture I was seeing was on Al Jazeera TV, who curiously again go totally unremarked). My "opposite but equal" Egyptian quote is this:

"I think it's been incredibly condescending to diminish, if you will, what was an incredibly popular revolution the likes of which the Arab world has not seen, perhaps the whole world has not seen, and just to say that it was a Facebook event or a Twitter event." -- Parvez Sharma, filmmaker and writer

As to where next, in fact one of the best predictors of revolution is the % of unemployed poor young men a society has - and the Arab world has a major "youth bulge".

Fortunately, a guest post retained some sanity - Devin Coldewey wrote in a piece that "People, Not Things, Are The Tools Of Revolution" - he actually says most of what I think is the case, so over to him:

Some are using that moment to praise the social media tools used by some of the protesters, and the role the internet played in fueling the revolution. While it’s plain that these things were part of the process, I think the mindset of the online world creates a risk of overstating their importance, and elevating something useful, even powerful, to the status of essential. The people of Egypt made use of what means they had available, just as every oppressed people has in history.

Twitter and Facebook are indeed useful tools, but they are not tools of revolution — at least, no more than Paul Revere’s horse was. People are the tools of revolution, whether their dissent is spread by whisper, by letter, by Facebook, or by some means we haven’t yet imagined. What we, and the Egyptians, should justly be proud of, is not just those qualities which set Egypt’s revolution apart from the last hundred, but those which are fundamental to all of them.

Malcom Gladwell has become the whipping boy of the internet for having suggested however long ago it was that the social web is something that breeds weak connections and requires only a minimum of participation. He was right then, and he’s right now; he wrote a short post the other day defying the gloating masses (sensibly, but haughtily), and concluded with something commentators of the Egyptian revolution should take to heart: “People with a grievance will always find ways to communicate with each other. How they choose to do it is less interesting, in the end, than why they were driven to do it in the first place.”

It’s one thing to give credit where credit is due and admire the rapidity and resilience of internet-based communication. The new uses to which the younger generation is putting the internet are very interesting and point to shifts in the way people are choosing to share information. It’s another thing to ascribe to these things powers they don’t have, powers that rest in the people who use them. It sounds like quibbling, but it’s an important distinction. Facebook greased the gears, but it isn’t the gears, and never will be. The revolution has been brewing for decades, and these same protesters have been in the streets countless times, after organizing by phone, by word of mouth, or simply as a shared reaction to some fresh enormity.

Clearly Social Media, and the Internet, were comms tools in Egypt, but if it wasn't around (it was turned off for a while remember) people would have found - and did - other tools. But as Dewin points out, to a Social Media apostle:

It’s a variation of the mindset of the man with the hammer, in which every problem appears to be a nail. Today’s hammer is the social web.

There is actually (in my opinion) a deeper attitudinal problem possibly emerging here among some armchair western Social Media Experts - that it is inconceivable to some that poor, less educated, revolting Arabs could foment and carry out their own revolution - with (extremely unusual) dignity, clarity and self restraint as it happens - on their ownsome, with just Arabic TV stations and being left to their own (mobile, internet and other less techie comms) devices. No, they clearly could only have done this via good old up-to-the-minute American know-how.

Update - Jeff Jarvis writes a blog post opposing most of my views over here. He's wrong, of course