New Media, Revolutions, and the Search for Causality
Gwenyth Jackaway, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Communication and Media Studies
Fordham University
Was it the new technologies or was it the brave revolutionaries? Was it the synchronous interconnectivity, or the young tech savvy organizers? Is it the power of the tool or spirit of those who use it? Will the ‘Facebook and Twitter effect’ continue to spread across the Middle East? Will the successful use of networked communication to organize political resistance in the Arab world inspire similar uprisings against repressive governments worldwide? Will authoritarian political systems increasingly resort to 'turning off' the internet to instantaneously shut down dissent ? Are these new developments in communication to be hailed or feared?
These and many other questions are currently being explored in a seemingly endless stream of discussion taking place in meetings, in classrooms, in a myriad of forms on-line, in blogs, in youtube videos, on talk radio and television news, in magazine essays, newspaper op ed pieces, and even in the pages of those ancient communication devices…. books. We are in the midst of an international conversation about the role of communication technologies as catalysts for change. It’s a conversation that we seem to have each time a new medium achieves widespread adoption. There were similar discussions about the telegraph, the telephone, the radio, the television....It’s a conversation about technology and causality. It’s a conversation about change. It’s a conversation about human nature. It’s a conversation about revolution and the factors necessary to bring about true transformation.
The word, revolution, describes a powerful and significant change. On a political level, the term is generally reserved for a dramatic overthrow of one governmental system in favor of another. On a social or philosophical level, revolution is also used to describe “a dramatic and wide-ranging change in the way something works or is organized, or in people’s ideas “ (New Oxford American Dictionary). Whether we welcome or fear revolution, of course, is directly related to whether we feel that the world should work towards or should guard against change.
We humans have a curious relationship to change. We hunger for, and fear it, often at the same time. Often, whether we welcome change or work to fight against it depends a great deal on our views about the present. As Adam Gopnik observes in the New Yorker, If all you have is a hammer, the saying goes, everything looks like a nail; and, if you think the world is broken, every machine looks like the hammer that broke it. When we are opposed to the current arrangement of things, of course, we tend to side with revolutionaries, and see the tools they wield as welcome aids in a worthy cause. On the other hand, when we want to preserve things as they are (such as “our way of life” ) or wish to return to the ways of the past, then we fear the revolutionaries and their tools look like weapons.
We are interested in questions of causality as part of our endless quest for control. If we long for change, then we want to figure out how to ‘cause’ it. So, for example, if new communication technologies can be used to help cause political revolution, then: let’s give smart phones to people in oppressed nations everywhere. If, on the other hand, we want to prevent upheaval and chaos: let's approve the use of an 'internet kill switch', if necessary, to preserve order and stability.
The search for a clear cut and well define ‘cause’ of revolution is tantalizing. If we can only identify the ‘independent variable’, we like to imagine, then we can control the rate and pace of change. We can help to bring about change, or try to block it. The thing about real revolutions, true transformations -- whether on the deeply personal level or on the most public, political level, is that they don’t happen overnight. Real, lasting change, true revolution, takes deep commitment. The people involved must have passion, will, commitment, drive and perseverance. Under the right conditions, with enough key interlocking variables in place, social media may indeed be helpful in galvanizing political protest. Much like an joining a gym or buying an exercise bike might help someone kick start a diet, the technologies of synchronous networked communication may provide momentum. But the gym membership doesn't do the heavy lifting, and the bike doesn't peddle itself.
In the end, sparking a revolution may turn out to have been the easy part. Keeping the change going, especially when people are trying to overthrow years of patriarchal, authoritarian theocracy, for example, will take hard work and much dedication. There will, inevitably, be push back. People who have long held power don’t usually go quietly. The people of the Middle East, and in developing nations around the world, are going to need more than just Twitter accounts and Facebook pages to find their way to their own version of popular sovereignty (if that is, in fact what they want). In the end, thoughts are bigger than the things that deliver them. Although aspiring revolutionaries in developing nations may find it helpful to have access to the new tools of social media, they are likely to discover that in order to achieve lasting change in their nations, they’ll need other things as well, including: a clear political and philosophical perspective, a practical plan, sustained passion, the right timing, and most likely, a great deal of patience.
GLJ, 2/27/11
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