Twitter revolution

By Yvonne Buma on 21 February 2011

The twitter revolution is roaring in the Middle East. Looking at the headlines at this moment (Sunday evening) they are about continuing revolts in Libya, thousands demonstrating in Morocco, daughter of an ex president of Iran taken prisoner during demonstrations and last but not least calls for revolution on the internet in China.

Wow, the internet revolution is really spreading. In the traditional newspapers you can read some interesting articles trying to explain how important the new social media are, or questioning if that is true.

An interesting remark I picked up from NRC-Handelsblad (an article published last Wednesday) remarking that a danger of twitter revolutions might be that, although they seem to succeed, they may not succeed in the end. People are only half organized. They organize this ‘ínformal’ revolution, but nobody seems to know when it is time to stop. What are the minimal results. In Egypt the military are still in power (and weren’t they Mubaraks power base?), the twitter revolution in White Russia succeeded, but failed in the end.

The question you can raise is if these revolutions aren’t at risk of losing to their success. Calling on the masses works beautifully with social media. But isn’t the spontaneous strength also its weakness. It seems these revolutions have no real leaders, no real (elaborate) program and therefore more or less stop when the figurehead of power is dethroned. What happens after that? Who negotiates about what? Or will the old powers hold on to their power and just make some cosmetic changes? Maybe even elections?

I really hope these fears will prove wrong, but I am worried that our lose social networks may in the end not be strong enough to fight well organized powers.

tagged with: socialmedia, revolution, twitter

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