The Twitterest Pill
By JACK Z. BRATICH
[counterpunch.org] Ahh,
remember the Summer of Tweet-Love? Those heady days in June 09, when
pundits and cable news anchors sang the praises of their beloved social
media platform Twitter? Remember how we changed our Facebook profile
pics to Green in solidarity with Iranian protestors?
Perhaps
Eliot Madison was feeling that techno-optimism in late September, when
he was arrested in Pittsburgh during the G20 protests. Police stormed
his motel room, where Madison and others had set up a communications
node (as part of the Tin Can Comms Collective) to gather and distribute
information about the demonstrations. This hub contained hardware like
police scanners, phones, computers and involved, yes, tweeting. Madison
was charged with criminal use of a communication facility, hindering
apprehension or prosecution, and possession of instruments of crime.
The following week, police raided his home in Jackson Heights, Queens
and he and his roommates were detained while the premises were searched
for sixteen hours.
So
where is all the journalistic gushing over social movement media now?
It’s as though the corporate media collectively woke up after a sordid
affair and agreed that, “What happens in Tehran, Stays in Tehran.”
Much
of the news discourse surrounding the “Digital Media Revolution” during
that summer fling relied on tired post-Cold War binaries, especially
“authoritarian regimes vs. freedom-loving protestors.” But there are
indeed some differences between the Iranian style of dissent management
and our homegrown techniques:
To
disband crowds, they still use clunky acoustic weapons like gunshots.
We have the latest in dispersal technology: a “sound cannon” designed
to scatter people via painful sonic blasts.
They
still rely on a live voice delivering orders via the police megaphone.
We have the Long Range Acoustic Device, whose prerecorded vocal
commands sound like they were made by “Fred, the friendly fascist”
(Seriously, someone’s been watching too many Philip K. Dick-inspired
films).
Finally, if they rely on State-run television for informational control, we have something more insidious: State-friended
social media. It is widely known that during the Iranian
demonstrations a State Department rep contacted the co-founders of
Twitter to reschedule a maintenance shut-down. Who needs to control
communications via government ownership? Just be bros with the new
media outlets! State Department, your Facebook friend request has been
accepted by Twitter. (I hope they don’t get jealous that CNN’s status
says that it’s “in a relationship” with Twitter).
Speaking
of the State Department, perhaps they should be called in to this case
as well—not as an investigating agency, but as a potential
informational accomplice. It co-sponsored the Alliance of
Youth Movements, a 2008 conference and web-hub of materials that
distributed knowledge and skills for youth protestors around the world.
Representatives came from Media Old (MTV, NBC, CNN) and New (Google and
especially Facebook). The AYM produced a series of How-to videos (How
to Create a Grassroots Movement Using Social-Networking Sites, How to
Smart Mob, How to Circumvent an Internet Proxy). Reminiscent of
insurgency/counterinsurgency handbooks, this State-sponsored guerrilla
mutation also produced a “Field Manual”. (By the way, the press contact
of the AYM, Jared Cohen, was also the guy who contacted Twitter during
the Iranian revolts).
Of
course, it’s absurd to think the Feds would be investigated as
“intellectual support” for the G20 communicational organization, but it
begins to pose the questions: who judges the legitimate and
illegitimate uses of communications technology in social movements?
Which networked alliances have State-sponsorship, and which ones face
criminalization and State-crackdown?
These
new friendships, alliances, and affinities shed some light on new forms
of authoritarian control. Social media are relying on open network
access, but this openness too easily sugarcoats itself in democratic
notions (participation, interactivity, freedom). At the same historic
moment, we are also witnessing an expansion, integration, and
refinement of sovereign police power. When the two converge we begin to
see an increase in repressive intervention into, and pre-emption of,
information use. Soft and hard control merge in order to implement what
communication scholar Mark Andrejevic calls the “digital enclosures,”
now with added urban warfare tactics.
As
much as a data cloud might fog up our conceptions of democracy, some
things remain clear. Social media and information are still embedded in
and rely on popular freedom. In Madison’s case, it means freedom of
expression and even freedom of assembly (perhaps a new one—freedom of dissembly).
It would be naïve to begin chanting “Whose Tweets? Our Tweets!” But
without understanding that the expressive commons are the heart of
democracy, we will continue to watch these neo-authoritarian digital
enclosures rely on sound cannons and other weapons of social
disruption.
Jack Bratich
is Associate Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers
University. He is also a zine librarian at ABC No Rio in New York
City. He can be reached at jbratich@gmail.com
