[lbo-talk] The role of social media in the Egyptian uprising

Eric Beck ersatzdog at gmail.com
Sat Feb 12 06:32:22 PST 2011


On Thu, Feb 10, 2011 at 5:48 PM, SA <s11131978 at gmail.com> wrote:


> It's funny, though. In France, strikes and demonstrations shut down the
> whole country a few months ago over the pensions issue. It was the biggest
> such event since 1995. Yet in all the coverage of the protests, I don't
> remember US journalists breathlessly reporting on how they were all (in a
> mechanical sense) coordinated through the internet and SMS - which they
> were, in the same sense that the 1995 protests were probably coordinated
> through phones and fax machines.
>
> Social media is about The Future, which in the journalist's consciousness
> means (a) young consumers and (b) democracy spreading to the Third World. It
> certainly doesn't mean strikes.

Alternately: Social media is about Orientalism: The French are certainly able to organize and carry out political activities under any circumstances, but those swarthy foreigners are incapable of it without Western intercession, this time in the form of digital technology.



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