[lbo-talk] social media

[Peter Fay]

I read both - very well written, but the logic seems underwhelming.  Seems
that what we've been discussing here was totally absent in her postings -
that a huge, if not the most important part of the uprisings have been from
outside social media - those who have no access due to poverty, etc., but
nonetheless were critical in the uprisings.  They got their communications
from fliers, AlJazeera, mosques, etc., and all did during the internet
blackout.  And the final blow to cause the military to push out Mubarak were
the strikes - by "hierarchical" unions.

Her analysis seems somewhat detached from the reality on the ground.  And
somewhat utopian in thinking that "non-hierarchical, horizontal and
participatory" structures are somehow superior per se. That may be true for
generic social interaction, but less so for business structure, even less so
for high-intensity production, absolutely less so for a revolutionary or
military structure.  If we wanted to win a revolution, please count me out
of non-hierarchical, horizontal, participatory structure.  If that were used
in Algiers in the 1950s, then the FLN would have been dead and Algeria would
still be part of France.  And the "revolution" in Egypt is not yet a
revolution, and hasn't yet won, obviously.

And the graph - well, interesting, but not sure it's more meaningful or
conclusive than the corollary on Google trends:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=Ghonim,+elbaradei,+sandmonkey&ctab=0&geo=all&date=2011-2&sort=0

<http://www.google.com/trends?q=Ghonim,+elbaradei,+sandmonkey&ctab=0&geo=all&date=2011-2&sort=0>
-PF

On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 4:55 PM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:


> Some really good writing by Zeynep Tufekci - a name some veterans of old
> Marxist listservs might recognize - on Twitter and revolution:
>
> http://technosociology.org/?p=366
>
> http://technosociology.org/?p=305
>
> Doug
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>

-- 
Peter Fay