Shutting down social media accelerates civil unrest?

Social media’s role in promoting revolutions has been highlighted in recent months as observers connect it to uprisings in the Middle East and riots in the United Kingdom. A number of governments have wavered between calling for openness in communication and shutting down networks to maintain order.

A study conducted by a Yale graduate student - Navin Hassanpour - suggests that shutting down digital communications in the midst of an uprising only accelerates civil unrest. He suggests – and I think this is a very interesting point – that social media provides people with a forum to vent their frustration. Because people have access to social networking sites they know about the situation and this makes physical presence unnecessary.

The Egyptian revolution proved a fertile case study for this idea. President Mubarak unplugged all communication at the local level. With internet and mobile phone services cut off more than 71 million Egyptians were unable to function in their daily lives. What had once been a minor political issue centered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square ballooned into thousands of riots across Egypt.

Maybe we can include some thing on this in our feature??

Design and layout inspiration

In my last post I talked about our target audience 18-30 years olds. In my research I have come across a site who’s layout I think will really appeal to this user group.

http://newsmap.jp/

I think the layout of this site is great!!!! Firstly, it presents information in a visually appealing way. It is color blocked into different sections so it is easy to navigate. And when you run your mouse over each headline a box appears on the screen with a brief summary and related picture. There is even an option at the bottom of the screen that enables the user to select the topics they want to view on screen.

This is great because internet users (and especially our target user group) are working in an information-soaked world. Data from Neilson shows that in the US (and presumably this is similar world wide) people visit 2 554 pages per moth but only spend an average of 56secs on a website.

Another thing that I really liked is that the website is constantly updated and different shades of colors are used to depict things posted less then ten mins ago, more than ten mins ago and more than an hour ago. This will appeal to our target users as it mimics social networking feeds.

I know not all of these ideas will be practical to put into action on our website. For instance we cant keep updating every ten minutes (unlike news web we cant just source stories from other sites and post them on our own) – but we should consider a way in which the website can be updated and kept current. We could defiantly consider organizing our information into different sections in a way that is visually appealing.

Some possible categories into which we could organize information:

· different instances where social media has played a role in civil unrest

· Or possibly even separating into features, opinion pieces, interviews, background info and video and images.

PS - If you are interested here is a short video explaining how Newsmap works.

Appealing to our target user group

As Brianna explored in a previous post our target user group will be educated, critical 18-30 year olds. Our content will appeal to our audience because it will be content about them tailored to suit them.

Content about them

We are living in a burgeoning digital social networking era. It is young people – around the ages of our target user group - that have been the first ones to harness the power of social networks to incite social change.

In previous blogs we have mentioned that our feature will investigate the role of social media in the instances of civil unrest e.g. London Riots and the Egyptian Revolution. Scan news accounts from these events and it is evident that youth were at the center of them.

Global Post: Behind Egypt’s revolution: youth and the internet

Time World: Egypt’s Youthquake: At a Nerve Center of the Revolution

Daily Mail: British youths are ‘the most unpleasant and violent in the world’: Damning verdict of writer as globe reacts to riots

The Hindu: Feral youth and the English riots

Whether the role of social media in times of civil unrest is positive or negative is debatable. But what is clear is that young adults (our target user group) are most often the instigators.

"Youth Carrying Egypt" Sourced from http://tumblr.ausetkmt.com/post/9672212400/art-piece-for-school-representing-the-egyptian

Because young people played such a pivotal role in the events we assume that they will be interested in learning about them in depth.

Content tailored to suit them

The role of the youth in social media and civil unrest means that our target user group will have an inherent interest in our content. However, it is also important that we shape and present our content in a form that appeals to them.

To start with we are already at an advantage as a study from the Pew Research Center reports the internet is now the main news source for people ages 18 to 29 - with 65% citing it as their go-to source for news. This means that our target users will already be looking to the internet to provide them with news content.

The same study also showed that young adults internet usage is driven by online interaction and social networking.

• 15% of online 18 – 29yr olds have a blog
• 72% of online 18 – 29yr olds have a profile on Facebook
• 48% of online 18 -29 yr olds have a Myspace
• 82% of young adults (the highest percentage of any age group) use social networking sites

Sourced from http://pewinternet.org

From this data I think a there are two main things that we can do to engage our target audience.

1) Integrate Social Media – Integrating a social media feed (ala Twitter, Facebook) will speak to our users on a platform they are most familiar with. It will also give users a reason to come back and see what is going on and what we have to say.

2) Provide a Means to Get Involved – Because our target users are socially aware and tech savvy they will respond positively to interactive content. We can do this by allowing comments on our website. It may be a good idea to use video and enable comments on the video – video will add uniqueness and a human element and ,hence, encourage insightful discussion. Or maybe even an online opinion poll?

Take free speech for granted on the internet

After the riots, the Home secretary, Theresa May had met with executives of the social networking companies Facebook, Twitter and BlackBerry to discuss countering measures for avoiding abuse of social communication tools by limiting the use of social media to combat crime.  However, there are many critics for such idea with various strong reasons and evidences. Here is the link talking about the reactions from people who condemned the British government for banning the social communication tools. https://blog.indexoncensorship.org/2011/08/11/reaction-david-camerons-plans-social-media-ba/

The online social networking sites and the mobile technology provide a free to speak platforms for users to interact with each other. In the case of London riots, the rioters and looters made use of the social networking tools to organise events and gather members in a fast and easy way. Comparing to the real world, people feel safer and more comfortable to say in the online virtual space. Does freedom of speech allowed on the internet give rise to an uncontrollable conversation among the online communities which possibly create a madness of crowds ultimately? The questioning of freedom of speech brings the concept of censorship into the debate, not just for the case in London riots but for the whole internet world.

From the case of London riots, I realised that how powerful the social networking was in helping the gathering of crowds, updating instant happenings and even generating a hysterical emotion. We have talked about the role of social media with its benefits in the previous post. One of these roles which I observed from that is the provision of such a great medium of free speech could lead to an uncontrollable outcome. We, the heavy internet or social networking users, may not be attentive to the terms of use given by the sites that sometime we may breach the guideline. Despite the given terms of use, most of us would rather ignore it because “who would care?” . 

Is free expression has its limits? Is there a need to censor the content of social networking sites and what is its negative impact? Surely, there would be complaints of invading privacy and jeopardizing human rights. This sort of debate is also the concern of the United State, http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/93283/state-department-internet-freedom-china-censorship

 

There are quite a numbers of cases relate to this controversial issue of free speech and policy restriction. Here is one of the examples talking about the virtual police whose duty is to take down contents which are illegal or violate Facebook's terms of usage.  http://www.theledger.com/article/20101213/NEWS/101219739

 

One more example on the suspected unlawful things happened in Facebook which reflected sometimes there are grey areas in judiciary decision. An example could be found in this incident, http://www.theledger.com/article/20110621/NEWS/110629899

 

Blackberry has been unfortunately linked to the riots, this article discussed the Blackberry messenger in relation to the law in India. https://blog.indexoncensorship.org/2011/08/09/blackberry-messenger-and-the-law/

 

For more details on internet censorship and free speech, the FreeSpeech blog is very useful in finding news on this topic. http://blog.indexoncensorship.org/. And all the above resources are useful for writing features about social media censorship and freedom of speech later in our website. I think this topic is highly debatable and influential in our life that it is worth to take into account.

The Meme as an Avenue for Social Agenda

It should be noted that the majority of viral trends share an aspect of humour in tandem with the requirement of relevance. This can be observed in the concept of memes, where a relevant or important event or piece of information is spread by becoming the main theme in a variety of established forms.

Take, for example, the Demotivational Poster:

Another is Scumbag Steve:

While the Demotivational Poster example is an example of a more frivolous viral image, the Scumbag Steve example shows us how a popular sentiment can spread via a combination of a shared opinion and humour.

The point being made in the Scumbag Steve meme is that the UK riots did little to further some humanitarian cause. To take this a step further, it hints at the wanton stupidity of the riots, drawing attention to the damge they have inflicted on decent members of the community. This agenda then ensures a wide reach by assuming the form of a popular meme, presenting the issue in a wryly humourous way to appeal to people to share the information with others in their online network. 


The meme form is also quite online-friendly. It only takes a few clicks of the mouse or strokes of the keyboard to broadcast the image, and it's associated agenda to hundreds.


The Flip-Side

However, like any piece of information, the meme can evolve and change it's message depending on who passes it on. Essentially, a meme is the reframing of a piece of information to make a new point. The image of the riot squad in the Demotivational Poster example in it's organic form tells a factual story about the work being done by riot police. It's restructuring into the above meme tells a joke.


In the same vein, established memes can be adapted to change the meaning being evoked. 

Meaning can also be constructed through a blending of symbols to alter their semiotic meaning in an evocative way that is easily passed on.


Case in point:

It's Going to Spread: Social Media and Viral Trends

The main aspect of online media separating it from its printed and broadcast predecessors is its capacity for 'going viral'. From topical trends to more trivial fancies, viral trends appear to be indiscriminate in subject matter, yet share the requirement of being widely relevant to a large number of people. Established online social networks then enable speedy sharing of relevant information among members of the internet community, eventuating in a ‘viral’ trend.

When we look at this within the frame of how social media can affect social movements, it is clear that social media will have a role to play in how socially significant decisions are made, but how that role will develop is uncertain.

In recent times, social media has played a key role in various significant social changes. For example:

• Early 2011 Cairo Revolution
• June 2011 Vancouver Stanley Cup Riot Clean Up
• August 2011 UK Riots and Clean Up Efforts

 
Today, unlike ever before, pieces of information are able to spread with speed and tenacity due to the accessibility, immediacy and widespread reach of the online medium. Social media is a key player in the facilitation of viral trends. The majority of people today are a part of an online social network.

Facebook boasts that the average person is linked to 130 people on their friend lists, and that they are connected to an average of 80 community pages and events.

These connections provide a platform for messages and trends to take shape and spread, strengthening their possibility to manifest outside of a virtual environment.



The 'mob mentality' the social media promotes can be seen in more trivial situations like Kate's Party where tens of thousands of people managed to share in a collective joke through the Facebook medium. However, while one message was broadcast on such a massive scale, it was taken in different ways by different people. Some not understanding the joke, some finding it humorous, and others chastising the community. 

What we are seeing here is a demonstration of active media consumption and an example of the obsolescence of the Hypodermic Needle Media Theory. While Social Media provides us with a new forum of communication, it appears that it continues to fit with certain rules and philosophies about media and communications.  

Social Media Revolution?

Social Media Revolution?

# The recent riots in London have drawn a fair bit of negative attention to the role social media have played in their co-ordination.

# We have started to see patterns of rhetoric that position 'social media' and 'riots' alongside each other. For instance,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/aug/08/london-riots-facebook-twitter-blackberry

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/network-effects-social-medias-role-in-the-london-riots-08082011.html

http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/08/10/london-riots-the-social-media-is-to-blame-apparently/

Prime Minister David Cameron even suggested blocking the offending technologies to ease the riots...

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/london-riot-social-media-blocks-totalitarian-20110812-1iq0o.html

#But what about looking at the use of social media in the context of different types of civil unrest? Why don't we take a step back from the London riots and take a look that the events in Cairo, January, 2011.

# I was curious to find out more about what went down in the Egyptian capital this year, because all I really knew was that there had been some pretty epic protests and a temporary ban by the government on social media sites.

#What I discovered was both inspiring and shocking. When I think of facebook and twitter I think about identity, networking, parties and maybe some profile checking-outage.  When I think of social networking’s role alongside the London riots, I can see its immense ability to organise people (as G. Crovitz has pointed out in his article this year in the Wall Street Journal… ‘Egypt's Revolution by Social media’ http://www.aucegypt.edu/SiteCollectionDocuments/WSJ.pdf )- whether they were organised to loot premises on masse, or organised to clean up the mess (en masse) as Brianna has pointed to in her earlier blog.

# What I had not really considered, was the capacity of social networking mediums to represent something else to people-  something that ran potentially much deeper-the capacity to create change for the better.

Social Media as a Tool for Social Activism

WHAT WENT DOWN IN CAIRO?


# In my research on the events in Cairo this year, what I kept running into was one word: Revolution. Interestingly, it was often accompanied by mentions of social media’s huge role in this revolution’s facilitation- (see Crovitz’s article in the Wall Street Journal, and J. Preston’s piece in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/world/middleeast/06face.html?pagewanted=all   and also

The article ‘Revolution’s trigger’ in The Economist http://www.economist.com/node/18063746 ).

# But what was the deal with this revolution anyway? Why weren’t the events in Cairo simply a bunch of riots co-ordinated by facebook? It’s a pretty big call to label something revolutionary.  I needed to find out what the seed of this revolution actually was. As it turned out, the story itself is quite incredible.

# To put things as simply as I can for simple people like myself, here’s the 411. 82 year old Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak had this year been in power for almost 30 years (I shudder to imagine one of our prime ministers being around for that long!). Many of the people of Egypt were becoming tired and frustrated with his leadership, which continued to see food prices rising, unemployment rates increasing and rife corruption in what was an authoritarian government (one protestor called it a dictatorship- see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12289124 ). 

# These tensions had been brewing for some time, but it was one instance of the corruption that led to the murder of an innocent man, that set these epic protests in motion. Why this one case? I’ll tell you why.

Because it was happened upon by a rather clever Google executive for the Middle East, Wael Ghonim, who was looking for ways to use his skills to get politically active. Ghonim heard the story of Khaled Said, a young man who was brutally bashed to death by police because he had acquired footage of them with weed (very, very illegal in Egypt mind you). Said was rumoured to be putting it up on YouTube, as a way of revealing the rife police corruption in his country. His actions of course, had irrevocable consequences.

#Ghonim saw in this event a chance to take a political stand, and a chance for Said’s innocent death not to be in vain, and he created a facebook page called ‘We are all Khaled Said’.  The page juxtaposed images of Said alive and smiling with pictures of his bloodied body in the morgue.

#The page resonated so much with Egyptians that it got 500,000 followers, and soon enough the it was being used to organise mass protests that resulted in the thousands who walked for 5 days including what is now called the ‘Day of Anger’ on Tuesday, January 25^th 2011.

Check out this article and vid of the man himself:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/08/wael-ghonim-tahrir-square

#The protestors had been united and given a voice that otherwise would have remained silenced. During the height of the protests, the Egyptian government cut off internet and mobile services in attempt to curb the mayhem. But it was too late. The death of one man (who represented the ill-treatment of many by a corrupt government,) and the actions of Wael Ghonim who had merely created a facebook page (which we do every day for kicks and are happy if we get ten ‘likes’)- had indeed triggered a Revolution.

#A FEW STATS ABOUT SOCIAL NETWORKING USE IN EGYPT (according to Preston,  New York Times,2011).

-In April 2008 an Egyptian Youth movement group got 70,000 facebook followers in aim at promoting awareness about unfair working conditions in Mahalla Al-Kobra.

- Google and facebook are the most common sites visited by Egyptians, closely followed by youtube. In case you were wondering, the vid of the police doing their deal that got Khaled killed did end up surfacing on YouTube.

- Preston has labelled facebook as the modern “tool of choice for human rights activists in Egypt”.

Images sourced from:

http://cyg-x-1.deviantart.com/art/No-Mubarak-No-Cry-196055362

 http://images.google.com.au/imgres?q=cairo+protests&hl=en&biw=1440&bih=703&gbv=2&tbm=isch&tbnid=_pCVoFbpPSoB8M:&imgrefurl=http://www.arabtimesonline.com/NewsDetails/tabid/96/smid/414/ArticleID/164911/reftab/96/t/13-killed-in-Cairo-protests/Default.aspx&docid=XNWgejij-As9BM&w=500&h=324&ei=SHJUTsvHK6_ImAXVvLiYDg&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=204&page=2&tbnh=126&tbnw=185&start=24&ndsp=23&ved=1t:429,r:21,s:24&tx=106&ty=94

 http://images.google.com.au/imgres?q=cairo+protests&hl=en&biw=1440&bih=703&gbv=2&tbm=isch&tbnid=wX5JBwydAgaH4M:&imgrefurl=http://muni-vision.blogspot.com/2011/01/egypts-revolution-by-facebook.html&docid=xwFToZ-Tqv2gzM&w=387&h=302&ei=9XJUTvLPIYeImQXLsKXpDw&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=375&page=1&tbnh=130&tbnw=185&start=0&ndsp=24&ved=1t:429,r:15,s:0&tx=98&ty=74

http://www.etidbits.com/cameron-considering-initiating-social-media-ban-in-wake-of-london-riots=7220

 http://images.google.com.au/imgres?q=cairo+protests&hl=en&biw=1440&bih=703&gbv=2&tbm=isch&tbnid=oH1NxCGKC1nGaM:&imgrefurl=http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2011/jan/28/egypt-protests-cairo&docid=gPhcBsFxDRARnM&w=683&h=480&ei=ZXNUTqbJNav5mAX82uD9Dw&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=359&page=1&tbnh=130&tbnw=185&start=0&ndsp=24&ved=1t:429,r:3,s:0&tx=100&ty=66

Ideas and Inspiration for Design, Layout and Content

Some more sites to add to the inspiration list:

BBC News section on England Riots

• I like the layout and design -particularly the 'Features and Analysis section', where links to Features are accessed by clicking on images of the riots- let's do something similar!!
• I also like the 'background section'- we could use something similar to make our unique angle applicable to a broader context.

Metro Online's section #riotcleanup: Riot clean-up Twitter operation swings into force

The Drum - has a great section dedicated just to social media news, with many focused particularly on London riots.

Content Structure (which our users would be interested in):

• Homepage- with opinion pole, timeline and video
• Opinion pieces (3)
• Features (4-6)
• Background information/Timeline
• Expert Views section where we could include video interviews
• Images
• Video
• Forum/Comments section for each written piece
• Links to Facebook and Twitter feeds from all web pages

Articles and opinion pieces to inspire ideas for our web features and opinion pieces:

• Mashable: Should Governments Monitor Social Media to Prevent Civil Unrest?
• Los Angeles Times - Tunisia Twitter: Did Tweeting Topple Tunisia?
• SMH: London riot social media blocks 'totalitarian'
• SMH: As Egypt goes offline US gets internet 'kill switch' bill ready
• Social Networking's Two-Edged Sword