One expects any tool or weapon in war can be used and misused to advantage or disadvantage. I think it is too early to assess the full impact, but it is clear social media had some impact. What isn't clear is whether the revolt would have actually started in these recent cases without it, maybe and maybe not. Real time interactive communications to a mass media is powerful, but of course a number of factors will influence just how powerful and to whose side it will advantage. The reports it provided links to were interesting.Originally Posted by davidbfpo
http://www.usip.org/publications/blo...tious-politics
Despite the prominence of “Twitter revolutions,” “color revolutions,” and the like in public debate, policymakers and scholars know very little about whether and how new media affect contentious politics. Journalistic accounts are inevitably based on anecdotes rather than rigorously designed research.http://www.usip.org/publications/adv...media-researchThe impact of new media can be better understood through a framework that considers five levels of analysis: individual transformation, intergroup relations, collective action, regime policies, and external attention. New media have the potential to change how citizens think or act, mitigate or exacerbate group conflict, facilitate collective action, spur a backlash among regimes, and garner international attention toward a given country.
Lots more at the site, but the gist of this argument is that to actually study SM it would require the government to acquire intrusive technology and actually read the messages to understand its impact on any particular revolt, which of course is much more than metadata.
http://www.usip.org/sites/default/fi...ivil%20War.pdfStudying new media raises a host of complex questions about privacy and accountability. Policy measures, such as encouraging actors to use new media in nondemocratic regimes, raise even more serious questions. Ethical guidelines for new media research and policy are badly needed.
No surprise, SM can be as bias as public media. The danger for those who don't realize that networks within networks shape the message could lead to outside actors getting played.
In particular, social media create a dangerous illusion of unmediated information flows.
Key curation hubs within networks may now play a gatekeeping role as powerful as that of television producers and newspaper editors.
The pattern in social media toward clustering into insular likeminded
communities is unmistakable and has profound implications.
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