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Moldovan Protests: Was it really a “Twitter Revolution”?

source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/creepysleepy/3429118253/

Since Tuesday’s protests and riots in the Moldovan capital Chisinau, there has been much analysis on how this group of protesters was formed.  Initial reports focused primarily on the use of Twitter, while paying scant reference to other social media tools, let alone the still relevant power of human mobilization.  The extent to which Twitter has been connected to the event has even led to unfortunate outcomes such as the charging of Natalia Morar, a Moldovan activist blamed for starting the “revolution” using the application.

The analysis on the technological aspects of this event in the past few days have revealed a different story.  It still involves Twitter, but Twitter has a different role.  While Twitter had a part in the pre-protest mobilization in and around Chisinau on Monday night, it may not have necessarily turned the protests into mobs or rioters, nor did it necessarily invoke the violence that occurred on Tuesday, as some believe.

As Evegeny Morozov, a fellow at the Open Society Institute, pointed out, Twitter’s more important role was getting the information out to the world, bringing it international attention and keeping the story alive and buzzing, as well as acting as a channel to push out user-generated content from on the ground.  After some great immediate analysis of the Twitter scene in Moldova (which was a follow up to his initial, but still quite insightful assessment on Tuesday), Morozov found that there were actually very few registered Twitter users in the country, and he suspects that most of the Tweets on #pman were not on the ground and were elsewhere in the world, taking information and pushing it along.

Aside from the fact that the government of Moldova quickly shut down cell phone service for the square where the riots took place, it seems there is limited use for Twitter in terms of mobilization efforts once you already have people in the square.  The violence was somewhat self-contained and more of a product of human beings being human beings than a technologically enhanced provocation.  As you might predict, the use of a megaphone became more useful than using Twitter.

However, the broader set of social media tools beyond Twitter seems to have played a greater part in the process of mobilization than originally thought, as Daniel Bennett hints at in his blog post discussing the events.  One commenter to Bennet’s blog, Julien, stated that “If it were social media, I’d say it were rather social networks like Facebook. I saw messages from Moldovan contacts the evening before asking to gather for the first meetings on Monday.”  Even more telling was this comment by zerolab:

“As evisoft stated, Twitter was used for the initial organization and consequent spread of information. Add facebook statuses tied to twitter updates and a few other means like SMSes, word of mouth, LiveJournal.

There is no doubt about Twitter’s role on starting/organizing the protests, but they’ve evolved into something bigger and way too hard to coordinate anything.”

There’s no doubt that there was a complex system of social media tools that were being used prior to and during the event, but they went beyond Twitter, and included blog aggregators like blogosfera.md, Facebook, and regionally-specific social networks such as Odnoklassniki.

The use of Twitter cannot, however, be discounted.  This is a very interesting case of more sophisticated tactics for activism.  People have realized the ability of the tool not only to draw people to your cause, mobilize efforts or provide information, but they were able to harness it’s ability to spread information with the explicit goal of attracting attention to a particular event that otherwise may have gone largely unnoticed.  For them, personally, this means international pressure on a government and an election that determines their very well-being.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Activist Charged for Inciting ‘Twitter Revolution’ (wired.com)
• Moldovan Opposition Claims Fraud in Elections That Set Off Anti-Communist Protests (nytimes.com)
• Gallery: Moldova Protesters Take to the Streets … and Tweets (wired.com)

Book Review: Activists and Innovation

Book Title
Market Rebels: How Activists Make or Break Radical Innovation

[Hardcover Publish Date is 18 January 2009]

Author
Hayagreeva Rao

Subject
This book explores how innovations and new technologies are changing the way people mobilize  around a cause.  Rao offers several examples of how activists have gone against the mainstream and used various technologies and tools to their advantage.

He offers many examples of how this has occurred, but one of the most insightful conclusions he comes to is that some of the most successful examples are a combination of what Bob Sutton, who has worked closely with Rao, calls the “one-two punch of a “Hot Cause” and “Cool Solutions.”  He goes on to say:

A hot cause like deaths from tobacco or medical errors can be used as springboards to raise awareness, spark motivation, and ignite red-hot outrage.  And naming these as enemies is an important step in mobilizing a network or market. But creating the heat isn’t enough; the next step needs to be cool solutions.   This doesn’t just mean identifying technically feasible solutions, it also means finding ways to bind people together, to empower them to take steps that help solve the problem, and to create enduring commitment to implementing solutions.

Activists, or “market rebels,” are those who defy conventional communication channels and leverage existing digital technologies by introducing radical and innovative ways to use them.  Under this model, many of the examples highlighted on DigiActive indicate that the range of uses for these tools will broaden beyond what which they were originally “intended” for.

It sounds like a book that should be top on the reading list of anyone with a cause they feel strongly about who wants to utilize the technologies out there.

Campaign: Mobile Phones Against War in Congo

Description: Last week a coalition of students and activists have asked mobile phone users to “Cell Out” in solidarity with the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where millions have died as a result of conflict over coltan, a rare mineral used in cell phones and other electronics.

Digital Tools Being Used: mobile phones

What Are They Doing: Friends of the Congo with the help of university students at dozens of colleges and universities in the United States and around the world had made this action as part of the “Break the Silence Week”, an effort to raise awareness among cell phone users and others about the ongoing civil war in the DRC and the role of minerals such as coltan in stoking the conflict.

In “Break the Silence Week”, you will find a lists of events in different parts of the world which you can join or support.

Tool: Twitter being used by the American-Israel Chamber of Commerce

Recently, companies and organizations have been hopping onto Twitter to use as a tool to communicate to customers, followers, interested parties etc.  Some use the tool as a newsreel, some use it for promotions or customer service.  But what would the American-Israel Chamber of Commerce get out of the situation?

Ask Guy Tessler, who works in Atlanta for the organization’s Southeast Region.  Interviewed by Toby of Diva Marketing, Guy mentioned the importance of being able to put a human face to his organization, and feels that Twitter, by virtue of its brief, direct and personal forum for conversation, provides an effective way of doing so.

With an organizational mission as follows,

“to boost the Israeli and Southeastern economies by helping their companies develop business relationships with each other and explore new market opportunities”

Guy hopes to use Twitter as a networking tool that he hopes can him reach specifically the local markets.  Please read here for the full interview.