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Egypt is in turmoil. The North African nation is going through the mass protests it had never seen before in an attempt to rid itself from the clutches of 30-year autocracy of President Hosni Mubarak. Regime change in Tunisia, its neighbor, fueled the protests in the streets of Egypt that are growing violent, without any sign of subsiding until Mubarak steps down.
In the Egyptian as well as the Tunisian protests, social media on the internet such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube acted as a platform for the people to share their opinions with the world along with exchanging information. In fact, some of the optimistic social media advocates are calling these revolutions Facebook revolutions, which in my opinion is an exaggeration. People used these means of communication media to spread and share information, only because they are global and more powerful than traditional means – word of mouth or telephone.
During the recent Arab protests, global news channels especially Al-Jazeera used YouTube footages and Facebook photos while covering the protests. In fact, the early reports of Tunisian protests that were aired on Al-Jazeera were largely based on the information that came through social media. And, when the protests grew bigger, many global channels used opinions expressed on Twitter, as people’s voices to report the news. Twitter, for many mainstream media, became the source of peoples’ voices.
Twitter is a service that lets its user post a message of 140 characters or less at a time. The tweets, as the messages on Twitter are called, are searchable and use of special word, called hashtag (#), help to aggregate the tweets on similar topics. The simplicity in its usage makes it easier to access it through mobile phones with internet connection or even through text messaging (SMS) – which makes it popular among people as it allows them to share information right from the streets.
During the recent Wikileaks saga, the whistleblower site effectively used Twitter to keep people updated about the latest developments and directing them to mirror sites, when the main site was blocked. The best use of Twitter was seen during the Iranian election and protest in the aftermath of it, until the Tunisian revolution came about. Quite a lot of Iranians used Twitter to communicate the latest developments of the protests and the world followed Iran through the tweets.
New Vox-pop tool
Twitter, the most-popular microblogging service, has undoubtedly become the channel for people on the street to raise their voices. It is evident that the importance of tweets grows more during times of crisis and elections when public opinions become more important but this doesn’t mean that tweets are only useful during those times.
The rise of microblogging has limited the power of mainstream media in terms of vox-pop or representation of people’s voices. Although mainstream media can choose to use or not use tweets, they can no longer completely dictate people’s opinions. Microblogging is accessible to anyone with an internet connection and there are tools that aggregates tweets in a topic empowering audience to go beyond mainstream media’s vox-pop. This, in a way, has become a challenge to mainstream media. But on a more positive note, it’s something that helps the media make objective and responsible while disseminating people’s voices.
There is no doubt that Twitter has become a new vox-pop tool, despite being limited to those with internet knowledge. The best aspect of the new vox-pop tool is that it’s more controlled by the people themselves, rather than the limited representation presented by the mainstream media as a result of its limited reach, resources and choices.
Tweeting Nepal
During the April Uprising in 2005, neither Facebook nor Twitter was as big as they are today. Back then, very limited number of Nepalis used these services ma king it difficult to predict the extent of role of these social media could have played had the revolution had happened recently. However, it’s safe to predict that they would have been used extensively – and could have made the participation in protests larger, by attracting the internet-enthusiastic youth who are accused to avoiding the political movement. A sample of which was visible on May 7, 2010, in the number of participants in the mass gathering that converted into an impromptu rally demanding the leaders clear their differences. The organizers had used Facebook extensively to promote the gathering cum rally which also protested the week long bandh imposed by the Maoist.
Another example of use of social media in gathering people is best exemplified by the Kathmandu Bar Camp – an event that saw more than 500 participants when it was last held. The organizers of the event used social media including Twitter to publicize the event.
Although, Twitter is yet to become as popular as Facebook in Nepal, the ‘tweeples’ in Nepal (Nepali Twitter users) actively write opinions about political and social events as they happen in the country. According to SocialBakers, the number of Facebook users in Nepal is 897,060 – although the Twitter users are fewer than that, it is still a significant number to express the voices from the streets.
It’s less likely that Nepal will face situation such as Tunisia or Egypt in the future, but the growing number of internet users, the accessibility and ease of use of upcoming technology to express opinions for the common people will contribute in making internet the best and effective vox-pop very soon.
(As published in Republica national daily’s op-ed page.)
