COMM 150: Social media, Iran, Arab Spring and Wall Street demonstrations

LATER [Monday]: I posted this item Sunday, before I realized we weren't going to meet class till Wednesday. (I learned about Monday's midsemester holiday, by the way, from a message on Facebook ... another sign of how important social media are, I guess!) Some of it will probably be out of date by then, but it still gives the best account I've seen of how new media are involved in the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations.

STILL LATER [Wednesday morning]: The Christian Science Monitor has related story, headlined "Social media drive Occupy Wall Street. Do they also divulge its secrets?" and and a Time magazine blog has a post headed "linked below. Its focus is different as the corporate, or "mainstream," media try to get a handle on the protests. - pe

This week's assignment in John Vivian's "Media of Mass Communication" begins with a two-page discussion of the rioting in Tehran when the authorities cracked down after the 2009 election there. Says Vivian:

At that point in what is now being called the "twitter Revolution," everyone recame a reporter. Ordinary Iranians sent real-time updates to Twitter about the protest marches. They took video from their windowns of governament agents beating protesting citizens. As people walked the streets, they used their cell phones to shoot images of people shouting from the rooftops. (185)

More recently, Twitter and other social media played a major role in the "Arab Spring" demonstrations that toppled governments in Tunisia and Egypt and this summer's riots in London.

Now we are seeing new media, mostly on the internet, being used in much the same way in New York City. Beth Carter, an intern at Wired magazine, has a report today (Sunday) with one of those headlines that says it all: "‘Arab Spring’ on the Hudson: Social Media’s The Same The World Over" ... in class let's read Carter's report and watch a companion video produced by Mark Riffee with additional reporting by Dawm Lim and Sasha Conley. Platform convergence, anyone?

A journalism student at New York University, Carter visited the demonstrations in the city's nearby financial district. Here's what she found:

... this isn’t Cairo or Tunis, where earlier this year mass protests ignited the “Arab Spring” and the Tunisian and Egyptian people overthrew dictators in a matter of (semi) peaceful weeks. This is Liberty Square in downtown Manhattan, the center of American finance. The movement is “Occupy Wall Street.” The sound bite is “we are the 99%.” The demands are … unclear

OWS — #occupywallstreet in the parlance that really matters in the age of Twitter — started small. On September 17, the first day of the protests, the fledgling group’s one loudspeaker was stolen mischievously by a passer-by, organizers were clueless when asked how food would be distributed, and police were content just to watch and wait. The feeling for some was that there wouldn’t be a real revolution unless they were actually being attacked. In the dismayed words of one Anonymous member there, “this is a hippie jam fest.”

But the demonstration grew and matured over three weeks, and is now spreading to other cities, even overseas. There is talk of an “Occupy the FED” demonstration — and the similarities earlier Middle East uprisings don’t end there: Many got the word to join the protest via social media, and organizers are maintaining momentum and keeping tabs on thing the same way.

As in the Middle East and London, the mainstream commercial media don't know quite what to make of the demonstrations. And there's no way of predicting how they'll play out in the end. But Wired is in a good position to explain how they got started. Now a subsidiary of Condé Nast, Wired started in 1993 as an independent magazine that explored the effect of new technologies on American society and culture. (Like so many indies, it was bought out by a media conglomorate but retains its name and brand identity.)

Carter notes that OWS demonstrations are spreading. "Twitter and Facebook proved to be, and continue to be, a way to move information quickly, personally, and largely under the radar. Feeds and pages have materialized all over the country in solidarity of the OWS movement, each group now reaching a different, more localized audience." Not all of her readers see much significance to it, however. "Am I the only one baffled by the comparisons between this and the Arab Spring? It's not as if these protesters are being shot at," said one, who called himself Pops_K.

Carter says "the outcome isn’t clear — to anyone." But no matter what it is, it'll have a Twitter hashtag.

A corporate media perspective. This morning's Christian Science Monitor has a bylined story by Gloria Goodale quoting public relations consultants, political operatives and professors as they try to get a handle on the demonstrations.

Every day, millions of tweets, posts, and texts swell the global chat around the topic, creating, in essence, a living and evolving database of raw information about the protest movement, its supporters, and its possible goals.

As this cyberchatter burgeons, more and more individuals – and organizations – are tuning in and trying to make sense of what they hear in order to formulate strategies and make decisions, say media analysts, researchers, and political strategists.

Time's blog post by Ishaan Tharoor is headed "Occupy Wall Street: A New Era of Dissent in America?" Quoting David Graeber, an anthropologist who took part in the anti-globablization protests, and Todd Gitlin, a professor who led anti-war protests in the 1960s, Tharoor says it's too soon to know:

On the ground, uncertainty over what's to come mirrors the palpable excitement of those committed to camp out in the park indefinitely. “It's clear many aren't going to leave [Zuccotti Park] after a piece of legislation [gets passed],” says Gitlin. “They're after a more transcendent sense of change.” When asked what it would take to empty Zuccotti Park now, Graeber echoes the steely sense of purpose of many of the protesters: “It's not going to empty by itself. Maybe when [the police] come with guns. And maybe not even then."

Both are worth reading, as the establishment plays catchup.