Social Media Guests
| 13:08 UK time, Wednesday, 23 February 2011
Hi, it's Sophie here on Sarah's log-in. As mentioned in the blog post below, on today's programme we will be talking about the use of social media in situations like we have seen in countries across the Middle east and North Africa.
Ben Allen is at a conference in Dubai that has been organised to discuss how important and effective social media has become as a tool. He will be joined by the Egyptian blogger Sandmonkey who has agreed to talk to us about the importance of social media and the role it played in the Egyptian protests. We will also be talking to social media experts and commentators including Evgeny Morozov and Juliette Powell.
Sandmonkey, who has been an active blogger since 2004, has become even more well known through his constant use of social media during the Egyptian protests and events in Tahrir square. He recognises that social media played an important role in the people's revolt, but he added that the organizing continued even after cell phones, the Internet and Facebook were shut down.
"Basically, social media was very useful at first and letting people know that there is a protest and what the demands are," he said. "Then there was the shutdown, and we were still able to organize and go to protests without" the help of social media."
Sandmonkey says that he had his blog, that covers Egyptian politics and repression, shut down by authorities for many years. Mubarak and Egyptian officials considered social media and the internet to play an important role in organising and motivating protesters in Egypt and attempted to silence the online dissident on several occasions.
Juliette Powell, a social media expert and co-founder of The Gathering Think Tank, and author of '33 Million People in the Room, thinks that we often under-estimate the power of social media. It is now undeniable that social media also plays a major role today in the struggle for democracy, like we have witnessed across the Middle East and North Africa, waged by people under the yoke of democracy.
She also recognises the importance of social media in managing human catastrophes. After the disaster in Haiti, NGOS used digital media to help source and provide aid and medical care to the Haitian people, and it is now becoming the case that humanaitarian aid can not live without the digital and social networks that feed it.
Evgeny Morozov, author of a book called The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom has an alternative view of the role of social media.
"The Internet has provided so many cheap and easily available entertainment fixes to those living under authoritarianism that it has become considerably harder to get people to care about politics at all."
Morozov is sceptical about the widely held view that social media and the internet is inherently pro democratic. It is important to remember that authoritarian regimes themselves can use the internet themselves, and can use it to their advantage. Social networks offer a cheaper and easier way to identify dissidents than other, more traditional forms of surveillance.
Do you think social media is a help or a hindrance? If any one has any questions for our guests please post them below.
Comment number 1.
At 17:26 23rd Feb 2011, Pancha Chandra wrote:The Social media has galvanized mass demonstrations against Gadaffi and his mercenaries. Gadaffi has been check-mated and the repression he unleashed has come to haunt him! He may claim to be a martyr but the sea-change that is being enacted by Libyans and the baying for his blood should send shivers down his spine. The social media helped to accelerate and coordinate the downfall of a ruthless tyrant!
Complain about this comment (Comment number 1)
Comment number 2.
At 17:41 23rd Feb 2011, Ibrahim in UK wrote:Social networking is a tool. How it is used is up to the user. But it's also a new tool which the new generation knows how to use. The older generation hasn't really got to grips with it and probably never will. In these revolutions, the dictatorships were all old generation and from an old-era mentality. They think the same as they did 40 years ago, (and even look the same). They didn't have knowledge of how to control social media in the same way they control state tv and newspapers.
Social Media is free and democratic as long as the repressors of freedom and democracy don't understand its potential.
Complain about this comment (Comment number 2)
Comment number 3.
At 17:45 23rd Feb 2011, Pancha Chandra wrote:The Security Council needs to show its muscle and clamp down heavily on the Gadaffi regime. Exerting the maximum pressure on the ruthless tyrant by placing an air exclusion zone around his residence or his known whereabouts. Sniffing him out and airlifting him to the Hague should not be too difficult. The longer he is left on his own, the greater the danger: a desperate man has no scruples!
Complain about this comment (Comment number 3)
Comment number 4.
At 17:57 23rd Feb 2011, Pancha Chandra wrote:Cant the United Nations and Nato send elite forces to save the lives of innocent citizens? Gaddafi has committed so many human rights violations. Isnt it time for him to be hauled to the Hague to answer gross human rights charges?
Complain about this comment (Comment number 4)
Comment number 5.
At 20:15 23rd Feb 2011, Tom D Ford wrote:When DARPA designed the internet the idea was to make sure that any message would get through by making many different paths and dividing each message up into many different pieces and sending each piece over a different path and assembling them all back together at the intended destination with methods that would accurately recreate any missing pieces so that the original message would get through to the intended recipient.
So how can social media get through the barriers of a dictator shutting down the internet and such? How can social media be made more robust for getting through in the face of attempts to shut it down? Can satellites help? Can those "drones" be conscripted into use for promoting freedom through social media? How about many small disposable model type airplanes that repeat and resend messages for even a relatively small period of time? How about launching small weather type balloons to drift over the area with social media transmitters and repeaters?
How about a "version of death by a thousand cuts" by trying all of those small and disposable things in hundreds or tens of thousands coordinated by computers?
Complain about this comment (Comment number 5)
Comment number 6.
At 16:47 25th Feb 2011, Kenn wrote:Bravo to social media,they are doing a wonderful job,without them the world will be in darkness.
Complain about this comment (Comment number 6)