What Does Twitter Have to Do With Revolution? (Video of My Talk at Columbia U)
A talk I gave on March 5th at Columbia University about how and why social media plays an increasingly important role in social movements, especially in authoritarian countries:
The previous speaker I refer to is Bob Garfield of NPR whose talk had visual examples from a Krispy Kreme ad campaign. As I sat and listened to him, I thought that I better warn people that my talk will contain different kinds of visuals!
After a year of studying and talking about the Arab uprisings, I fear that my standards for “graphic content” have been dramatically altered. I often need to remind myself –and my audiences– of that fact–and that’s what I’m trying to do in the first minute of the talk…
Also, as background: More of my conceptual approach can be found here in this short article I had written for MIT’s tech review: New Media and the People-Powered Uprisings.
Is there any evidence as clusters of activity grow and disperse, that there is a critical mass of activists linking the various clusters?