From Innovation to Revolution

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67325/malcolm-gladwell-and-clay-shirky/from-innovation-to-revolution

Summary: Do the tools of social media make it possible for protesters to challenge their governments? Malcolm Gladwell argues that there is no evidence that they do; Clay Shirky disagrees.

 

From Innovation to Revolution -  Malcolm Gladwell states that just because innovations in communications technology happen doesn't mean that they make a real difference.  He believes that new communication technologies and social mediums only make a real difference is if they solve a problem that was actually a problem in the first place.  Malcolm isn't ignorant to the fact that some recent protests have used the tools of social media but he doesn't see where that in the absence of social media, those uprisings wouldn't have been possible.  

  Shirky responds to Gladwell's argument that the internet and social media have altered the competitive landscape.  The internet and other communication technologies have enabled insurgents and protesters to play by different rules than incumbents.  Social media has allowed insurgents to adopt new strategies and that those strategies have always been crucial.  Digital networks have eased and increased in range public speech by citizens.  Social mediums have increased the speed and scale of group coordination.     

The Political Power of Social Media

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67038/clay-shirky/the-political-power-of-social-media

Summary: Discussion of the political impact of social media has focused on the power of mass protests to topple governments. In fact, social media's real potential lies in supporting civil society and the public sphere -- which will produce change over years and decades, not weeks or months.

CLAY SHIRKY is Professor of New Media at New York University

The Political Power of Social Media - Over the last two decades the world's networked population has grown from the low millions to billions.  Social media is now an innate part of life for civil society worldwide.  Global communication is now more intimate than ever and has more participants than ever.  It is easier than ever to have your voice heard and hear the voices of others.  The immediacy and fluidity of social media allows citizens to create change in the present but its long term scope is beginning to show as well.   In 2001, Philippine President Joseph Estrada was on trial for impeachment.  Loyalists in the Philippine Congress voted to exclude key evidence against Estrada.  Just hours after the decision was announced thousands of angry Filipinos protested at a major crossroad in Manila.  The protest was arranged by a forwarded text message reading, "Go 2 EDSA.  Wear blk."  In the end over a million people arrived and the public's ability to coordinate such a rapid and massive response forced the country's legislators to allow the critical evidence to be presented.  Estrada was impeached just days later.  This protest marked the first time that social media helped force out a national leader but as we've seen recently it wasn't the last.  Social media has given people more opportunities to engage in public speech and undertake collective action.  Social media has increased our ability to coordinate public demand change. 

It takes a village to find a phone

The ongoing saga a lost phone in a New York City cab caused speaks to the power and effects of new social mediums.  

1. Technology itself isn't powerful.  Technology only becomes powerful when there is ready participation from a large, distributed group.  Groups can be very powerful when given the right tools.  When the phone thief Sasha said "I never thought a phone would cause me so many problems," she was inaccurate.  It was the unified group on the other end of the line that caused her so many problems.
2. Social mediums such as texting, emails and message boards allow us to be connected with one another but it also could lead to us being scrutinized in public if we are not careful.   
3. We can now be judged morally not just by our intimate peers but also on a global scale because of the internet.  Returning lost items for example.  It's easy to keep something such as a dollar bill we find a street because we don't have the knowledge of where and who it came from.  But, it's difficult not to return a wallet with an ID inside.  We used to just have to bat these feelings of guilt inside or ourselves but now it's possible that we can be judged for these decisions on a large public scale.
4. Technology today makes it easy for someone to get our thoughts and it's also easy to put them into a database.  What we text or email can stick with us for a long time and can hurt us down the road.  The story in this chapter detailed how Sasha and her families' lies came back to haunt them.  Readers of the website had a detailed database to go through that spotlighted all the lies and how their stories simply didn't add up.
5. A unified group of citizens with diverse expertise can cause change.  Users of content used to just take what they could get but now it's a two-way street.  Users feedback steers the content they are receiving.  User feedback can also cause change when coming from a united front.  The police initially labeled this case as the phone being lost, but public out cry eventually got the police to treat the case as theft.

 

Clay Shirky: Review

Clay Shirky encapsulated the current state of modern social devices and their influences on the social world.  Social devices such as cell phones with picture and video messaging, Twitter, and Facebook are enabling users to report news as it happens.  Shirky uses the massive earthquake that recently happened in China as an example.  Citizens reported news on the earthquake as it happened by uploading videos and photos onto the internet for all of the world to see.  Breaking news coming from Twitter is a new, developing trend but it doesn't mean the end of professional journalism.  We still need professionally trained journalists to interpret events and gain access to and publicize information that an amateur cannot.  If anything, these amateur reports coming from Twitter and other social media will only push the professional journalists to be more proactive and creative, which will lead to enhanced news coverage for the audience.  These social devices also have an influence on companies outside of the journalist market.  Companies and even politicians now must understand that users can not only communicate back to the company but they can also communicate with each other.  This type of innovation can happen anywhere and innovation now moves through the world.

Clay Shirky: How cellphones, Twitter, Facebook can make history