This past week, CNN put out an article on social media, one that asks the question whether social media hinders revolution. The basis of the piece comes from an article by Navid Hassanpour, a grad student at Yale, who calculated equations and came to the conclusion that the organization of revolutions are hurt by social media because it discourages face-to-face contact and the real understanding of the current situation by seeing it/experiencing it/and discussing it with others physically. This may be so. Social media via the internet and through devices such as laptops, cell phones, and tablets, let people connect to others without physically meeting or seeing them. Hassanpour argues that people have no choice but to organize and mobilize without social media, which doesn't seem that groundbreaking. Aside from the calculations to prove this, the answer here is part of everyone's metamemory or metacognition, meaning, we have known all along that people will organize in the absence of social media, but just needed to be reminded of it. Some call this "hindsight bias" but still, this the argument of Hassanpour is nothing out of the ordinary.
Taking from the CCN article, they quote the New York Times regarding social media's role in organizing people: "All the Twitter posting, texting and Facebook wall-posting is great for organizing and spreading a message of protest, but it can also spread a message of caution, delay, confusion or, I don't have time for all this politics, did you see what Lady Gaga is wearing?" Confusion spreading, yes, as there is a plethora of information coming from social media apparatus on the internet, and one cannot always discern between accurate and inaccurate information. But for those who are staying abreast of a revolution through social media, the NYT is wrong to assume that people would just get bored with the revolution (politics) and wander on to other topics (Lady Gaga??). Those in tune with the revolution will most likely not be distracted by other goings-on in the world and will be highly focused on the revolution.
The question here is "does it really matter if social media hinders or helps revolution?" Yes, it is always good to analyze the effect of social media on all things, Clay Shirky has done this multiple times. It is also good for theoretical work to discuss this, but it has no practical value because technology will only advance and social media is here to stay (Google+ just came out, right?) Perhaps statistically social media may bring less people out to the streets, but that does not necessarily mean that social media makes people less interested in current events. It provides more outlets to disseminate information and news, whereas this information is in the public domain and can be viewed by people who otherwise would not have been interested enough to go directly to the source. And it is a fact that social media helped the revolution in Egypt.
