Abstract
Traditional scholarship on social movements and journalism could not envision the dramatic changes that emerging social media have brought to social uprisings. Social media technology have served to challenge cultures of control, simultaneously eroding barriers between public and private lives and promoting civic engagement of individuals in their societies. This chapter explores the implications of emerging social media employed by citizens during the disputed 2009 Iranian elections. It focuses on the use of social media including cell phones, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, blogs, and YouTube to spread information about the death of Neda Agha-Soltan and, as a result, coalesce anti-government protestors. Starting from the case of Neda Agha-Soltan, this chapter investigates how social media have changed the role of protestors functioning as citizen journalists in social movements.
Highlights
Wael Ghonim, the Google executive who helped to organize the protests against Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, remarked that “if you want to liberate a society just give them the Internet” [1]
Starting from the case of Neda Agha-Soltan, this chapter investigates how social media have changed the role of protestors functioning as citizen journalists in social movements
It posits that social media have altered the balance of power formerly dominated by government news organizations, allowing citizens greater media access to voice their positions as citizen journalists during social confrontations
Summary
Wael Ghonim, the Google executive who helped to organize the protests against Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, remarked that “if you want to liberate a society just give them the Internet” [1]. This chapter examines the intersection of social media forms such as cell phones, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, and blogs with public protest, investigating the impact of emerging media on traditional conceptualizations of social protest. It posits that social media have altered the balance of power formerly dominated by government news organizations, allowing citizens greater media access to voice their positions as citizen journalists during social confrontations. Beginning with the participation of citizens acting as journalists in news creation, this chapter asks what happens when centralized constraints dissolve as social media shifts the personal connections to others from geographical and semi-enduring relationships to virtual and ephemeral cyberspace communities [6,7]. This chapter will examine the traditional models of social movements and the situation in Iran before drawing implications from this case study
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