The Non-Twitter, Non-Facebook Revolutions
In this Guardian column, Evgeny Morozov (whose book I confess to not having read – yet) tempers the cyber-utopians’ proclamations of the power of social networking to bringing democracy to the Middle East. It is a must-read that goes over some now-familiar topics I have blogged about: the fact that real social movements still require old-fashioned people on the streets taking real risks against the powers they are fighting.
And yes, Twitter and Facebook may be useful tools, but they are simply that, tools. This should not be a very controversial idea, so, for Morozov, there must be something behind the quick and superficial embrace of the notion of political power of social media platforms:
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