sure. reporters do need to condense. and policymakers will readily grab news stories if there isn't a lot of reserach out there. the point is less about what popular discourse does, and more about how to at least get a better picture of events to policymakers, so thet don't set up thousands of twitter kiosks in a repressive countries, hoping that that will spark a revolution. -robert On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 3:02 PM, Dave Karpf <davekarpf@gmail.com> wrote:
I think Alex H's point was that many more empirical studies aren't going to affect that element of the popular discourse.
Or put another way, when a journalist calls you up and asks a question like this (the one I get are usually along the lines of "is clicktivism good or bad?"), they want a simple answer. If you give them a complex/nuanced answer, they're either going to (a) misquote you or (b) not quote you at all. And if they *do* delve into the complexity as you explained it, their editor will surely tell them to cut it down and simplify it.
As far as I can tell, egypt-as-twitter-revolution is basically a zombie lie. Far more people debunk the claim than actually hold the claim. It remains propped up solely for the debunking.
...All that said, David Faris gave an excellent presentation at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting a few weeks ago, titled "Yes Malcolm, there really are social media revolutions." His argument, as I understand it, is that if Tahrir (and the years of organizing the preceded Tahrir) doesn't count as a social media-enabled revolution, then that just means we need to rethink the term.
-DK
On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 2:52 PM, nativebuddha <nativebuddha@gmail.com>wrote:
Thanks one and all for these suggestions.
In response to Alex H's comments below, I completely agree. Unfortunately, there's a lot of policymaking going on right now that's picking up the cause-effect model and runnin' with it. In fact, popular discourse pretty much asserts that Twitter caused the revolution!
This simplification is why there needs to be many more empirical studies.
-robert
On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 11:27 AM, Alex Halavais <alex@halavais.net wrote:
I think any "cause-effect model" for any large-scale social phenomenon is sketchy, and I also think popular discourse loves such simplification. That is to say, I don't think "This Caused That" is something that evidence could directly demonstrate or refute (or even "refudiate" ;).
That said, I've been reading Philip Howard's new book, "The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy," which is quite good, and provides something of a discussion of this question in its conclusions, and suggests that ICTs can play an important part in a "causal recipe" for democratization of Muslim states.
- Alex
On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 1:52 PM, nativebuddha <nativebuddha@gmail.com> wrote:
Does anyone have evidence (or links to studies) that show the impact, or lack thereof, of social media on the Arab spring? This cause-effect model still circulates in the mediasphere, but what is the evidence show?
Thanks.
-Robert _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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-- Dave Karpf, PhD
Assistant Professor Journalism and Media Studies Department School of Communication and Information Rutgers University, New Brunswick
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