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1 Social Media and Social Movements Social Media and Social Movements The Transformation of Communication Patterns Edited by Barış Çoban LEXINGTON BOOKS Lanham • Boulder • New York • London Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB Copyright © 2016 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Control Number: 2015955902 ISBN: 978-1-4985-2930-3 (cloth : alk. paper) eISBN: 978-1-4985-2931-0 ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992. Printed in the United States of America Contents Social Media R/evolution: An Introduction vii Barış Çoban 1 Commune, the Web, and the Anarchist Thought of Mikhail Bakunin 1 Chiara Livia Bernardi 2 New Media and Empowerment in the Indignados’ Movement: “If you want that no one else decides for you, so that no one else speaks for you” 19 Tommaso Gravante and Alice Poma 3 Occupy Nigeria Movement, Organized Labor Unions, and Oil-Subsidy Struggle: An Analysis of Processes in Media(ted) “Revolution” and its Demise 37 Kudus Oluwatoyin Adebayo 4 The Internet and Democracy in Arab Spring Morocco: Opportunities and Challenges 57 Abderrahim Chalfaouat 5 Occupy Movements, Alternative New Media, and Utopia: The Gezi Resistance and Activist Citizen Journalism 73 Barış Çoban 6 Social Media and Social Change: The 2011 Campaign for Stopping the Massacre of the Danube Delta Wild Horses 97 Dana Florentina Nicolae v vi Contents 7 Active or Passive Citizen: The Influence of New Media Over Local Communities’ Participation 109 Ilona Biernacka-Ligieza 8 Youth Vote and Web 2.0 Political Engagement: Can Facebook Increase the Propensity of Young Citizens to Vote? 131 Alan Steinberg 9 Weblogs: Revolutionary Media? 151 Simona Stano 10 The Transformation of Leisure in the Digital Age 165 Ana Viñals Blanco 11 Virtual Voyeurism and the Capitalization of Individuality on Facebook 181 Shahriar Kabir 12 Are Google’s Executives Liable for Uploaded Videos?: Italian Case 193 Anna Rita Popoli 13 Social Media in Education: Main Sources for Inclusion and Collaborative Learning 209 Magda Pischetola 14 Social Media: Transformation of Education 229 Carolina Duek and Gastón Tourn Index 247 About the Editor and Contributors 249 Social Media R/evolution An Introduction Barış Çoban In contrast with other media revolutions, social media revolution is the one revolution which builds and shows itself over the streets. Although the evolu- tion of social media has occurred in an intrasystem process, the revolutionary transformation in the use of social media has done so in an antisystemic way. The evolution of media proceeds in the context of developments in the field of informatics and technology, namely capitalistic relationships; therefore, revolutionary struggle goes on the basis of the creation of class conflicts and/ or independent/autonomous social spheres. The struggle against the power in the field of media is being carried on by different means and methods. Social media revolution is one of the most important determinants of the struggle of carrying another world of today’s beyond possible and the struggle of actualizing it. Accordingly, it’s not possible to think of many social move- ments of the day without social media, or rather “alternative/activist new media” (Lievrouw 2011). Today’s revolutions cannot be described only as social media revolutions: Traditional revolutionary forms of struggle, social movement methods and uses of traditional media are still utilized effectively, however, social media has become centralized in proclamation, organization, mobilization, and maintenance of revolutionary social activity by creating ample opportunities that other media tools have never held. Although the movements occuring in the local base had global impact starting with the Iranian Green Revolution (2009) and continuing with Arab Spring (2011), Spanish Indignados (Outraged) movement (2011), Occupy Wall Street (2011), Gezi Resistance (2013), afterwards, they organized, made themselves heard, mobilized, and gained recognition with an internationalist solidarity. These social media-based social movements built “temporary autonomous zones” on the basis of local occupy movements that included and transcended the antiglobalization movement and they established their own “dual powers vii viii Social Media R/evolution which are not ‘the powers.’” The movements that organize horizontally and create their own centers and participatory networks around this center built “hybrid-network society” (Amor et al. 2013, 4) or “hybrid public sphere” that consists of a mix of both the social media network and the network they cre- ated in their living space: “Egyptian activists are still trying to find a balance between the use of social media and local street campaigning. In so doing, they are creating a hybrid of the two, a mediated public space, as signalled by the appearance of Twitter hashtags as graffiti tags on the walls of Cairo” (Gerbaudo 2012, 74). Social media is a must for hybrid-network society in the formation process of a new political culture horizontally based on partici- pation and pluralism. From micro to macro, social media plays a central role in the building and actualization of a new culture, politics, and lifestyle in a number of living spaces. In the description of Castells, network society is a social structure that depends on the networks operating over information and communication technologies (2005, 7). When referring to the network society, social rela- tionships operating in the basis of economy, politics, and culture are men- tioned in fact: These relationships have a dynamic structure that consistently changes and transforms; however, the historical processes this structure has been through could also be mentioned. In this view “information age” makes a reference to a process in which economy, politics, culture, and all social thought and practices accordingly go through a reformation restructured over these networks. The power is also organized in the shape of a network and, trying to encapsulate the whole society, this network, works to keep the soci- ety connected to itself over communication networks. In opposition to the power networks’ effort of establishing hegemony on the society, opponent movements create their own antinetworks and go into a struggle rendering the networks of the power noneffective or nonfunctional: “By engaging in the production of mass media messages, and by developing autonomous Net- works of horizontal communication, citizens of the Information Age become able to invent new programs for their lives with their suffering, fears, dreams and hopes. They build their projects by sharing their experience. They sub- vert the practice of communication as usual by occuping the medium and creating the message” (Castells 2012, 9). The power of the opponent move- ments lies in their success in creating a network; the creation of a social net- work in the traditional sense was actualized in the basis of developing theirs against the strategies and tactics of the power and establishing their own communication networks against the networks of power in this process. It’s also possible to read this process as a struggle between networks. Today, with the change of all network structures and new communication networks that have been created in parallel with this change, the struggle forms between networks had to transform. The antinetwork has become an international Social Media R/evolution ix and effective power in contrast with the globalization of the network of the power. Rebuilding and use of antinetwork starting with the antiglobalism movement goes into a new phase with Arab Spring. In this process, anti- network has become a more effective power than ever before. The creation of social movements with a rather effective organization and mobilization power has become possible with the emergence of the structure of traditional network and digital network in this process. As Negri and Hardt (2012, 90) state in different parts of the world, occupy movements put down roots on their individual conditions, took many things from each other’s practice, and transformed them within the process as well; taking each other’s slogans, but attributing new meanings to them, and most importantly, regarding themselves as part of a project. A powerful social network was created in the process in which the street actions link with each other in both local places and the international field over social media, with each practice interacting with the other, including and transcending it. The hybrid structure of this network does not exclude the street, although it locates the social media in the center. This new hybrid-network society became possible with the reflec- tion of the network created over social media in the street. Social media activism turned out to be able to become an effective power when it reached out to the streets and squares. The fact that any opposition which remained close in the discursive field had no power to transform real life and that the actual transformation would be realized with actions was also recalled in this process: “The encampments and occupations of 2011 have rediscovered this truth of communication. Facebook, Twitter, the Internet, and other kinds of communications mechanisms are useful, but nothing can replace the being together of bodies and the corporeal communication that is the basis of col- lective political intelligence and action” (Hardt and Negri 2012, 21). While Castells defines Arab insurrections as the spontaneous processes of mobiliza- tion which occurred by the calls from Internet and wireless communication technologies by depending on both digital and face-to-face social networks preexisting in the society (2012, 102), he introduces the characteristic of this hybrid network. A movement that does not occur in the streets has no chance to be successful against the state. The street is the only medium where all the oppressed who cannot use the opportunities of social media can express themselves; for this reason, the mobilization of the struggle against power that starts on the basis of social media has to be maintained in different ways in the street. In this process, traditional forms of struggle and communica- tion strategies are also used, and hybrid networks of power in which the opportunities of social media and traditional media cooperate are created. It was observed that social media and traditional media were hybridly used at different levels and forms in all of the street actions before and after Arab Spring (Gerbaudo 2012; Castells 2012).

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