Where Social Technologies Have Been Used to Effect Societal Change

If you’ve turned on any form of news media in the last 6 weeks you’re more than aware of the unrest in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Oman and Yemen. And a few mild attempts in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq and Iran. No doubt Israel’s foreign service folks are not getting much sleep and the military is wired on caffeine. Thoroughly.

What are some examples of how social technologies have disrupted or aided in the change of government.

• Phillippines: Filipino’s use texting to coordinate mass protests resulting in the ousting of Joseph Estrada
• Spain: Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero used text messaging to coordinate the 2004 ouster of the People’s Party in four days.
• Moldovans used social media in 2009 to turn out 20,000 protesters in just 36 hours
• In 2008 Egyptian youth use Twitter to coordinate the taking of an activist and protest his release
• In 2010 Canadians use Facebook to hold a peaceful nationwide rally against proroguing of Parliament
• In the autumn of 2010 British students coordinate massive rallies in London against changes to fees
• Ukrainians used text messaging to coordinate the Orange Revolution, ousting the communist government in 3 days
• South Koreans rallied against beef imports in 2008 taking their grievances directly to the public, sharing text, photos, and video online, without needing permission from the state or help from professional media.
• In 2011 Tunisians use various social technologies to share and coordinate unrest, ousting a dictator in a week
• Inside of 3 weeks after using a Facebook group and other social technologies, Egyptians ousted dictator Mubarak in 2010
• Chinese anticorruption protesters use the instant-messaging service QQ to coordinate in 2011

In our research into which social technologies are most often used to coordinate social change activities we found that text messaging has proven to be the most popular and what we classify as a Tactical Tool; meaning it can be used quickly and in a rapidly changing context. While SocNets (Social Networks like Facebook or Orkut) are what we term Strategical Tools that are used to establish groups and set an event, but are poorly adapted to being mobile. Microblogs (such as Twitter, which leads the way) are still more “strategic” sliding towards tactical since Twitter is susceptible to outages (Fail Whale) and not always a rapid means of posting.

That new technologies will come onto the scene there is little doubt. Some will be used in ways we cannot yet predict. It took nearly 300 years until the printing press aided a speedier revolution and the telephone nearly 40 years. Social Technologies of today took less than a decade to begin aiding social unrest activities.