Why Facebook Is Not a Revolutionaries Tool

Many a pundit has put forward that Facebook  played a vital role in the Arab Spring and in 2009 in the failed Iranian revolution, that it will increasingly play an important role in organizing revolutions in repressed regimes and developing nations. We beg to differ on that point and here’s why.

Facebook is Not the Hub of the Online Protest
Contrary to popular perception by pundits et al, Facebook plays a lesser role than other social networks and social technologies from our research. When we looked at the Arab Spring and the tools used in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Libya and Bahrain…it was Ning networks, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and blogs that drove more traffic and were used for reporting and organizing over 78% more than Facebook.

Why Other Channels?
One of the conclusions we’ve drawn from why so many other tools take the majority of traffic and engagement is that there are always a number of different groups involved for different reasons. Coordinated groups in any uprising is rare. There may be a lead interest group and eventually one does come out on top, but in the early phases and during the depths of an uprising, there are multiple parties involved with different priorities. Hence a number of different tools and channels are used.

The Visibility Factor of Facebook = Liability
As easy as it is for a group to organize and protest on Facebook, so it is for the group in power to search and view that information and who is involved. Today, as Iranian students studying abroad go home to visit family in Iran, the security forces check their Facebook profiles for who they are connected to. A hostile government can quickly determine key players through Facebook. With blogs, Twitter accounts and private Ning groups, this becomes harder.

Online Information Warfare Tactics
Expanding on the visibility factor of Facebook issue, at the start of a drive for societal change, the fomenting groups can push an agenda and ideas into the social web while gaining some degree of anonymity or at least protecting their families and themselves. Using a tool like Ning affords some level of security by enabling the group administrator(s) to vet any requesting members. As an issue progresses, the government under attack my also deploy tactics to create counter-messages on the social web. This is quite easy with Facebook, a little harder with blogging and Twitter and how these engagements can be countered by the protestors or antagonists. Egypt chose to shut down the Web, as did al-Assad in Syria, but then Syria started engaging online and countering the claims made by protestors – information warfare in social media then escalates.

Conclusion
While Facebook is a valuable tool in planning a revolution and communicating, it actually becomes a liability as a protest action escalates. Anti-government organizers understand this. In the case of Egypt, Syria and Bahrain, Facebook became less and less popular for the revolutionaries. We found use of Facebook by organizers in a country in question dropped over 90% once the protest spilled into the real-world through actions. For observers and westerners, they used Facebook to share information, views and opinions and content pushed out onto YouTube, Flickr and Twitter, but the revolutionaries were rarely there. So Facebook is a liability for the revolutionaries and a news and opinion channel for the non-participants.

What “Rick-Rolling” & “Cone-ing” Really Tells Us

Rick-Rolling was quite a fad for a while; playing “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley (from the 80′s) at an event and people dancing while videoing and then placing it on YouTube. This harmless, seemingly daft activity was carried out all over North America and even across Europe. Now there’s “cone-ing” in which a guy goes through a drive-through window having ordered soft-cone ice cream and does inane things when handed the cone..videoed and put on YouTube. Or the Coke & Mentos experiment. We shake our heads and wonder why? For what purpose?

We Are Exploring Our Culture
With well over 200 social media research projects under our belt and three years plumbing the deep depths of Cyburbia and its social alleyways, we’ve garnered some pretty interesting stats and insights. One conclusion we’ve started to come to is the “cultural exploration” of social media…ok another fancy label, but as humans, labeling things helps us frame an understanding. Pop psychology 101. So what do we mean here?

From the time we are infants, as individuals, we strive to understand the world around us. We learn language to express to our parents when we are hungry, what hurts and what we like. We do this in varying degrees all our lives. So with social medias, we are simply expanding our desire to explore the world around us as individuals and as a group and culture.

Communication is A Fundamental Trait
As humans, we must communicate to survive. We do better by communicating and working together. You cannot build a hospital and serve all the sick people by yourself. A government needs a bureaucracy to make a society work. Our very nature is to work together.

Social Media Is An Exploration of Defining Our World
We’ve never been able, as humans, to communicate and explore and attempt to understand the world we live in like we can today. One can argue that it is our fundamental drive to communicate that drives ICT technologies forward. Social Medias are so popular and driving the Web and mobile devices today because we must communicate to survive as a species (I mean survival in more ways than just finding food and shelter.)

Individual & Group Behaviours in Social Media
The example or Rick Rolling indicates group behaviours whereas cone-ing is the act of an individual that in like Rick-Rolling gets the attention of large or small groups of people. If you pitched BBC, NBC, CBC on having a camera crew attend random events and broadcast them live at your whim, they’d laugh you out of the executive suite. But because of social media tools, we don’t need their permission and thus we are free to explore how we communicate and engage with people.

How We Are Adapting Social Technologies
But we are adapting through these behaviours. Today, people will rarely answer their mobile phone during a meal; if they do, it is seen as rude and disrespectful. Similarly, where it was “cool” and gave you “social rank” to walk around with a phone glued to your ear, that is no longer the case. Wearing a phone on your hip is not cool anymore. Hopefully one day it won’t be cool to have a little black thing with a flashing blue light stuck in your ear either…

Summary
Actions like coneing and Rick Rolling seen individually and by some may seem inane and irrelevant. But they are how we as people, are exploring our world. They are all simply experiments. Sometimes they work and sometimes they flop. Badly. But that is what we do as humans. Taken together, looked at over time and seen for what they are, these actions can help us better understand our modern way of life and the society we live in. For us as researchers they are valuable clues in sociology, cultural anthropology, marketing and governments.

How The U.S. Government is Leading Cyber Diplomacy

I was reading Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Judith Mchale‘s remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations on June 21st this year. One statement caught my attention on how the US State Department has looked to deal with our complex world of communications today and she’s very right: “By taking our public diplomacy into the marketplace of ideas.”

The social web is very much about ideas. It is where ideas are first translated from mind into an electronic world where they can be quickly and easily adopted, fostered and developed into actions that take place in the real world. Such as the Arab Spring, raising money for Obama’s election campaign, gaining support for petitions at a local level or simply creating new products. For governments around the world the social web represents a challenge from municipal government through to federal and as the U.S. State Department truly understands – international relations.

Undersecretary McHale’s remark reflects a national government that truly understands the very nature of the social web; that it is a marketplace of ideas, that it is ideas that become actions. But then, the social web is from ideas primarily hatched and adopted globally by America. The social web is in part, an embodiment of the American nature of having an idea and being able to turn it into something that moves the world.

The State Department also recognizes that the social web is not all roses and hugs for peace and love. Just as many of the people in the Middle East are using social media to share ideas and organize for democracy, so have dictators like Assad in Syria and al-Bashir in the Sudan vowed to use those same tools to crush freedom of thought. China throws up its Great Firewall to discount ideas of freedom. Somehow, just as communism collapsed, I suspect democracy and capitalism will win in the end; I’m an eternal optimist in this regard.

Political views aside however, the State Department has recognized and embraced this new medium; and they share ideas, foster the values of democracy and freedom of speech and they listen and respond. From blogs to Twitter to Facebook and beyond. Some governments have been afraid to step into such turbulent and unpredictable waters. They have only to look at the US State Department, who has made its missteps for sure, but acknowledged them, stood back up and kept on going. As an averag citizen, well, I’m impressed.

Perhaps the continuance of this dialogue they have bravely enjoined, will play a part in improving international relations through debate, discussion and consensus. It’s sure an awful lot better than lobbing bombs.

Importance of Emotion & Mythology in Social Media for Government

It’s easy to dismiss a lot of comments on newspaper websites, rants by bloggers or in Twitter as “uninformed, emotional and useless” when it comes to looking at what citizens are saying on government policies or issues of the moment, even perhaps, when riots are looming. For the Vancouver police this was a grave error. For organizations like the UN and the cholera issue in Haiti, it is a potential for danger to UN workers and citizens.

Why Listen to the Rants?
For the most part, they are no more than emotional rants and very often by people who are uninformed or basing their views on unreliable sources and may not even be in the physical area of the issue or crisis in question. But not always, and even those rants can provide vital clues. For those in the area of concern, they may be ranting or venting, but they may also present critical clues to a deeper understanding of issues. They may also indicate the evolution of a mythology or a meme.

The Role of Online Memes & Mythology (i.e. Perceptions)
As a story or issue evolves, it will take on a life of its own in social media channels. Before long, people from all over the world or other cities are expressing their views and opinions. In large volumes of discussion on an issue, we’ve found that a meme or mythology forms within 24-48 hours of the inception of the crisis or issue breaking into mainstream media from social media. Once an issue gains uptake in mainstream media, on average (of the 24 crises we examined) a story will develop a mythology or meme 87% of the time. Other times it will fizzle out and come to nothing. These mythologies or memes are vital because they play a key role in how online discussion results in real-world actions.

How Mythologies & Memes Evolve to Real World Actions
This is where understanding the memes or mythologies becomes important. A mythology (see Haiti example below) or meme can become the underlying message that then drives citizens to “organize” a public protest, strike, or other form of civil unrest, as in riots or petitions. The meme or mythology becomes the overall “perception” of the masses, filtering from the Web into every day society in the real-world. This then becomes the driver, the “call-to-action” if you will. At this point, the reality of the situation or the truth, is no longer relevant. A government or corporation must then deal with the perception and counter it effectively or face any range of actions from peaceful protest through to full-blown riots.

Haiti, Cholera and The Genocide Mythology
In some of our research into Haiti (more to come) an overriding mythology (which is completely untrue and impossible) is that the cholera outbreak was engineered by certain (they aren’t named other than the usual suspects) UN member countries to “wipe out” the Haitian people. This is a mythology and has evolved over the past several months to become the overriding “perception” by Haitians in Haiti and Haitian diaspora living around the world. Although this isn’t reality, it is a popular discussion. We’ll be releasing more data on this issue in July of 2011.

Approaches to Understanding
Government departments, large corporations, IGO‘s and NGO’s will have to develop a deeper understanding of what the value is in researching, monitoring and addressing the issues of mythologies as they evolve. Understanding issues that are escalating can help develop more effective messaging, reduce risks of greater civil unrest and in some cases save lives. A part of the challenge will always be separating the rants that are simply an expression of opinion and venting from the true indicators that may or are, evolving into a meme or mythology that will need addressing.

The Painful Truths of Social Media

Fortunately, most of the time we get to deliver good messages to our clients from our research. Sometimes though, we have to deliver some painful truths. In the private and public sectors. These are truths that an organization has to wrestle with, perhaps come to terms with and find a way through. Sometimes, a client simply says “thank-you” and sets the information aside to collect dust, buried deep in a digital vault. Other times they embrace the findings and look to evolve.

Where Empirical Research Fails
Traditional research methodologies are still valid, critical and a core part of marketing and citizen opinions and views. But they all fail in two significant ways; 1) these approaches do not understand, account for or measure emotion and 2) these methods do not clearly define the message being interpreted by the audience. This applies to public sector research and private sector marketing research.

An Example of a Painful Truth
Not long ago we completed a research project for a client in the public sector. They wanted to compare some survey work they had done with what citizens were saying about the delivery of their programs. The survey had indicated a fairly good approval rate, but in their view, may have missed more in-depth views that might be found online. This was a very progressive approach. Unfortunately it ended up with some painful truths. Overall the programs were good, but discussions in forums and blog posts presented some very compelling, well-iterated evidence of certain failings that had a deeper impact on the client’s overall operation. Several months later and the client is struggling to effect changes to make things better. They are progressive in their thinking and we suspect will make the changes.

But Some Prefer The Ostrich Tactic
A similar case with a company showed they had missed a market opportunity and failed rather well with customer service. It was a niche market and so not the information that a run of the mill online reputation management tool would have uncovered or been able to place context around. In this case, the company made a concsious decision to simply ignore the information and write off a market segment. Perhaps they are profitable enough to do this.

The Reality is Harsh Yet Opportunistic
The Ostrich Tactic doesn’t work very well today however. The market tends to get louder until the ostrich is ripped from the ground and carried along very unhappily until something changes. It is ideas that become actions that cause change. A good idea, well articulated and then executed empowers people and organizations. Facing the uncomfortable truths of social medias impact on business and society will not be easy at times, but is inevitable. These realities can teach us valuable lessons, which can create enormous opportunities. How will your organization deal with potentially uncomfortable truths that cannot be hidden from?