The Revolution Will Be Complementary?

Ethan Zuckerman has got a piece on protest and social media that's required reading over at ...My Heart's in Accra.

The use of social media for protest - especially to promote a protest to international audiences - is far from unique.

Hmm... I'm interested. Do tell.

I’ve been asking some of the reporters I’ve spoken with where they were on other recent social media and protest stories. Citizen media has emerged as one of the key spaces for journalism in Fiji in the wake of a coup government that’s censoring mainstream media. It’s been a key source of information in Madagascar as that country’s suffered through a violent change of government. (One reporter who I mentioned this to remarked that Madagascar was “just a speck of an island somewhere”. That speck is twice the size of Great Britain and has the population of Australia…) In Guatemala, online media publicized the assasination of a lawyer by forces close to the president… and government authorities began arresting people for twittering the story to amplify it. These weren’t huge stories for most newspapers - the Iran story is huge not because of the social media aspect, but because protests in Iran are a huge story independent of citizen media.

In all these cases, it looks like the real role of social media is in amplifying the story to a broader audience. In a sense, that is the current role of social media in the synergy with established traditional media which we described yesterday.

The shift is that through critical mass, social media is now able to make the stories we used to tell around the kitchen table or at the corner bar now available immediately as a primary source to the world's media.

So, the stories themselves are going to have a different feel or focus.

In a way, as a musician, I can't help but see in the amateur video coming from the streets of Tehran the same sort of ethos that was present and has been instrumental in the lo-fi and documentary movements in audio recording. It's about getting the moment on tape, all else be damned.

In a way, it's a perfect complement to the remarkable on-the-street professional reporting of pros like Roger Cohen whose recent NY Times Op-Ed is one of the best pieces of writing I've read in ages.

How about: "The Revolution Will Be Complementary"?

***

I agree with Zuckerman that the Iran story is huge not because of social media as the focus but because it's a big story regardless.

However, the secondary impact is that the Iran story is in fact a big story for social media. In reality, the biggest yet.

Perhaps even, the game changer.

Implications of #IranElection for Social Media in the Classroom

For the last several days, I've been consumed by this Iran story. I apologize if any of you think I've just been wasting blog space. I realize that in the heat of the moment I have not always been the most discrete concerning my statements on the media, but regular readers of this blog will long have since recognized that shortness of tact is just part and parcel of my prose.

Getting to the matter at hand: I just want to state for the record that I believe that two things have happened this week, give or take whatever the end result is in Tehran.

First, the Iranian people have protested their government in ways that seem unimaginable not so very long ago.

Their lives have changed.

Second, the use of Twitter to get information into and out of Iran -- being so important that the US State Department even got involved -- has demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt the legitimate importance of social media to societies.

All of our lives have changed.

As a teacher, my thoughts rest on what this all means for my students. And in thinking about it over the last few days, I see this as possibly a watershed moment in terms of what it means for the blocking/access debate.

I've posted in the sidebar to teachpaperless.com a section compiling all of my posts on #IranElection and what that feed means for the future of social media in education.

Read through; digest; and comment back with ideas, suggestions, and criticisms. As with most things these days, this blog depends on your continued generous sharing of ideas.

This is the Moment: Legitimize Social Media in Education

It can not be denied. Social Media is now a part of everyday reality.

The situation in Iran demonstrates this beyond any of the articles TIME or NEWSWEEK will ever write.

Twitter's simple statement explaining that they would halt a scheduled maintenance this evening so as to not disrupt a means of communications for news within and without Iran demonstrates this beyond the pundifications of any of the loose cannons on cable news.

It's happened.

This weekend will go down in history in two ways. First, it will mark -- for better or worse depending on the outcome -- a fundamental shift in the way the people of Iran are able to express dissent with their government. Second, at least here in the United States, this weekend will mark the moment at which the mainstream media -- particularly cable news -- was overwhelmed by social media.

It can not be denied. We are all now living in a world of social media. You can't claim ignorance. You can't call it a 'trend'. Whether or not Twitter exists in five years is besides the point. What happened this weekend is that social media became -- in the most legitimate way -- the voice of the people.

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Now, what do we do as educators?

Well, I'd say that this moment both offers us an open door and compels us to act. The door that has been opened now allows us to cross the threshold of the legitimacy debate. No one who has followed the #IranElection feed can argue that social media is not a vital and legitimate media source; nor can they argue that social media is nothing more than the playground of the Internet. If anything, what that feed demonstrates is that social media is the closest thing to an active collaboration of global human thought and knowledge that exists or has ever existed in the the collected history of global humankind.

It compels us to act immediately as educators because our students can not afford to have their access to this Zeitgeist blocked by foolish laws and fearful bureaucrats.

The blocking debate ended this weekend.

Goodbye to the last vestiges of 20th century top-down media. Goodbye to the fear of what humans might produce given the opportunity to work collectively in thought and goodwill. Good morning, humankind.

So teachers, don't try to teach kids to live in a world that doesn't exist anymore. Rather, reach out and take hold of the possibilities social media offers. Anyone countering you doesn't deserve the authority their office holds.

This is the moment. Legitimize social media in education.

Where Were You When They Tried to Beat the Democracy (and Social Media) Out of the Kids?

No comments here. Just Tweets via Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish and @Change_for_Iran.

I'm feeling sick, actually.

Via Sullivan: Imagine this Is Your Dorm Room.

Students. Twitter. Beatings. Death.