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When thousands of Egyptians took to the streets during the 2011 Arab Spring, they had a tool at their disposal that previous social movements did not have: Twitter.
While major activist groups have used the platform to network and organize protests against authoritarian regimes, many more demonstrators have used the platform to disseminate information and images from the ground and to reach other parts of the world. made it visible to countries around the world. Months later, organizers of the Occupy Wall Street movement took to Twitter to coordinate protests in New York and beyond.
Twitter facilitated public conversations around the Black Lives Matter movement after the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, and again after the police killing of George Floyd in 2020. The sexual assault allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein amplified #MeToo and brought other revolutionary movements around the world to the global spotlight.
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In February 2011, the word “Twitter” was seen spray-painted on a store in Cairo, Egypt, after the then government cut off internet access.
“You can’t underestimate the impact of Twitter on social movements,” Amara Enya, policy and research manager at the Movement for Black Lives, told CNN.
Twitter is often hailed as a democratizing force, bringing previously marginalized voices to the forefront and providing citizens with a platform to demand accountability from their leaders. (It also enabled the spread of misinformation, extremist ideology, and abusive content.)
But since Elon Musk bought Twitter last year, sending the platform into chaos, some organizers and digital media experts have warned that his controversial policy changes and mass layoffs will shape future social movements. Be prepared for the impact.
Twitter has often been described as a public square, but some of Mr. Musk’s recent moves call that description into question.
Rachel Kuo, assistant professor of media and film studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said Twitter has given organizers and political groups a level of direct access to policymakers and leaders that would otherwise be impossible to reach directly. Stated. Verified activists can promote specific messages that algorithms push to the top of users’ feeds, organizers can launch campaigns that get attention from celebrities, and the public can receive real-time updates. You can follow it for information.
“There’s an issue right now in how people view Twitter as a source of information and a source of political community,” said Kuo, whose research focuses on race, social movements, and digital technologies. To tell. “I’ll never look at it the same way again.”
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Some activists say Elon Musk’s controversial policy changes at Twitter Inc. could have an impact on social movements.
Mr. Musk has upended traditional Twitter verification and turned it into a paid system, leading to impersonation of government accounts and the spread of fake images. For organizers who choose not to pay Blue Check’s monthly subscription fee, it also means a loss of credibility and visibility, Kuo added.
Twitter, which cut much of its communications team under Mr. Musk, did not respond to requests for comment.
Twitter’s role in information sharing is being disrupted in other ways as well.
Following the company’s mass layoffs and retirements, the platform has been plagued by technical glitches that have frustrated many users. There are also reports of uninteresting content being displayed in the “for you” timeline.
As a result of these and other issues, some people are leaving Twitter altogether — more than 32 million users in the two years after Musk’s acquisition, according to a December 2022 forecast from market research organization Insider Intelligence. They are expected to leave the platform. (Before Musk’s acquisition, Twitter reported 238 million monetizable daily active users last year.)
Sara Aoun, a privacy and security researcher who works on cybersecurity for the Movement for Black Lives, said that as fewer people use Twitter, the platform becomes less focused and the information environment becomes more fragmented. Stated. That makes it harder for activists to connect, exchange tactics and build solidarity as they once did.
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Protesters in Cairo gather in Tahrir Square in November 2011.
Aoun said Musk’s approach to content moderation is also making Twitter a more hostile environment. Twitter has never been a completely safe space for marginalized voices – women, people of color, LGBTQ people, and other vulnerable groups have long been targets of online harassment and abuse. – However, a report from the Center for Digital Hate and Defamation Coalition found that under Musk’s leadership, hate speech has increased on the platform. (Musk previously denies that characterization, focusing on another metric.)
Some are disillusioned with Musk’s decision to reinstate users previously suspended for violating the platform’s rules, including former President Donald Trump and Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
“The lack of verification, the mass leaks, the inability to moderate in the way we used to be able to moderate, and the moderation (watering down) of content makes it very difficult to participate on the platform at this time,” Aun said. he said.
Musk has stepped down as Twitter’s CEO, and the role is now filled by former NBCUniversal marketing chief Linda Yaccarino. However, as the company’s owner, executive chairman and chief technology officer, he will retain significant control over the platform.
Changes at Twitter have caused some activists and organizers to reevaluate their relationship with the platform.
Rich Wallace, executive director of the Chicago-based organization Equity and Transformation (EAT), used to be an advocate of social injustice and social injustice, whether people agreed with him or not. He said he saw strong engagement with tweets about racial inequality. . Now, he finds that substantive posts get little attention, as opposed to tweets, which he considers more mundane.
Wallace said the organization, which aims to build social and economic equity for Black workers in the informal economy, still shares information about community events on Twitter, but has also expanded to new collaborations on the platform. He said there is a good chance that he will be able to find people and engage in meaningful conversations. past.
Wallace said Twitter is no longer the place for education and community building it once was. It’s a change in how he views his old platform, but he’s not particularly concerned about it. For his organization, it simply means re-emphasizing the grassroots, in-person work they were already doing.
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People raise their fists to protest the killing of George Floyd by police in June 2020.
“As organizers, we have been creative in how we organize around barriers,” he said. “This is just one new barrier we have to assess and overcome.”
In Kuo’s view, the changes on Twitter will have a very different impact on organizing and activism. Organizers of hyperlocal communities and those who work with non-English speakers typically don’t use Twitter in their daily work, so the recent changes likely won’t have a big impact. . However, she predicts that medium to large nonprofits with communications staff may reconsider their platform strategies.
“It really depends on the organizational structure, form, transformation strategy and political vision,” Kuo said.
On a personal level, Enya said she feels like she is engaging with people less on Twitter and using it more for news. But it remains an important tool in her advocacy work with the Movement for Black Lives.
“For us, its usefulness lies in the fact that it creates more points of access to our policy platforms and the issues we advocate for,” she said. “It’s still very useful in that respect.”
When Musk first took over Twitter, some organizers and activists flocked to other alternatives, such as Mastodon and Bluesky, an app backed by Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey. .
Aoun and others say neither appears to serve the same purpose as Twitter did in the past. Mastodon and Blue Sky are decentralized and fewer people are using them, making it more difficult to build a community. And while that number continues to grow, it’s still far less than Twitter.
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The Bluesky app will be available on phones and laptops in June 2023.
In the case of Mastodon, privacy and security issues are a concern for some activists. Because social networks allow users to join different servers run by different groups and individuals, “your privacy, security, and control over your content is basically only as good as the person behind the server,” Aoun said. said. Twitter, at least before Musk took over, had a dedicated privacy and security team and increased transparency about how its systems worked.
While some activists use popular social networks such as Instagram and TikTok, the visual nature of these platforms and the text-based medium of Twitter change the way people interact and engage with each other. Kuo said.
Enya said Twitter is a very powerful tool for social movements. But ultimately, a platform is just a tool.
“There is no one-size-fits-all solution to just the basic work needed to meet people, engage with people, organize and talk to people,” Enya said. “So even though we recognize social media is a tool, we don’t put all our eggs in that basket.”
Social media platforms come and go, and the same could happen with Twitter. So while Enyia’s organization continues to use the platform for its own purposes, it is preparing for the reality of Twitter becoming less relevant.
“We need to stay on top of things to ensure that the tools associated with our work are serving their purpose,” says Enyia. “But when it becomes clear that that’s the direction we need to go, we have to be ready to evolve or move forward or adapt to different tools.”