Problem and Solution

Online Social Mobilization: Dance, Democracy, and Danger

I grew up alongside the Internet: I once accessed the "information superhighway" by waiting for the clang and clash of a dial-up modem so that I could log into AOL Online's chatrooms to talk with old friends and meet new ones. If anyone picked up another phone in the house to place a call (and actually hear another human voice), my internet connection would be severed and I'd have to wait for the call to be finished before I could start the whole process again.

Fifteen years later, I access the Internet from just about anywhere using my cell phone. With the right cell phone and carrier, you can make a phone call and surf the web at the same time. I furrow my brows and heave a deep sigh if there's a two second delay between the time I select an app and the time it pops up on my screen. My world shuts down without an Internet connection.

Before I had ever connected to the Internet, Hollywood lead me to believe that the Web would either be a haven of enlightenment or a destructive and isolating force. The 1994 movie Disclosure (Michael Douglas and Demi Moore) taught me that the rise of the Internet would lead to a digital society in which nobody knew your race, age, or gender - we would live in a marketplace of ideas, where merit was king. A year later came the Sandra Bullock film The Net, in which a woman's utter dependence on the Internet for all social interactions and telecommuting to work left her isolated and vulnerable to the complete obliteration of her life, which really only existed online. (I'll save for another day the effect that Terminator 2 had on my young, impressionable mind.)

Those two movies revolved around how the Internet would affect us as individuals in a virtual space. I don't recall any discussion about whether it would bring communities together in the real world. I can think of little else after watching Know Your Meme explain the Occupy Wall Street movement's evolution.

Before the Internet was inextricably entwined with daily life, mobilizing large groups of people without an official organization or event to rally around was next to impossible. I'm not sure how it was done back in the day - neighborhood fliers, newspapers, churches, unions? All of those required money or an official agenda. But now ...

YouTube introduced the public to flash mobs - individuals in a crowded public space unexpectedly breaking into a choreographed dance routine for no reason other than to introduce a burst of meaningless fun into an otherwise mundane time and place. Anybody could go online to search for a flash mob and learn the dance steps, then show up at the appointed time and place. All in good fun!

In late 2010 and throughout early 2011, the international stage saw the rise of the Arab Spring - uprisings, protests, and demonstrations taking place in Northern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Social media led to social revolution in a region that is not typically known for its adherence to American ideals such as freedom of speech. The Egyptian revolution lead then-President Mubarak - in his 20th year in office - to cede the reigns of government in only 18 days. And Egypt had seen it coming, too - Mubarak had attempted to shut down internet access in order to quell the rebellion.

With Occupy Wall Street, the US is seeing its own call for a revolution in government. Since early September, the protest has been driven by a group bound by no agenda. The OWS protesters are brought together by a shared belief that the government is more concerned and beholden to corporate America and a small sliver of wealthy Americans than to the bulk of the citizenry. Seeing American citizens, generally accused of apathy (as evidenced by steadily declining voter turnout in local and national elections), protesting for over a month suggests that apathy is not the problem - they just don't see the use of trying to participate in a political process that they perceive as being overrun by corporate interests. Online social movements such as Occupy Wall Street and We Are the 99% enabled people to have their voices heard, their faces seen, and their pictures and stories published on the internet and in traditional media. It's a lot harder for politicians to ignore masses of bodies in major metropolitan public areas nationwide than it is to ignore a stack of emails, letters, or phone messages.

Lest we think that Internet mobilization is all fun and revolution, I'd like to point out a seedy side, which reared its head in August of this year. In the UK, a small, peaceful neighborhood protest against a police shooting spread into four days of non-related arson, violence, looting, and rioting. London burned in largely meaningless riots as social applications such as Twitter and Blackberry were used to organize opportunistic copycat riots. Participants engaged in mayhem, as overwhelmed law enforcement officers were busy elsewhere.

So we've seen that the Internet can be used for good, for fun, and for very, very bad. It will be interesting to see how the US federal government will respond (but you can bet that government will only move in reaction to a gathering gone wrong). I don't envy the person who has to come up with those laws or regulations. American ideals of the right to peaceably assemble and the freedom of speech are in tension with with the duty to ensure public health and safety - and as in the case of the London riots, who knows how or when a public gathering will shift?