The Facebook Political Movement

by Meagan Dorsch

Could organizing the next political rally, demonstration or movement come from cyber space? It is already happening in some international communities.

A colleague of mine at NCSL emailed me an interesting article. It is from the El Watan newspaper in Algiers. I was fortunate enough to be part of an NCSL delegation to Algeria earlier this year to discuss communications and social media, among other things, with the Algerian Parliament.

If you would like to test your French, please click on the newspaper link. If not, here is a quick summary of the article (thank you Ann Driscoll for providing the translation). Two Algerian youths are using Facebook to mobilize against terrorist acts in their country. One goal is to create an on-line demonstration, since public demonstrations are banned in Algeria. 

This 'Facebook political movement' has also taken off in Egypt. One blogger, Sandmonkey, talks about how new media are being used to promote political activism. The LA Times wrote an op-ed on how the Egyptian government has threatened to shut down Facebook, after it was credited for helping to mobilize protests against food prices earlier this year. Moroccans used YouTube to capture protesters clashing with security forces, because sights like this would not be shown on state-run TV. Activists in Lebanon used text messaging to organize an anti-Syria rally. Heck, according to this blog, even al-Qaeda has been using text messaging to organize. And political candidates are starting to embrace text messaging in their campaigns.

Social media tools can be threatening for some governments. It may be the only form of free press these countries have. Sandmonkey mentioned the Syria government closed down Facebook, and some members of the Algerian Parliament voiced their concerns about social media sites earlier this year. On that same note, several other Algerian officials embraced it and welcomed the potential changes that Facebook and other social media sites could bring to their government and country. Social media are not going away, and with millions of users across the globe, we are bound to see various sites used to bring about social change.

Comments

[Pam Greenberg]

The Intelligent Community Forum blog has another interesting example about how websites, IM and cell phone texting made an huge impact on civic engagement and political outcomes in South Korea (See http://www.intelligentcommunity.org/index.php?src=blog&refno=30&category=Innovation) Friday, August 29, Broadband and Social Capital, Part Four).