Authoritarians Like Twitter Too

Authoritarians Like Twitter Too
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Authoritarians Like Twitter Too
By Kevin Munger

In May 2014, CNN aired footage of a Ukrainian helicopter being shot by pro-Russian militants. Taken with a cell phone camera and posted on social media, the video showed compelling evidence of the scale and technological sophistication of the Ukrainian conflict.

The video was also fake — it was actually over a year old, and from Syria. CNN retracted the footage and apologized, but the “incident” was still widely discussed on Russian and Ukrainian social media.

In the wake of the Arab Spring, enthusiasm for the power of social media ran high. Nothing else had shown the same power to mobilize protestors living under repressive regimes. With information democratized, the logic ran, dissidents could outflank the centralized media control and propaganda machines so crucial to authoritarian states.

But this logic is flawed, as the faked helicopter video demonstrates. Although social media may have given tech-savvy dissidents a temporary advantage over repressive governments that were unable to keep up, Twitter and its regional analogues are now a fully mature technology.

Just like radio and television, repressive regimes can and do use social media to solidify their grips on power. As a result, the net effects of social media on the possibility of democratic revolution are at best ambiguous. They may actually be negative. Continued/more.

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