Twitter as a Democratizing Force

Twitter has been a political tool for several years now. Long before President Trump began using it to bypass traditional media, tweeting was an effective way to organize political groups. In 2011, the youth of North Africa and the Middle East used it to coordinate rallies that led to the Arab Spring. Even before that, in 2009, China was so fearful of the new media that it banned Twitter. It has also banned Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.

In China, only state-run social media platforms are allowed. China’s version of Twitter, Weibo, has hundreds of millions of users. Another site, WeChat, has roughly a billion. Despite the ban, Twitter still has an estimated 10 million Chinese users. They get around the government-imposed firewall by using virtual private networks. Many see the channel as the only site where Chinese politics can be discussed openly. Its users include a fugitive billionaire who condemns government corruption, a journalist living under house arrest, and an 86-year-old ousted member of the Communist party who criticizes the regime. The government responds to this illicit behavior by vacillating between cracking down and eavesdropping.

Worldwide, an entire generation is growing up with social media as a political tool. This will continue and even expand as more people seek to be heard and know others who share their feelings and experiences. In the long-term, this increased socialization could lead to a new form of governance—one that exploits technology to rely more on collective decision-making, similar to today’s referendums. Of course, the technology may still be generations away, but the long pole in the tent—the change management of getting people used to the technology—has already begun.

Meanwhile, China stifles the democratic power of the social media. Ironically, in doing so it may someday find that it has become irrevocably hinged to the past, causing it to forfeit the gains it had hoped to achieve through authoritarianism in the first place.

Reference: “Chinese censors crack down on tweets,” Washington Post, 6 Jan 2019, A1.