Freedom? Power? Both?

The advent and proliferation of social media has enabled media consumers to the quickly share information across the world. I can log onto Facebook, recommend a film, song, or television show to my former Kyrgyz exchange student, Anton. Moments later he could be downloading it from where he lives in China (that is if he has successfully circumvented various firewalls first).

We do live in a Network Society as Castells suggests. Social media networks like Facebook and Twitter have granted us the freedom to forge relationships with those who may be geographically distant yet ideologically close. Social media has already demonstrated its ability to facilitate demonstrations and protests, particularly in the Middle East this year. On a political level, social media’s existence in the network society does present the opportunity for users to undermine the role of the nation-state. However, for it to become such an agency of power requires users of social media and the mechanics of such networks to seize control from nation-states so that they possess more than just the freedom to share information but the power to turn information into action.

So back to Anton. He loves film trilogy, The Matrix. When he stayed with my family in 2003, I was subjected to the midnight showing of the final installment because Anton was leaving the next day and he argued that the film wouldn’t arrive in Kyrgyzstan until months or even years later. Flash-forward to present day. Anton teaches in China now and while e-mailing recently I referenced YouTube and Flickr and explained what they were in excruciating detail. Slightly insulted, he responded, “What? You think it’s the Soviet Union again and I live in Siberia or there’s bears walking around in the street. I know what those are!” My initial embarrassment segued into consideration and appreciation of how the Internet and social media really have granted us the freedom to independently search for and access information even in places we may incorrectly believe to lack such freedoms (for the most part).

The power to organize information into legitimate threats to the nation-state, however, seems somewhat limited at this point. While use of social media in the Arab Spring has proved that Twitter and Facebook can, in fact, facilitate coordination of protests, it is at the mercy of those who control such networks.

We return to Anton in China who I haven’t heard from in months because he hasn’t been able to access Facebook or his Gmail account. While I don’t know the specifics of why his access has been blocked, it demonstrates that we only have network freedom to the extent we are granted by the gatekeepers’ power.

In the context of social and political movements, social media enable the rapid sharing of information to those who share similar ideologies and facilitate organization and coordination of demonstrations. The power of these demonstrations to inspire change, however, is limited by the nation-state’s power to grant freedom to access technological networks. We can look at the Iranian government’s attempts to crackdown on Twitter during the 2009 Iranian Presidential Elections. While turning off the Internet is pretty difficult, attempts to do so in Egypt earlier this year illustrate that the power to do so does exist.

It really does beg the question of who really possess the power of Internet and social media in the Network Society.