1

2
3
4 Revolutionary Tactics, Media
5
6
Ecologies, and Repressive States
7
8 Ramesh Srinivasan and Adam Fish
9
10
11
12 Story 1: A small group of activists, taking advantage of a
13 deregulated Internet, begin to publish independent, sometimes critical, views of
14 a repressive regime. One of these activists, a leading young politician who has
15 been the subject of a previous assassination attempt, turns to the blogosphere,
16 where he publishes his views on the subject of independence and builds support
17 networks with sympathetic publics. A few other colleagues, working mostly with
18 Western-­supported nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), also begin to publish
19 independent blogs. This small group of activists know one another but have been
20 unable to meet in person because of surveillance and policing, and they begin
21 to use proxy servers and pseudonyms to comment on one another’s posts and to
22 communicate with domestic and transnational Internet journalistic sites. Trans­
23 national networks connecting activists, American diplomats, and Western non­
24 governmental power brokers are facilitated via Internet use, and larger audiences
25 are reached as bloggers share their reflections with foreign and regional journalists.
26 Perhaps the most famous blogger (the previously mentioned politician) takes on a
27 new role as the spokesperson and chief of staff for the transitional government.
28
29 Story 2: After a sham of a reelection, a major public figure within a theocratic
30 authoritarian regime maintains power. Activists, including many students, take to
31 the streets in protest. Some of these activists work with technologies of informa-
32 tion sharing and coordination, including Twitter, and with domestic social net-
33 working technologies. Others work with technologies hosted in Western nations
34 by hackers from the diaspora, many of whom have never been in the nation itself
35 and do not speak the local language. What follows is a great deal of confusion.
36 Western media and diplomats, at odds with the regime, visibly praise these activ-
37
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 Public Culture ists and begin to ascribe democratizing values to networked new media tech- 1
nology. A prominent American journalist writes an influential manifesto, “The 2
Revolution Will Be Twittered,” implying that because of the affordances within 3
the technologies, the regime will be overthrown and replaced by a grassroots 4
youth-­driven democracy. Others challenge this prediction, noting that the regime 5
has begun to gather intelligence about bloggers and dissidents by mining Twitter 6
and other information feeds and that it subverts movements by pretending to be 7
activist bloggers and ultimately uses brute force to gun down protesters on the 8
street. These skeptics predict that the regime will persist, and perhaps grow stron- 9
ger, by using new technologies for repressive ends. Ultimately, they are proved 10
right, as the authoritarian regime maintains power. 11
......... 12
13
The above narratives represent commonly understood if not universally accepted 14
accounts, story 1 of Kyrgyzstan in 2010 and story 2, Iran in 2009. Story 1 emerged 15
from fieldwork we conducted with politically active bloggers, journalists, and 16
Internet authors over the course of several months. Story 2 is based on an analysis 17
of popular and academic literature. 18
Of course, no two nations are identical. Economic conditions, social and cul- 19
tural demographics, regime characterization, technological access and expertise, 20
military and policing, and domestic/transnational networks all represent factors 21
that frame each narrative. Yet story 1 can be seen as evidence and symbol of the 22
liberatory power of Internet technologies and open networks. In this telling, open 23
networks speak to grassroots aims and will naturally be more often appropri- 24
ated by activists and journalists seeking to empower a more democratic world. 25
Story 2, in contrast, is seen as evidence of the “Net delusions” of the West. These 26
delusions, claim critics, are techno-­utopian in that they ignore far more powerful 27
institutional and social realities, overhyping tools rather than the actors that use 28
them, including intelligent repressive regimes. 29
We are left with two questions. From story 1: can new media technologies 30
serve as tools to empower the open sharing of information, rapid journalistic 31
reporting, public scrutiny and accountability, and local mobilization across bor- 32
ders and within nations? From story 2: can new media technologies empower 33
repressive regimes and antidemocratic actions? 34
The answer to both questions is a resounding yes. A successful revolutionary 35
movement that uses technology may be successful despite the technology. And an 36
unsuccessful movement may be squelched despite the overall positive contribu- 37
tions of the technology in that movement. What both stories tell us is that it is 38

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 1 humans and their actions that make possible the synergies, appropriations, sub- Revolutionary Tactics,
2 versions, and translations of recent events involving technology and revolutions, Media Ecologies, and
3 producing both democratic and repressive outcomes. Repressive States
4 Given the many differences among revolutionary movements, how does one
5 produce a common analysis of key factors that are involved across them? Three
6 factors are critical: first, the study of how digital networks are part of a larger
7 media ecology that works to spread awareness, scrutiny, and activism; second, the
8 consideration of how digital networks coordinate and mobilize physical assem-
9 bly and protest; and third, the examination not just of grassroots prodemocracy
10 engagement but also of the ways that social media tools are wielded to repress
11 and oppress.
12
13 Media Ecologies and Networked Awareness
14
Networked, digital media technologies are situated within an ecology of other
15
technologies that inform both local and transnational awareness of political
16
events. Examples might include tweets publicizing underlying problems with
17
regimes, activist grievances, or mainstream media networks such as CNN, Free
18
Speech TV, and Al-­Jazeera rebroadcasting protester-­created video. These ecolo-
19
gies remediate local events into local and transnational discourses that inform
20
multiple publics about political events.
21
An example of how a media ecology functions during a revolution comes from
22
our ethnographic work in Kyrgyzstan. Information networking during both the
23
Tulip Revolution of 2005 and the revolution of 2010 occurred across a range of
24
Web 2.0 sites, including blogs, forums, and journalism aggregators. Together
25
these constituted a media ecology that politically active Internet authors used to
26
publicize and debate their concerns and to discuss their visions for a more demo-
27
cratic nation. The authors we studied saw their work within a larger project of
28
motivating Kyrgyzstan toward a civil society and used an ecology of both older
29
and newer media platforms to build transnational engagement with their causes.
30
We concluded that Internet authorship stimulated (a) the formation of community
31
networks among activists and (b) grassroots coordination and activism through
32
the re-­mediation of messages via posters, megaphones, and word of mouth. This
33
power of Internet authorship and its coordination via social media platforms was
34
evidenced in the toppling of the Bakiyev regime in April 2010, in which one of
35
our informants, perhaps the nation’s most famous dissident blogger, emerged as
36
the spokesperson and chief of staff for the transitional government.
37
Complementing the Kyrgyz case, the popular consensus has been that Al-­
38

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 Public Culture Jazeera’s role in the recent Egyptian revolution was critical, in part because the 1
network built alliances with social media activists and used digital networks to 2
share journalistic findings 24/7 via live Internet streams. Al-­Jazeera secured a 3
place for itself within a media ecology that included grassroots activists, citizen 4
journalists, and international television networks. It also made a rebroadcasting 5
agreement with Free Speech TV, a nonprofit satellite network that reaches 35 6
million US homes. Al-­Jazeera understands its role in the media ecology. “The 7
democratization of the Arab world is directly related to the democratization of 8
the media,” says Ahmed Shihab-­Eldin, a journalist for Al-­Jazeera’s The Stream, 9
a new program created collaboratively with citizen journalists and social media. 10
“It’s not just about organizing protests,” he continues, “there are so many differ- 11
ent ways in which social media is used to connect people across borders, but also 12
to connect old media with new media.”1 Speaking weeks after former president 13
Hosni Mubarak’s resignation, Al-­Jazeera’s managing director, Wadah Khan- 14
far, thanked the dissenting citizens of Tunisia and Egypt for serving as network 15
reporters, proclaiming, “The youth of the Middle East, choosing universal values 16
from within while embracing tolerance, and diversity — they are our reporters.”2 17
18
Tactical Media: Coordinating Political Protest 19
20
While the layers of a media ecology work with digital technologies to spread
21
awareness, networked technologies also generate opportunities to share and coor-
22
dinate actions of political mobilization, whether assembling in public spaces,
23
coordinating actions, or donating time and resources to a physical, material cause.
24
They are, in short, “tactical media.”
25
One form of tactical media involves virtual groups that inspire physical assem-
26
bly. An example is the Egypt-­based Facebook group We Are All Khaled Said,
27
which had more than eighty thousand in-­nation followers on Thursday, January
28
27, 2011 (the day before the first large Friday protest), compared with approxi-
29
mately twenty thousand on January 26. The memory of Said, a young man slain
30
the previous summer by regime police, reminds us of the attention focused on
31
Neda Agha Soltan, a twenty-­six-­year-­old female protester shot and killed during
32
Iran’s Green Revolution. Yet the key difference in this case was how the Face-
33
book group was used locally to allow dissidents to meet, coordinate, discuss, and
34
35
1. Rachel Zurer, “Al-­Jazeera English Enters the Stream,” May 8, 2011, www.wired.com/ 36
magazine/2011/03/storyboard-­al-­jazeera-­stream. 37
2. www.ted.com/talks/wadah_khanfar_a_historic_moment_in_the_arab_world.html. 38

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 1 plan without having to be physically present, and potentially arrested by regime Revolutionary Tactics,
2 police. Media Ecologies, and
3 Distilling the Egyptian with other historical examples, we find three elements Repressive States
4 at the core of tactical media: (1) nomadism, or the ability to “meet” virtually in an
5 environment where physically assembly is treacherous; (2) scale, where technolo-
6 gies can be used to accumulate large amounts of information and large numbers
7 of participants, presenting patterns and decisions to the larger group in a clear and
8 actionable call, such as showing trending hashtags on Twitter or voting outcomes
9 by large groups; and (3) mobility, where dissidents can take to the streets and
10 access real-­time coordination information while protesting and evading arrest.
11 There are many important questions about the future of tactical media. For
12 example, would tactical media scale to the degree it did if it were within a nation
13 that had healthier economic and social indicators than Egypt did in January 2011?
14 Would the nomadic element of tactical media be as effective in a nation that had a
15 more sophisticated technological apparatus? If not, how could technology activists
16 respond? Would tactical media be successful if, instead of arresting or warning
17 citizens, governments maintained military control and actively killed protesters?
18 Does it make a difference in activist outcomes whether local social media tech-
19 nologies are used versus foreign, Western technologies such as Twitter? Scholars
20 of culture understand that protesters, publics, citizens, and regimes each beg the
21 issue of studying cultural and social specificity. Not all despotic regimes are the
22 same. Nor are all technologies the same.
23
24 States That Push Back
25
During the recent (and, as of this writing, ongoing) North African and Middle
26
Eastern uprisings, dictatorial and monarchic regimes have found ways to dis-
27
rupt, shut down, or monitor dissident activity, and these practices discourage any
28
euphoric celebration of “liberation technology.” For example, although a number
29
of Internet providers cover the Egyptian population, the Mubarak regime was
30
effectively able to hit a “kill switch” to shut off service on January 27, 2011, and it
31
used Facebook to target activists for arrest. The neighboring Tunisian government
32
deployed technologies that recorded users’ keystrokes (including passwords) and
33
blocked access to Twitter. Libya experienced irregular Internet access punctuated
34
by shutdowns. Bahrain has endured “degraded” service. Iran has admitted that it
35
was conducting cyber-­warfare campaigns against dissidents. Nepal’s King Gya-
36
nendra “killed” the Internet at a critical moment, and the Burmese government
37
shut down Internet service to complement physical violence from military police.
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 Public Culture These practices may also extend to more open societies. In the United States, for 1
instance, Congress is now considering an Internet kill switch in case of a “cyber- 2
­emergency.” 3
Governments can thus take a number of steps to police, monitor, censor, or 4
shut down networked technologies, including mobile phones. Pro-­dictator blog- 5
gers can either honestly represent the state’s interests or pretend to be dissidents 6
who confuse the movement. Governments may also choose to use technologies to 7
keep up the ruse of accountability, including the implementation of e-­governance 8
and sham Internet voting “booths.” State officials can choose to “crowdsource” 9
(outsource tasks to decentralized publics) intelligence data by reading Twitter 10
feeds or joining Facebook groups. And last but not least, governments can initiate 11
distributed denial-of-service attacks on activist servers, a tactic used by the ruling 12
Burmese dictatorship. Antidemocratic states can thus thrive in information-­rich 13
eras by mastering the tools of social media for their own aims. 14
......... 15
16
Dictators’ attempts to shut down or repress Internet communications may not 17
have the intended effect. Democracy Now!’s Sharif Abdel-­Kouddous, an Egyp- 18
tian journalist, explained in an interview with us that cutting off the Internet “had 19
the opposite effect of what the regime wanted to happen. . . . A lot of people told 20
me they were just going to call their friends on their cell phones and check Face- 21
book to see what was happening, and see any videos that were being posted, and 22
stay at home. But they couldn’t because Facebook was down, the Internet was 23
down, and cell phones were down, so they hit the streets.” In addition, a number 24
of Egyptian youth activists are suing Internet companies that betrayed them in 25
complicity with the Mubarak regime. 26
Moving forward, we need to know more about how regimes disrupt Internet 27
access and develop expertise to track, censor, and repress political dissidents. We 28
also need to learn how activists anticipate and react to these practices, since this 29
dynamic will structure action and shape the outcome of future uprisings. 30
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