Re: <nettime> The Twitter Revolution Must Die (by Ulises A. Mejias)

[Ulises Mejias <ulises.mejias@oswego.edu>]

I thought Frank Rich also said it well in his editorial for The New York
Times ("Wallflowers at the Revolution," Feb 5, 2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/opinion/06rich.html)

"Perhaps the most revealing window into America?s media-fed isolation from
this crisis ? small an example as it may seem ? is the default assumption
that the Egyptian uprising, like every other paroxysm in the region since
the Green Revolution in Iran 18 months ago, must be powered by the twin
American-born phenomena of Twitter and Facebook. Television news ? at once
threatened by the power of the Internet and fearful of appearing unhip ?
can?t get enough of this clich?. Three days after riot police first used
tear gas and water hoses to chase away crowds in Tahrir Square, CNN?s new
prime-time headliner, Piers Morgan,
declared<http://archives.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1101/28/pmt.01.html>that
?the use of social media? was ?the most fascinating aspect of this
whole revolution.? On MSNBC that same night, Lawrence O?Donnell
interviewed<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41350969/ns/msnbc_tv/>a
teacher who had spent a year at the American school in Cairo. ?They
are
all on Facebook,? she said of her former fifth-grade students. The fact that
a sampling of fifth graders in the American school might be unrepresentative
of, and wholly irrelevant to, the events unfolding in the streets of Cairo
never entered the equation."

-Ulises


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