Game over in Tunisia & Eygpt: Why the revolution HAS been tweeted

Last October, I gave five reasons why Malcolm Gladwell got it wrong in arguing in The New Yorker why the revolution won’t tweeted. What Gladwell overlooked was the possibility that a slight nudge and a glimpse of an opportunity might be enough to move people into action that would not otherwise have happened.

In January 2011, undeterred, Gladwell argued in Foreign Affairs that “the lesson here is that just because innovations in communications technology happen does not mean that they matter.” In order to be convinced, he says we would have to show “in the absence of social media, those uprisings would not have been possible.”

Clay Shirky replied in the same article that “these changes do not allow otherwise uncommitted groups to take effective political action. They do, however, allow committed groups to play by new rules.”

The dramatic events in Tunisia and Egypt now offer convincing evidence of the power of social medial to “allow committed groups to play by new rules.”

In Tunisia, President Ben Ali has been forced to flee into exile.

In Egypt, the fact that the government has shut down social media and the Internet demonstrates that it certainly believes that these were crucial factors in the uprisings. The fact that it acted several days after the demonstrations got under way meant that their efforts were ineffective. Dissidents, undirected by any political party or opposition, had already mobilized to create a wholly different situation.

In Egypt, the government has begun offering concessions, but it is too little, too late. Exactly what will happen next remains unclear. But what is clear is that the political narrative in Egypt has been changed forever. This would not have happened without social media.

The game is over. The revolution HAS been tweeted.

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