#direngeziparkı #direndemokrasi (#resistforgezipark #resistfordemocracy)

• by: Ekmel Ertan

A protester with a medical mask against tear gas
Photo: Ekmel Ertan

I had thought that those who characterized the Tahrir square uprising in Egypt as facebook revolution were neglecting the primary dynamics of the event in favour of new media. I am in the field of new media and the conferences I have attended always looked at the subject from this angle and foregrounded the role of social media. Facebook graffiti on the streets of Cairo was noteworthy. Social media had an undeniable role in all this but I thought that the “facebook revolution” characterization was a kind of branding, a new form of orientalism.

Last week I changed my mind. I certainly cannot call what happened in Turkey as a facebook revolution but I have experienced how important and defining facebook and social media in general can be. Facebook graffiti in Cairo streets were in fact a tactic to try to draw people to social media. Tahrir square was the first social movement of this size where the effect of social media became so apparent.

In Istanbul nobody wrote facebook or twitter on walls. This was because these are ordinary and everyday communication tools for the youth on the streets. Everyone was aware. This is why social media was intensively used from the very beginning. Nobody will call what happened in Istanbul a facebook revolution because that first wave has already been overcome in Egypt. However, I feel obliged to say, is social media wasn’t there, we may well woken up to much darker mornings. The uprising would have been taken care of in a couple of days with excessive police violence, and the pain of injustice would have been planted in the bad memories of those hopeless souls who know what happened, and who are ostracized precisely because of this knowledge. Read more

Ekmel Ertan – #direngeziparkı #direndemokrasi – From The Billboards On The Streets

• by: Ekmel Ertan

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