Talkin’ ’bout a social networking revolution

Talkin’ ’bout a (social networking) revolution

Two months into the New Year, and already the media are brimming with coverage of newsworthy stories – floods in Australia, SA membership into the BRIC, a historic referendum in Sudan (Gasp! Shock! Horror!), the shenanigans at the SABC (yawn…) and no word yet from Julius Malema (touch wood). It’s been an eventful year to say the least! Compliments of the New Season to you all!

Keeping things on the home front, I for one am happy about the realpolitik coming out of Africa since January 1st.  It is good to know that people are finally taking their New Year’s resolutions seriously. Mine was to quit making Mark Zuckerberg so darn rich. But I watched the movie based on the social network he created twice already, and continue feverishly to superpoke and update my status. Ok, so the whole social networking bug has bitten me. Try prying a 20-something away from her Crackberry and see how much luck you have! On a recent trip to Sun City with a carload of friends of mine, easily 80% of the trip was spent ‘BBM-ing’. The remaining 20% was spent by me complaining about all the BBM-ing.

Sure, I have a Facebook account and network socially (or on the internet rather – it’s one and the same thing really) but some folks have taken it too far. And I don’t mean my (anti)social friends who went on a road trip to fund Sol Kerzner. I mean the young ones who are causing real political unrest and social upheaval north of the Equator. If the tweets and updates are anything to go by, this social networking thing has become somewhat revolutionary in Egypt, Tunisia, Lebanon (and much of the African* Middle East).

Young, jobless, politically disenfranchised people have taken to social networking on the streets of Tahrir Square in Cairo, Tunis in Tunisia and Damascus in Syria – amongst other places – to express their dissatisfaction and disillusionment about their government’s failure to acknowledge their needs and concerns. Young Tunisians forced President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali into exile in Saudi Arabia after 23 years in power. Subsequently, young Egyptians successfully encouraged Hosni Mubarak to take early retirement. All this from status updates and ‘liking’ a group on Facebook? Mark Zuckerberg, YOU ARE THE MAN!!!! But I’m not entirely convinced that Mark had this in mind when he created Facebook but US$50 billion later, it’s a pretty convincing argument. But the message coming from young, politically disenfranchised and socially stratified people in the Arab African*world, who have (re) discovered their political voice, is equally convincing. Perhaps even more so.

Indeed, arguments about the medium being the message have plagued Media Studies students since Marshall McLuhan first penned it 30 years prior to the invention of the internet. But I digress. The situation up north is symptomatic of an authoritarian government that represses outlets and channels that should encourage citizens to express and converse amongst themselves and with the powers that be: a.k.a. the media. Of course, failed responses to the rising food prices and inflation have not helped much either.  Small wonder then that youth – and the new media technologies that they have embraced – have been heralded as the agents of change, creating spaces where these views can be aired. It is good to know that the media theories I was taught in SHB1 do actually happen in the world.

I am encouraged by the youth of North Africa, whose idealism and desire for better circumstances I personally admire and would like to emulate. The feast of images in the press, on TV and the net has been proverbial food for my soul. Just when I was giving up on the grand ideas put forward by the likes of McLuhan and other foremost latter-day cultural critics, I witness how powerful they can actually be. Social networking activism can best be described by the thousands of young people who gathered in Tunisia and Egypt (and gather still in other parts of the African Arab world) and made significant historical and political inroads. The annals of the internet and social networking sites will forever be in your debt!

For real though, I do wish young people of South Africa could take a page out of Arab African youth’s Facebook groups. There are many lessons to be learnt from our distant neighbours up north. They remind one that politics is of the people and that at all times power remains ours to claim (and reclaim, if need be). Young South Africans must (re)claim their youth and create or discover networks that encourage political, social and economic participation and enfranchisement, and spaces where we can gather. I look to Media Studies students to use this platform to discover their voices, extend their participation beyond Facebook, Twitter and Blackberry Messenger, and encourage and empower other young people to do the same in the process. Unlike in Egypt and Tunisia, our democratic process is better entrenched (the Protection of Information Bill notwithstanding). We must ensure that this remains so by continually challenging and making use of these processes and show the democratic world order how it is done. Be the change you want to see in the world, right?

I’m talking about a Revolution, yeah!

*The term ‘African’ is used here in a general, all-encompassing sense. If the recent debate in the City Press on who is an African is anything to go by, the results are inconclusive.

Naledi Siphokazi Msimang is a Research Assistant for the ICT and New Media Cultures in Southern Africa project in the Department of Media Studies, University of the Witwatersrand. She does not know all the words to Tracy Chapman’s hit song. She sings along anyway.