Posted by: David Newman

Everyone saw it coming.

City officials in Vancouver must have watched the final minutes of Game 7 in the Stanley Cup Playoffs with a sickening sense of dread. While Bruins fans took to the streets of Boston for beer-sloshing hugs and ridiculous celebratory dances…

…the streets of Vancouver showed a different scene. The predictable, abhorrent spectacle of violent destruction reared its ugly head, as “black bloc” looters were given a splash of colour from a few bad seeds wearing Vancouver Canucks blue.

What could the good-natured, law-abiding majority of people present that night do to make a difference in the midst of chaos? Answer: they flocked to social media sites and provided a fly-on-the-wall portrait of events as they happened.

Social media has, in the recent past, had a huge part to play in affecting these kinds of large-scale human outbursts. It makes sense: the role of social media is to provide a unified platform through which people can interact, organize, and communicate. It was only a matter of time before the online proliferation of these sites began to have staggering real-world consequences.

You’ve seen some of those consequences on the news not too long ago. The Arab Spring, a civil resistance movement that began in Tunisia and started a massive uprising that spread through Egypt, Syria, Yemen, and beyond, was fueled by the people’s ability to plan organized protests through social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. These sites were so helpful to the populists’ rebellion, in fact, that Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak ordered the entire Internet shut down. You get to make these kinds of calls when you’re a dictator.

And if you wanted the most up-to-date news coverage of what was going on at the ground floor of these social movements, you could forget CNN. Reporters are pushed to the sidelines of conflicts like these, looking on from a distance and giving their report on what they think is going on, or what their network wants them to think. It was Twitter that came alive with people’s first-hand experiences of the revolution. Facebook told the protesters where the next day’s gathering would be held. Youtube was filled with camera phone videos showing what was going on that very minute. You could literally watch, hear, and read as a revolution turned a country on its head. It was a powerful display of how social media sites are capable of giving us an instant, unfiltered perspective on what is happening in the world.

So how then does someone use these abilities to make a positive change during a hockey riot? Vancouver police actually enlisted the help of the many innocent civilians within the crowd to help bring justice to the rioters. They asked people to upload and share pictures and videos of anyone who committed crimes in order to help identify the rotten apples in the crowds. Many tweeted when and where any destruction or violence was happening so that people would know where not to go as they tried to escape the riot. Soon after, Facebook groups such as “Shame the Stanley Cup Rioters” were created to provide a public forum to identify and denounce those responsible for the mayhem.

The digital effects of the social media explosion are now real-world effects. Social media is a powerful tool to get a message across, and it may very well be helping to make our world a safer, more communicative place. So to all those who are using your Facebook profile to figure out where the party’s at, your Youtube account to upload baby videos, or your Twitter page to announce how you “Forgot how awesome Mountain Dew is lol #soawesome” I say this:

I sympathize. I get it. I do those things too, but there are people in the world who are taking the spark of social media and lighting the fires of positive social change. Isn’t it time we looked into making a little more out of our social media lifestyle?

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5 Responses to “Riots, Revolution, and how Social Media is Leading to Social Change”

1. Dawn Chafe says:

   June 17, 2011 at 1:13 pm

   I agree with you, Kevin, though I’d expand that to ask, “isn’t it time we looking into making more out of our lifestyle?” Too much of what passes as information is really shallow entertainment. We get all worked up about the wrong things.

   If our social media characters are a reflection of our inner selves, we’re in a sad state of affairs.
2. Harry Connors says:

   June 20, 2011 at 6:05 am

   Dave:

   Great post. As a steadfast “resister” of Facebook and Twitter, (from what little I’ve seen, merely a means of individualizing the “television wasteland”), I agree that such social media must surely find better uses.

   However, I think the broader point highlighted by what happened is how many otherwise law-abiding, respectful individuals got caught up in the circumstance, and not only cheered on, but actally participated!

   Where was the internal “civics” regulator that might have caused such people to see, “this is wrong”, or “I’ll try to stop it”, or at least “I’ll resist the emotion or alcohol or drug-stimulated wish to do a little destruction myself”? Such internal regulators – whether derived from religious belief, or from a humanistic respect for others and oneself – seemed to either have not been in operation or switched off by the “power surge” of participation.

   Better uses of social media might be able to support the creation of effective “civics” regulators, but it’s sad that the social media, for now, will merely be a means of bearing witness to the absence of “civics” regulators.

   Harry Connors
3. Brock Anton says:

   June 20, 2011 at 6:25 am

   forgot how awesome Mountain Dew is lol #soawesome
4. Grace says:

   June 21, 2011 at 12:07 pm

   I remember years ago reading an article which stated that the personal computer would level hierarchies. This statement stuck in my mind for years and it has proven to be one of the most potent precursors to what is happening today. Indeed, the personal computer has done more for democracy than any politician could!

   The comment below is so true and it reminds of when I attended a seminar 20 years ago when the speaker informed the crowd that civilian journalism was coming and it would take a huge dent out of the broadcasting industry.

   Love this comment….

   “The digital effects of the social media explosion are now real-world effects. Social media is a powerful tool to get a message across, and it may very well be helping to make our world a safer, more communicative place. So to all those who are using your Facebook profile to figure out where the party’s at, your Youtube account to upload baby videos, or your Twitter page to announce how you “Forgot how awesome Mountain Dew is lol #soawesome” I say this:

   I sympathize. I get it. I do those things too, but there are people in the world who are taking the spark of social media and lighting the fires of positive social change. Isn’t it time we looked into making a little more out of our social media lifestyle?”
5. David Newman says:

   June 21, 2011 at 12:51 pm

   Harry- Very interesting point. Part of the reason that the Internet has become so expansive and widespread has been the lack of regulation or restriction, internal or otherwise, with which people could interact. You have to wonder, though, how this affects people’s personality and morality when they’re “offline”. Glad you enjoyed.

   Grace- Thanks, I was having a bit of fun at the expense of normal day-to-day internet banter, but I’m not trying to be critical. The natural use of sites like these is for personal networking, but I think we should all be on the lookout for opportunities to do positive things where and when the chances arise online. We have developed one of the most powerful, influential tools ever created, and now it’s just a matter of seeing what we end up using it for.

   Brock- I know that’s you, Jed