CorpComms Magazine

The opening months of this year may always be seen as the time when social media finally grew up. Before you could tweet 'revolution' the medium went from a way of posting clips of Irish-dancing chimpanzees and blow-by-blow accounts of bad dates, to a regime-toppling danger to the status quo.

As governments fell in Egypt and Tunisia, social commentators started to dub the protests sweeping the region 'The Facebook Revolution'. A new generation of dissatisfied and Internet-savvy citizens organised themselves and fuelled the flames of their anger through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other similar technologies.

'During the day we are on the streets; at night we are in front of the screen,' a 41-year-old teacher in Tunisia was quoted as saying. Google executive Wael Ghonim became the unlikely poster boy for these extraordinary events. His Facebook page We are all Khaled Said, named after an Egyptian businessman who was beaten to death by police, proved a catalyst for events in Egypt, hosting images of police brutality that galvanised a generation into a fortnight of protests. After he was released from prison, Google's 30-year old head of marketing for the Middle East and North Africa, told independent Egyptian television channel Dream TV that, 'This is the revolution of the youth of the Internet.'

In a smaller way, authorities in the UK had already seen the power of social media to inform and organise protests. Marches that turned into riots against rises in university tuition fees used similar tools to galvanise protesters.

Protesting students

Young, politicised computer programmers in Britain launched 'Sukey', a communications network updated by Twitter, which aims to stop protesters being 'kettled' or contained, by police. The site, which is named for the children's nursery rhyme Polly put the kettle on ... Sukey take it off again, uses tweets, texts and GPS positions to update an online map of places where protesters may be being 'kettled', and also sends out texts and tweets so that protesters can avoid these areas. Even mild-mannered library closure protesters are using Twitter and Facebook to plead their cause.

Whether you really believe that the student protests and North African regime changes were 'Facebook Revolutions', or whether this is just convenient and lazy Western journalist shorthand, these events have highlighted the growing power of social media and a new need for companies to respond to it.

Euan Semple, who advises companies on the use of social media tools for their businesses, said that the revolutions in North Africa had taken the use of these sites to another level.

'There is little doubt that the tools help more people see what each other are thinking and doing and this helps speed up and increase involvement,' he says. 'More people will need to think harder about how much they depend on undemocratically accountable organisations and what the alternatives are.'

For companies who engage (or fail to engage) with their customers on sites such as Twitter and Facebook, there are lessons to be taken from events in North Africa, as well as those closer to home. 'From WikiLeaks to Twitter, a new media environment is emerging that is changing the relationship between those in power and the public,' says Charlie Beckett, director of Polis, the media and communications department of the London School of Economics.

'Governments and corporations need to understand that they are operating in a world where people expect greater openness. They want authorities to communicate with citizens and consumers in a relationship of trust and transparency.'

Most commentators seem to agree that Twitter and Facebook were not the 'cause' of recent events, but their use did make things easier and quicker. 'Social media doesn't cause revolutionary activity or protests - no more than it causes mass suicides, paedophilia or any other activity that the traditional media regularly blames it for,' says Jon Silk, senior digital consultant at Waggener Edstrom.

Unity, information and speed

Sascha Meinrath, director of the Open Technology Initiative at the New America Foundation, agrees. 'Revolutions and protests throughout the Middle East are being driven by profound social inequities and the pent up frustrations of an oppressed citizenry. While social media has proven a useful tool for organising these activities, the notion that they are the driving force is incorrect.'

However, many credit social media with extraordinary power to unite, inform and speed up events. Semple says that, particularly in areas such as the Middle East, where there are many dialects that are hard to understand in different areas, tweets and Facebook pages can speed up understanding.

'What is unusual is having a person-to-person networked communication that is able to be commonly understood better than word of mouth. There is little doubt that the tools help more people see what each other are thinking and doing and this helps speed up and increase involvement,' he says.

Rafat Ali, founder of PaidContent.org said that the different technologies had different roles in events. 'YouTube had been used for things like this before, and Facebook served an organisational purpose. Twitter was more about amplification - it helped people throughout the world understand what was going on, and focused world attention on the issues.'

Even Biz Stone, founder of Twitter, described the service as deserving only a Best Supporting Actor gong for its role in recent world events. 'How a revolution comes to be is a mystery to me. It's important to credit the brave people that take chances to stand up to regimes. They're the star. What I like to think of services like Twitter and other services is that it's a kind of supporting role.'

Silk says that resources like Twitter and Facebook merely facilitate more access to things that are happening anyway. 'There's an argument to say that without services like Twitter the protests in the Middle East wouldn't have been so organised, or so visible to the rest of the world.'

Social media is pervasive

However, he goes on to state that these protests cannot be seen in isolation. Instead, they highlight the pervasive influence of social media into all of world events, big or small. 'Every corner of our lives, from secret government and corporate data being outed by WikiLeaks, to the way we organise a Saturday night out, is being affected by social networking services,' he says.

It is this lesson that companies need to take from events in the Middle East. It seems that there is nothing too trivial, nor too serious and life-changing, not to be posted on Twitter and Facebook. What is more, the power of these sites changes who holds the cards in any dialogue between customer or citizen, and corporate body or government.

Social media sites can take control of news, as Beckett says. 'News production has moved outside of mainstream media and the news cycle is now being driven by social media as well as by the big media organisations. 'Anyone operating in the new global public sphere has to listen to the public conversation as well as broadcasting their own messages.'

Crucially, social media gives a company's customer, whether happy, or unhappy, much more power.

'Authoritarians both inside and outside organisations should watch what happens when enough people, without overt leadership or ideologies, get sufficiently hacked off with the status quo,' says Semple. This is as relevant if a campaigning group is unhappy with a company's human rights record, as it is if they simply don't like the quality of its product, as it is if they are trying to overthrow an oppressive regime.

So how should corporations and regimes engage with Facebook and Twitter? Not by ignoring it, or even trying to block it, suggests Silk. 'Faced with a perceived threat, governments or regimes often try to ban access. In response, people just find new ways of sharing because as soon as one site is banned another will pop up in its place. And this is often embarrassing for the so-called ruling parties - they end up trying to reactively plug the holes as more and more information just leaks through.'

Many corporations had already seen this with WikiLeaks last year, where organisations fought bitterly to contain information from the public, who responded by requesting more and more of it. 'The social media revolution has changed the way we communicate and the way we look at information,' says Jeroen Hoekman, social media specialist at eMarketer. 'We expect organisations to be totally transparent and we 'punish' organisations that are not, by trashing them on social media sites and blacklisting their products.

'All those organisations will have to adapt to a new world; a world where few things can be kept secret for a long time; a world where most people in society will strive to unveil secrets and make them public knowledge.'

Censorship is likely

Semple believes that events in the Middle East may cause more censorship and blocking of access to these sites, even at a corporate level. 'I think there is a risk of institutions trying to lock things down more and those who care about keeping the Internet as open as possible will need to be more vigilant,' he says.

Meinrath says that, while governments will engage more with social media following the events of the last few months, not all of this interaction will be positive. 'We can certainly count on governments to engage more with social media - and will use these same tools both to inform and empower their citizenry, and to oppress. In the end, social media are like any other power tool - they can be used to the benefit or detriment of people around the globe,' he says.

'Corporations are also looking to find ways to wrest more personal information from online denizens, which can be used for a variety of malfeasant behaviour - from the annoying (such as spam and catalogues) to the truly nefarious (such as tracking down dissidents for oppressive regimes).'

Silk believes governments and corporations should seek to react more positively to the power of social media. 'But while individuals are embracing the New World, larger organisations - even large Western corporations - still think that banning access to Facebook is the answer. I'd suggest that listening to what people are saying, then using those channels to communicate too, would be a better option.

'Overall, social media isn't going away, and our need to communicate isn't going away either. Social media is an accessible way for people to share ideas, whatever the desired outcome. The fundamental need for people to communicate is as powerful as ever - social media just makes it easier.'

So next time you click on another video of someone wrapping their cat in Christmas paper, or a monkey waitressing in a bar (yes, really), consider the power of the social networking site. You could be changing the world instead.

share me: del.icio.us | digg | reddit | Tweet