Michael Dobbs, Howard R. Marsh Lecture
When: 5 p.m. March 29; reception begins at 4:30 p.m.
Where: Michigan League’s Hussey Room
In recent months, news reports showed how social media has empowered citizens in the Middle East and North Africa to revolt against authoritarian regimes.
The rules of the game, however, are changing. Foreign governments are learning the art of using the Internet — whether it’s Twitter, Facebook or some other social media — to keep the masses distracted and entertained, says Michael Dobbs, the Howard R. Marsh Visiting Professor of Journalism in the Department of Communication Studies.
“The images of successful revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia should not fool us into thinking that this process is going to be easy — and that democracy will automatically triumph,” he says.
Dobbs will discuss these revolts, information technologies and whether the Internet is a revolutionary medium during the Howard R. Marsh Lecture at 5 p.m. March 29 in the Michigan League’s Hussey Room.
The event, which includes a 4:30 p.m. reception, is free and open to the public. The lecture is titled “Tweeting the Revolution: The Role of Social Media in Toppling Dictatorships.”
Scott Soderberg, U-M Photo Services.
Dobbs spent much of his journalism career covering the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe. He also wrote about U.S. foreign policy under the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.
As a foreign correspondent, Dobbs said he’s seen how information has been key to any revolution. In Poland, in August 1980, dissidents with telephone trees and cassette recorders played a similar role to today’s social media, destroying the information monopoly constructed by the one-party state. Social media sparked the revolt throughout the Middle East, speeding up the process up for citizens to organize, he says.
By comparison, here in the United States, the ruling elite cannot expect to create an information monopoly, although they do spend ample time trying to shape public opinion, Dobbs notes.
“Public relations and propaganda techniques are similar everywhere,” he says. “They are just more sophisticated in the United States.”
The common theme globally is the right of protesters to spread a message that runs counter to the official narrative. How the message is shaped, however, has been different, Dobbs says.
For years in Egypt, bloggers used the Internet (particularly Facebook and YouTube) to spread information about police brutality and torture. The flashpoint for the Egypt revolution, he says, was a Facebook page called “We are all Khalid Said,” dedicated to the memory of a young man who died after police torture.
The other theme is the contrast between “us” and “them,” he says. “Us” means society that has been excluded from government and official media, and “them” being the ruling elite with all of its wealth, privileges and control over the state-run media.
Governments increasingly are becoming sophisticated in taming and controlling the new media. China has introduced an extensive system of Internet filtering. Iran uses the Internet and social media as a surveillance tool. Authoritarian governments also have used the Internet for propaganda purposes, putting bloggers on the state payroll and creating what is known as a “50-cent army” of pro-government bloggers, he says.
Last semester Dobbs’ students developed a website to track individuals who have been arrested or harassed by governments for their Internet activities. Some of these “infosurgents” have gone on to lead popular uprisings in the Middle East. To view “Infosurgents,” go to sitemaker.umich.edu/infosurgents/home. The lecture is coordinated by the Department of Communication Studies.
