Facebook as a Vehicle for Political and Social Activism

Introduction

Randi Zuckerberg, an older sister of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and the company's marketing director until August 2011, told an interviewer that the social networking site Facebook would continue to help people around the world mobilize for activism. According to Ms. Zuckerberg, social media is in essence "democratic," as it helps people whose freedom of expression is curtailed by autocratic governments to air their voices openly and join solidarity movements. Reflecting on Facebook's role as a place to organize collective action against injustice and oppression, she said that Facebook facilitated events that would not otherwise have been possible. Facebook helps to raise money for worthy causes, recruit engaged volunteers, and — most importantly — raise awareness, which, Ms. Zuckerberg said, "is an immensely powerful tool to effect social change" (Vericat 177).

Today one would hardly disagree with Ms. Zuckerberg's points, but in 2004, when her brother invented what would become a social networking giant, it would have been difficult to envision the global reach and impact of Facebook. Building a tool for political activism or social change was certainly not on Mark Zuckerberg's original agenda. One author who investigated Zuckerberg's rise described the founding of Facebook as "a tale of sex, money, genius, and betrayal" (Mezrich). The words "activism" and "social change" did not feature in that story. And yet Facebook has become, among other things, a venue for political activism and social change. From using Facebook to mobilize people against the revolutionary terror of FARC in Colombia to organizing protests across the Middle East, the social networking site has become a tool for activists around the world.

But while Facebook can be used by people who yearn for a better future and fight against oppression, injustice, corruption, and tyranny, it can also be used by authoritarian governments and terror groups to track down activists and punish them. Social networking, like the Internet itself, can be used as much for liberation as for political and social control (Deibert & Rohozinski). Nevertheless, one may argue that the role Facebook has played in galvanizing protests and revolutions in recent years has been significant. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how a tool designed to connect college students reached different parts of the world and became a vehicle for political and social activism, and to examine the challenges Facebook poses for authoritarian governments that are quick to adapt to technological innovation. After providing background on Facebook and its global reach, the paper will discuss the role Facebook played in recent successful and failed revolutions in the Middle East.

Facebook's Global Impact

Facebook is the brainchild of Mark Zuckerberg, who invented it when he was a sophomore at Harvard University. Initially designed to operate within the Harvard network, it allowed students to post their photos and share information about their class year, gender, and interests in music and film. The project proved popular and was soon extended to colleges in the Boston area, and later to Columbia and Stanford. In 2005, Facebook became public and open to all English-speaking users. Since then, Zuckerberg's project has grown rapidly, becoming a truly worldwide phenomenon within half a decade. Facebook now boasts more than 800 million active users. Half of those users log in every day. Facebook is available in over 70 languages, and three-quarters of its users are located outside the United States. On average, a user has 130 friends and is connected to 80 community pages or groups, while 250 million photos are uploaded to Facebook on any given day (Facebook statistics).

Researchers who have studied Facebook's impact on American citizens have noted that exploring who uses Facebook and why can be revealing in terms of political and social relations. Zuniga and Valenzuela studied the demographics of Facebook in America and found that greater numbers of women, African Americans, and Hispanics use social networking than men and non-Hispanic whites — a finding that attests to the empowering potential of social networking for minority groups. They also found that while 37% of those with household incomes of $100,000 or more use Facebook, the figure rises to 40–51% for those earning below that threshold. Zuniga and Valenzuela analyze these findings through the lens of the digital divide, arguing that social networking sites "could emerge as a digital tool that promotes a more balanced and democratized use of the information contained in their pages" (Zuniga and Valenzuela xxxv). In other words, Facebook may also serve as a tool for learning about people and ideas for the politically and socially disadvantaged, even in developed countries like the United States.

Those with access to power and money have not ignored the power of Facebook and other social networking media either. As the 2008 and 2010 political campaigns demonstrated, effective use of social networking can be crucial in modern politics. Many observers noted that the Obama team's use of Facebook, Twitter, and Meetup to post news and updates, mobilize volunteers, and raise hundreds of millions of dollars helped Obama defeat Hillary Clinton, despite her greater name recognition and stronger political connections. Republican candidates drew lessons from that experience, and in the 2010 midterm elections, 74% of congressional candidates who had more Facebook friends than their opponents won their races. In 2012, both parties faced the additional challenge of Tea Party activists who relied heavily on social networking in their public campaigns, since it had by then become "inextricably a part of the political communication landscape" (Partridge 83–84).

The significance of Facebook's impact at a global scale is equally remarkable. In his anthropological study of the Facebook effect in Trinidad, Daniel Miller found diverse ways in which Facebook shapes society on the small island. A marriage can break up, while a man in his sixties may return to social life through Facebook. A woman may discover that what she sees on Facebook feels truer than what she observes in physical contact, while for another woman, being publicly visible on Facebook paradoxically allows her to remain extremely private. Miller also finds that Facebook can be used to spread religious messages, among many other things. For many people, Miller notes, Facebook is a kind of meta-friend to whom "we turn to when we are feeling lonely, depressed or bored, when life seems to have less purpose than usual" (Miller 171). Facebook was also used to galvanize support for relief efforts when Trinidadians responded to the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti in 2010.

One key issue in analyzing Facebook's global impact is the American context within which the platform operates. Although it now has more users outside the United States than within, its core values still reflect assumptions taken for granted in America. Zuckerberg and other Facebook officials have, for example, emphasized the importance of transparency and openness built into the system — values that play out very differently across international and intercultural contexts. Both transparency and openness can be empowering in many situations but can also lead to tragic consequences. When a conservative Saudi father discovered that his daughter had been interacting with men online, he killed her. When Facebook users in the United Arab Emirates grew increasingly active — opening groups such as "Gulf Air Sucks," "Boycott Dubai's Dolphinariums," and "Lesbians in Dubai" — the government sought to ban Facebook. Similarly, an Italian senator unsuccessfully attempted to pass a bill that would ban online content that "ignites or justifies" criminal behavior, after many Facebook users publicly praised imprisoned mafia bosses (Kirkpatrick 278–280).

These examples demonstrate that Facebook is genuinely a disruptive force — one that disrupts social norms embedded in political systems, social relations, cultures, and religions. It is impossible to state categorically whether this is a good or bad thing. What is clear is that Facebook and other social networking media may narrow power gaps around the world, since Facebook adds little to the already formidable power of authoritarian governments while empowering the politically and socially disadvantaged in new ways. It is not surprising, then, that Facebook has become a venue for opposing political and social injustice. As recent events in the Middle East have shown, Facebook is more aligned with the politically disadvantaged and the poor, who have embraced it even as governments in the region have sought to ban it. Many governments — China's being the most prominent — do not permit Facebook precisely because they wish to prevent the scenarios witnessed across the Middle East.

Facebook Revolutions

It was around 2008 that Oscar Morales, a young man in Colombia, decided he had had enough of FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), a Marxist group that routinely kidnapped people, holding them as hostages for months or years while many died in captivity. Angry and despairing, he turned one night to Facebook — which he had been using to stay in touch with friends and high school classmates — and searched for "FARC." Finding no existing group or expression of outrage against FARC, he decided to create one himself. He designed a logo featuring the Colombian flag with the caption "NO MORE KIDNAPPINGS, NO MORE LIES, NO MORE KILLINGS, NO MORE FARC," and named the group "Un Millón de Voces Contra Las FARC" ("One Million Voices Against FARC"). Although Morales had approximately one hundred Facebook friends at the time, his group attracted 1,500 members within six hours, and another 2,500 joined in the six hours that followed.

As more and more people joined, many began calling for action. Morales decided to organize a national demonstration against FARC in Colombia's capital, Bogotá, on February 4. He received overwhelming support from people across Colombia as well as visitors from Buenos Aires, Paris, Los Angeles, Miami, and elsewhere. "What ensued was one of the most extraordinary examples of digitally fueled activism the world has ever seen," writes Kirkpatrick. "On February 4, about 10 million people marched against FARC in hundreds of cities in Colombia according to Colombian press estimates. As many as 2 million more marched in cities around the world. The movement that began with an impassioned midnight Facebook post in one frustrated young man's bedroom led to one of the largest demonstrations ever, anywhere in the world" (Kirkpatrick 4–5). This mass rally against social injustice in Colombia was one of the first of its kind and inspired millions of disgruntled young men and women in other parts of the world who yearned for political and social change.

Government officials in Iran have grown increasingly wary of social networking in the years since. One official compared Facebook and Twitter to "Satanism" that the West uses in its war against Iran. The head of the Pupil's Basij militia — a paramilitary volunteer group established by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979 — described the expansion of social networking sites among the country's 17 million Facebook users as harmful to the country's religious and cultural values. He dubbed Facebook, Twitter, the blogosphere, computer games, and films as the "most effective elements of soft war" waged by the United States against Iran, aimed at undermining the country's core values ("Iran Warns of Facebook's Soft Power"). These official statements reflect both the repressive media environment maintained by the Iranian government and its fear of social media's power — a fear that Iranians and observers worldwide witnessed after the elections in Iran were rigged in the summer of 2009.

When state officials proclaimed the incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner of the 2009 elections, many Iranians decided they needed to act. Opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi used Twitter and Facebook to mobilize the masses against the government. The Iranian government expelled foreign journalists, making social networking media the only venue through which international observers could learn what was taking place. Social media allowed Iranians to garner outside support. For instance, the campaign "Help Iran Election," established by Topify.com's Arik Faimovich, asked followers to tint their profile photos green and set their time zones to Tehran's, while encouraging them to retweet posts coming from Iran. At its peak, Faimovich's campaign had 160,000 followers, including high-profile U.S. foreign policy analysts. Sympathetic hacker groups attacked Iranian government websites and helped protesters circumvent Internet filters (Burns & Eltham 303–304).

Iranian officials responded by taking Mousavi's Twitter account offline. Mousavi then turned to Facebook. He and his supporters used Facebook in a number of innovative ways: posting photos documenting police brutality, providing outsiders with hard evidence against the government, and coordinating protests. As one analyst noted, Iranians using Facebook and Twitter provided "eyewitness accounts" of events unfolding in Iran (Alexanian). They also turned the Facebook page into a news hub accessible to anyone. Prominent figures — including popular artists and singers — posted artistic illustrations and songs in support of the movement. The page gathered 120,000 "friends," in addition to many more regular visitors. The followers were highly heterogeneous, representing young Westernized men and women, communists, monarchists, and those with Islamic views. Many members also protected themselves from government surveillance by replacing their profile photos with the slogan "Where is My Vote?" (Marandi & Hughes 177–178).

The revolutionary activism ultimately did not succeed: the election results were not reversed, Ahmadinejad retained the presidency, and police and paramilitary forces tracked down some activists through Twitter and Facebook, imprisoning or executing them. Many analysts therefore warn against placing excessive trust in social media tools for those fighting repressive regimes (Burns & Eltham). Yet the Iranian social networking revolution did not fail completely. If Facebook had primarily been used for staying connected with friends before the uprising, more Iranians began using it afterward for political discussion. The Iranian activists demonstrated the power of Twitter and Facebook, inspiring like-minded people in neighboring Arab countries including Tunisia, Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Algeria.

Conclusion

Facebook, as invented by Mark Zuckerberg, was a social networking site for college students who wanted to stay connected. But now Facebook is many things to many people. It is a global phenomenon that affects social relations, political events, and cultural and religious norms in different parts of the world. It is used by minority groups and by those running for political office alike. It is an effective marketing tool, while intelligence organizations use it to surveil users. Among all these uses, Facebook has also become a vehicle for political and social activism. From Latin America to the Middle East, from North Africa to Southeast Asia, and from Europe to the United States, Facebook is used to mobilize collective action against political and social injustice. The revolutionary developments in the Middle East in recent years stand as clear testimony to the validity of this argument.

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