The New Tool to Democracy: Social Media

As a public affairs officer in the US Navy, I was intimately familiar to the power and pull of the social media revolution. Tweets, status updates, blogs, microblogs, and yes, even Vlogs, have been indispensable tools to communicate in a viral medium as well as to track the pulse and viability of a story long after it is written and forgotten.

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During the Iran presidential elections in the summer of 2009, the US State Department specifically requested that Twitter not be taken down for maintenance.  This request substantiated the geopolitical value of Twitter and forever changed the landscape of social media in government, politics, and yes, even diplomacy.

A mini revolution ignited in Iran after the flawed Presidential election of dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.   Meanwhile, the Iranian fascist government virtually choked off the flow of news to and fro Tehran.  Many Iranians who protested that the election was rigged did so via Twitter. Twitter, not CNN, evolved as the ideal medium because it was real-time, was shot-gunned by the people closest to the action, could be deployed by virtually anyone with a computer or cell phone and was virtually impossible for the government to track or block.

During a revolution, crisis or emergency, Twitter really showed its spunk and stamina.  Forward to the present day: Egyptians vividly remember Iran's Islamic Revolution of 1979, almost a generation ago.  The unprecedented uprising of how the people threw out an indominable monarch has been magically weaved into the anecdotes of society as cohesively as the tales of Sinbad have become an endearing part of Arabian culture.  

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However, history is never fully flawless. Diplomacy is screened through dense filters manipulated by the ideology of totalitarian states.  In today's dramatic string of Middle East uprisings, social media has been the decisive medium to execution.

So could this revolution happen without Facebook?  It is no coincidence that Mark Zuckerberg was chosen as the 2010 Time Person of the Year.


Just as Twitter was instrumental in Iran, Facebook has been even more crucial to the development of political ideology that has led to this historic uprising.  Without Facebook, poverty, struggles and tension would still tragically exist in Egypt.  But without a Facebook, there would be virtually no way for these tensions to escalate to a boiling point and no way for disparaged Egyptians to vent their anger at Mubarak -- little chance for that pent-up anger to perpetuate across nations and borders.