Idle Twatter

Jay Rosen has been making some fun of cyber-pragmatists, whose reminders that we know little about the link between social media and democratization movements apparently constitute a “genre” in which:

1.) Nameless fools are staking maximalist claims. 2.) No links we can use to check the context of those claims. 3.) The masses of deluded people make an appearance so they can be ridiculed. 4.) Bizarre ideas get refuted with a straight face. 5.) Spurious historicity. 6.) The really hard questions are skirted.

He must not have read Evgeny Morozov‘s new book Net Delusion, whose very first chapter names the fools, links to the content, and reframes the big question as not whether social media matters but rather which side it ultimately benefits in the balance of power between citizens and authoritarian states.

Aaron Bady has a much more nuanced set of thoughts. TechPresident‘s Nancy Scola has some additional words of wisdom on how to evaluate social media’s role in the latest wave of democratization:

Revolutions can start and more or less finish in 18 days these days, and the debates they’re sparking on foreign affairs are happening at a similar pace. What technology means for the relationship between the citizen and the state is only going to become more important, and along with it the discussion of what on-looking governments like that of the United States should do in the mix. To wit, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is giving at talk tomorrow at George Washington University on the topic of “Internet Rights and Wrongs: Choices and Challenges In A Networked World,” a followup to her big “Internet freedom” speech last January that really kicked off domestic debate on the topic. This is stuff too important to ignore.