Massive Protests Organized Through Twitter and Facebook

Posted by Tana Ganeva, AlterNet at 11:41 AM on April 8, 2009.

A quick, effective way to demonstrate tech savvy and superior insight  nowadays is to claim that Twitter and Facebook are being over-hyped, particularly as instruments of political action or as venues for the spread of news and information. Certainly, this is an understandable reaction to the melodramatic proselytizing on part of the sites’ most ardent proponents. Then there’s the hilarious desperation of crusty news anchors -- eager to stay with the times -- begging you to “tweet” and "friend" them. It's the kind of thing that begs for cynicism.

But, sometimes incredibly inspiring stuff that reveals the huge potential of Twitter and Facebook happens: earlier this week, young Moldovans used the online tools to organize a massive rally protesting the Communist Party's win in Sunday's Parliamentary elections. The New York Times details how the demonstrations seemingly materialized out of nowhere, and how protesters used Twitter and Facebook to stay ahead of authorities and keep the rest of the world apprised of the situation on the ground:

The sea of young people reflected the deep generation gap that has developed in Moldova, and the protesters used their generation’s tools, gathering the crowd by enlisting text-messaging, Facebook and Twitter, the social messaging network.

The protesters created their own searchable tag on Twitter, rallying Moldovans to join and propelling events in this small former Soviet state onto a Twitter list of newly popular topics, so people around the world could keep track.

...

The protests apparently started on Monday, when organizers from two youth movements, Hyde Park and ThinkMoldova, began calling for people to gather at an event billed as “I am a not a Communist.” Natalia Morar, one of the leaders of ThinkMoldova, described the effort on her blog as “six people, 10 minutes for brainstorming and decision-making, several hours of disseminating information through networks, Facebook, blogs, SMSs and e-mails.”

The protesters agreed to gather the next morning and began spreading the word through Facebook and Twitter, inventing a searchable tag for the stream of comments: #pman, which stands for Piata Marii Adunari Nationale, Chisinau’s central square. When Internet service was shut down, Mr. Moscovici said, he issued updates with his cellphone.

Evgeny Morozov, a specialist in technology and politics at the Open Society Institute in New York, a group that works with democratic movements worldwide and has been active in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, said Facebook and Twitter had apparently played a major role in the protests.

“Nobody expected such a massive scale,” he said. “I don’t know of any other factor which could account for it.”

Sadly, the protests resulted in multiple people getting injured, 193 arrests,  and no give from the country’s Communist President, who, in the timeless fashion of Eastern European leaders, responded to the massive unrest with absurd, hyperbolic rhetoric (“fascists intoxicated with hatred”) and finger-pointing  (Romania and the EU).

But protesters appear unlikely to give up, and have taken to the streets again in support of those arrested.

Disclaimer: Joshua Holland just pointed out that since the primary source here is the New York Times and other MSM, there's no way to know at this early stage if the protests were a genuine uprising, or if the U.S. has some involvement, as has been suggested about the various "color" revolutions of the past decade.

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Tagged as: protests, twitter, facebook, moldova