In my last post I talked about how organizers often see their efforts countered by site bans. Now I want to discuss service outages. During Egypt’s election and subsequent protests, the government banned access to Twitter, Facebook and few select blogs. Still, messages spread as platforms, sites and forums rose up to carry the load. The reason why was because the movement was branded across platforms.

HASHTAG: #EGYPT #JAN 25
When the Egyptian movement was first mentioned on Twitter, messages were tagged as “#egypt” or “#jan25” to mark the date of the first uprising. The story of the woman who started the Jan 25 hashtag is available here. Because the status updates were consistent in their use of the hashtag, even when all of Egypt’s internet service was cut, the tags were recognizable in signage, guerilla art and Western media coverage. According to Twitter’s corporate site, the Egyptian tags were among the top 10 most popular topics of the year.

BRANDING A MOVEMENT
The point here is that if you want to organize a movement, you need to avoid being dependent on one distribution method and concentrate instead on spreading the symbol or idea across many platforms.

A year ago 99% meant very little to Americans but today it’s pregnant with meaning and that meaning reaches far beyond Twitter, Facebook, etc.

The bottom line is that if you’re going to enact change, the medium ISN’T always the message — the message is the message
Next Post: ANONYMITY & PERSONAL PRIVACY - PART 3/3