By James Deane
As events continue to unfold in Syria and elsewhere, an intense topic of conversation this One World Media Week has been on the implications of the powerful effects of media and social media in shaping the 2011 “Arab Spring”. At an ODI event on Monday, the discussion focused less on the specific events in Tunisia, Egypt and beyond and more on what their wider significance might be, especially for development. A key conclusion was that, for all the extraordinary scale and speed of change, events need to be considered from a long term perspective.
Despite the optimism generated by recent events, until recently much of the narrative on the future of democracy and even the role of communication in fostering democracy was becoming pessimistic. The so-called “twitter revolutions” in Iran and Moldova in 2009 did not result in major change; in Kenya, local language radio stations created through major liberalisation were implicated in fuelling violence in 2007/8; hate media seemed to be on the rise elsewhere, as did the sophistication in the use of new media by extremist groups such as al-Qaeda and Al Shabaab.
Accompanying these events, arguments made by commentators such as Evgeny Morozov, pointed to the “Net Delusion” and the degree to which governments and other authorities can and do increasingly exercise political control and surveillance through the web. Scholars such as Larry Diamond argued for good reason that the world had entered a “Democratic recession”. Towards the end of the last decade, democracy had been overthrown or gradually stifled in a number of key states including Nigeria, Russia, Thailand, Venezuela, Bangladesh and the Philippines.
Now, as suggested by the focus on Monday night, we are back to optimism about both the future of democracy and the obviously critical role of media and communication in creating the conditions for people to exercise democratic voice and power. There are plenty of people who argue that it was not laptops who marched on Tahrir Square but people and that revolutions are nothing new. Nevertheless, most who were involved have argued that events in Egypt and Tunisia were hugely facilitated because a critical mass of people had access to mobile telephony and social media, had the tools to organise and crucially had been sensitised to a different political reality by the increasingly satellite prevalence of independent media such as Al Jazeera and the BBC.
The potential of information and media is heading up the development as well as the political and diplomatic agendas. Development organisations are more and more focused on the problems of ensuring that citizens can demand accountability from governments and service providers.
It is becoming ever clearer just how profound the implications of new communication and media environments are for democratic, governance and development outcomes. The message from this meeting was that the time has come to move beyond the sudden rush of enthusiasm that events such as the Arab Spring prompt, to a more considered longer term set of frameworks and strategies that can properly integrate media and communication issues into development, diplomatic and media support efforts.