The Situations of Occupy Wall Street







3 thoughts on “The Situations of Occupy Wall Street”

  1. I profoundly disagree with the notion that “that these sort of events are perhaps only possible nowadays with social media,” and would point out that the protests in Egypt actually militate against that conclusion (as I pointed out in extended analyses here and here). I think saying “Look what social media can do!” is more of the silly, myopic techno-determinism that’s gotten our field in trouble. It looks at methods and sees tools; it looks at practices and sees cool gee-whiz gadgets; it looks at democracy and sees a Brookstone catalog. Most of the folks in Egypt are too poor to have computers or internet, and to declare the Egyptian revolution to have been a victory for social media is to willfully misunderstand what happened and fail to acknowledge the profound economic inequalities that the protests were about.

    Let’s try that thesis again with a variation: “these sort of events [i.e., mass protests] are only possible with social media.” Nonsense. There have been plenty of protests in years past without social media. So the argument is, essentially, that what happened on Wall Street within a contemporary context that included social media could have only have happened on Wall Street within a contemporary context that included social media. In other words, current events happen in a context structured by the context of current events.

    That’s not an argument, it’s a tautology. It says nothing interesting about social media or technology.

    1. Certainly social media is not a cause (an “exigency” in the language of rhetorical situation) of Occupy Wall Street or the Arab Spring. And certainly there have been lots of protests and uprisings and the like well before social media and the internet and even not so contemporary organizational tools like print.

      However, what’s going on here with technology and these events are different and important from what has happened before. From a theoretical point of view (and that’s what is most immediately of interest to me, no pun intended), communication technologies like social media change the way that rhetoric functions in situations as has been described by folks like Bitzer, Vatz, Consigny, Edbauer-Rice, etc. I could belabor this, but that’s essentially my diss and what might come next project. The short answer is I think that technology problematizes the time and space of situations, and I think there are few better examples of that then social media.

      The less theoretical/more pragmatic issue here is not a matter of cause but the ways in which social media enable this kind of action, especially as it comes out of a culture literate in these tools. Discontent existed in Egypt long before social media, of course; but there was also a critical mass of users of social media who were able to use those tools to take some action, one that I also am aware had been growing for quite some time before the MSM started following the story. I think the same is true (in very general terms) with Occupy Wall Street.

      Now, juxtapose this to a place like Syria or a place like Cuba. We know there’s a lot of discontent/revolution in Syria, but because the state keeps much MUCH more authoritarian control over networks and also because there is not as deep of a social media culture in Syria (in part because of the control issue), it has not gone as well. And in Cuba, where there is essentially no internet, there is no opportunity for a rebellion against Castro et al.

      Certainly there are many other issues swirling around these situations. I’m not trying to suggest that Twitter/Facebook = overthrow of the government in Egypt etc., and I haven’t read anyone who has made a similar claim. But clearly the opposite of that is not true either, and that’s what’s interesting and different for me.

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