This chapter discusses the relationship between mass protests and mass media, highlighting the role of technology in shaping the organization and amplification of protests. It explores how the media often presents protests in a simplified narrative that may not accurately reflect the complexities of the situations on the ground. The chapter also examines the role of social media in mass protests, discussing both its positive impact in spreading awareness and its negative consequences in terms of forming unified revolutionary governments.
Paris Marx is joined by Vincent Bevins to discuss the mass protests of the 2010s, the role that social and traditional media played in them, and why the horizontalism of those movements ultimately didn’t work.
Vincent Bevins is a longtime foreign correspondent who has worked for the Washington Post, Financial Times, and LA Times. He’s the author of The Jakarta Method and If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution.
Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.
The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation and produced by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.
Also mentioned in this episode:
- Read excerpts from If We Burn in The Guardian and In These Times.
- Vincent mentioned the work of Charles Tilley, Cihan Tuğal, Evgeny Morozov, and Andrey Mir.
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