The Shifting Relationship Between Governments and Social Media

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This chapter explores the changing attitudes of Western governments towards social media during the mass protest decade, from initially praising it for promoting democracy to viewing it as a threat. It also highlights the effective use of social media by other governments for their own power, emphasizing the importance of the real forces behind the tactics.

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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