US policy promoted social media as democratization tools regardless of outcomes

Evidence

During the George W. Bush administration, the US State Department began training movements in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East in the use of digital tools. It became state policy to push for global democratization using technology and social media. In 2009, thousands of Iranians took to the streets to protest what they believed to be a fraudulent election. Some of them were using Twitter, and this seemed to confirm that social media could push the world toward the end of history. Andrew Sullivan, for The Atlantic, published a piece titled “The Revolution Will Be Twittered.” In the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof claimed that “in the quintessential 21st-century conflict … on the one side are government thugs firing bullets … on the other side are young protesters firing ‘tweets.’” It did not change the mainstream narrative much when this round of contention in Iran achieved very little, and the Iranian government actually used social media to identify and promptly arrest many of the dissidents. Mark Pfeifle, a former deputy national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration, tried to give the Nobel Peace Prize to Twitter. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 294

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the hype/counter-hype cycle that recurs in the tech-promises themes of my knowledge base. — connects to: Social media’s democratizing promise reversed into authoritarian crackdowns and troll-army suppression; Social media empowered authoritarian retrenchment rather than democratic dissent — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 490; Social media design decisions prioritize profit over user benefit or democratic ideals — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 718
• SEED: Could be an essay on how failed or actively counterproductive ‘revolution tech’ was later recycled into other markets.

Broader Connections

• Social media empowered authoritarian retrenchment rather than democratic dissent #expands (0.80) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 490
• Social media’s democratizing promise reversed into authoritarian crackdowns and troll-army suppression #expands (0.78)
• Social media design decisions prioritize profit over user benefit or democratic ideals #qualifies (0.74) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 718