Apparently a popular equation online amidst Iran's election has been "Tiananmen + Twitter = Tehran," which obviously places a heavy emphasis on the idea that twittering (or tweeting) has rounded up hundreds and thousands of people behind those protesting Iranians who feel robbed of their voices with the supposed re-election of Ahmadinejad.
It's true- everyday I receive at least 10 Twitter updates referring to online petitions I can sign, graphic icons I can create, and listservs I can join, all to show my support. Sometimes as I'm scrolling through them, I feel an indescribable sense of community, as if simply by reading I am declaring "Yes! I'm with you!" But to be honest, the sensation is fleeting.
Maybe it is the cynic in me, maybe it is the fact that I'm still not super Web-savvy like some of my peers (I only have 22 followers on Twitter after posting over 50 updates — what am I doing wrong here?), but sometimes I can't help but still feel detached and skeptical about all of this hoopla on the Internet.
The first step to recognizing a problem is to be informed of it, of course, but what comes next? If all I do is read news updates every few hours and maybe link to them through Facebook, Twitter, or some other online social networking site, how much good does that do? I may reach a fair amount of people, promoting awareness both to myself and others, but URLs don't necessarily perform the same functions as actually taking to the streets and rallying.
Or do they?
This past week, The Washington Post published an analysis of the above equation, posing a lot of my same concerns. Could it be that the Web has so changed the world, that much of our faith in activism can rely on blogging and reaching one another through the Internet? Is it safe to say that 1,000 online supporters will translate to 1,000 marching supporters?
Simple copy and pasting, RTing (retweeting), and forwarding somehow seems to me like it's taken the place of physical action and movement (you know, the kind you do with the whole of your body, not just your fingers) outside (as opposed to in a dark corner in your room or hunched over your iPhone). Also, I don't know how I feel about the quality of "news." With the constant need to be posting every 10 minutes (since "old news" seems to be anything three hours old), I've been reading some really random stuff. Interesting? Maybe. Newsworthy? Probably not. You can Twitter all day long and all you'll be left with is a public timeline with a million updates.
It's easy to click a hyperlink, it's a little harder to leave our computer screens.
(An original and shorter version of this article was written for Asians in America Magazine, where I am the managing editor.)
