The limits of social media in understanding protests

Above is the tweeting intensity for geo-tagged tweets coming from the protest site in Athens. Though the number rises and falls with major events on the ground, Athens generally has low levels of tweeting.



Compare this to a protest site in Barcelona Spain. Though the crowds in Athens are as bigger if not bigger than those in Spain the levels of tweeting in Spain are far higher than in Greece.

Levels of tweeting vary wildly between cultures. Greeks are less likely to tweet with mobile smartphones than Spanish. This can be in part accounted for by income. But also do not forget that Greeks could quickly start tweeting in the way Arab have since the Arab Awakening.

A very key thing to remember is that Greeks don't need to tweet. Why, well here are some key observations:

• Protests in Greece are more organized, they involve more established groups within civil society like trade unions. They have the ability to organize and communicate that pre-date twitter.
• Protest in Greece are more acknowledged by the local and global media. One interesting fact is that Greek protesters have been flashing green laser light at the press core. The explanation I hear is that the protesters are not happy with the way the events are covered in the Greek press. Outside of Greece the global media has paid huge amounts of attention to Greece. In Spain many of the acompada protesters felt they were being ignored. In Bahrain people felt as though the global media had ignored them. In these cases people who feel neglected by established media will turn to new media to try and get the message out. This neglect of protests is not a case in Greece, where every action of the Greek protests is carried live around the world.
• Protests in Greece contain a larger band of age demographics. Unlike Spain the Greek protests have drawn people from almost every demographic in the country. And unlike Egypt Greece is a European country with an older population. Therefore a large part of the demonstrations are people are not digital natives.
• Protests have often been violent. Though there are debates of who started the fighting Greece protests have seen more confrontation. Tweeting is generally more active in large peaceful protests.

Live reporting from Madrid Acampadasol protest

Photo By Gail Orenstein/The Web 3.0 Lab/Clima/Madrid

Demonstrating the Clima.me tool for measuring twitter density to the communication tent in acampadasol Madrid. We showed the team how to use high and low density comparisons to guage the scale and activity of protests. These guys have a very international and well educated team of techies right at the heart of the protest. Not surprisingly it was the best place to find competent English speakers.

The communication center is a core part of this protest, but do not think of the Spanish camping protest as a Social Media or Facebook protest. People are very clear that the reacl community building is happening on the ground. Rather social media and computers provide tools for this process. People expressed inspiration from things learned from the Arab Spring, and appreciation for how the Internet has helped organize the protest: but the real event is happening between people or within small groups that gather to discuss issues late in to the Spanish night.

Photo By Gail Orenstein/The Web 3.0 Lab/Clima/Madrid

But just as it is possible to over state the importance of Web 3.0 Internet and mobile technology in the protests in Madrid, it is also just as wrong to understate them. Everything that is happening here is being captured, posted, and shared via a vast army of mobile machines to geo-social networks. The protest in Madrid has to embrace a Open Collaborative media environment carried around by the tens of thousands of ordinary people who pass through the protest every day.

Photo By Gail Orenstein/The Web 3.0 Lab/Clima/Madrid

Social media impacts the acampadasol in a rich matrix of complex relationships. Events take place that are pre-arranged online. During the event people put away their mobile phones and start talking or acting live. People coming to see what is going on will video tap or photograph the event. Many of these people post this video and photos to social media or blogs. From there people regionally and globally have access to the events. Many people around the world are encourage. Some people even fly down to Madrid to see what is happening. This analysis then comes back in to many of the participants in the continual feedback loop with is at the heart of Web 3.0.

In keeping with the recent protests in the Arab world we are seeing extremely high tweeting coming from the site of an evolving protest in Puerta del Sol Madrid.

Or use our Facebook App.

Extremely intense tweeting from protest in Barcelona, Spain

We are seeing very intense and concentrated tweeting right now from Plaça de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain, which is a protest site for the ongoing protest movement.

Using the high level tweeting meter we see an extremely concentrated number of tweets coming from the site which confirm reports of a massive protests confronted by police today.


Also we are seeing extremely high tweeting coming from the site of an evolving protest in Madrid.

Or use our Facebook App.

Update May 28th: this morning we say a high density tweet reading from the Barcelona protest site of 94, which would indicate a large crowd of heavy web users remains collected in that area. The high density reading functions at the near smallest reliable limit of GPS, and therefore we are confident that the square remains crowded.

Extremely high and concentrated tweets coming from Madrid potest

In keeping with the recent protests in the Arab world we are seeing extremely high tweeting coming from the site of an evolving protest in Puerta del Sol Madrid.

Or use our Facebook App.

Using the High Density check, seen by clicking the High Density button, we see that the very high tweeting in central Madrid is very concentrated in the area around Puerta del Sol. A high density score of 97 is on the same scale of the Royal Wedding site or the WTC site when Bin Laden was killed.

Students are demanding jobs and economic justice. Perhaps most interesting is the demand that banks which have been bailed out after the 2008 crash be made to pay more of the consequences as opposed to austerity.

A new generation is being made to pay the price for the mistake of wealthy people a generation or two older than them. Governments present this as necessary common sense, but protest movements are demanding a rethink of this approach.

This could start a movement against the growing tendency of right wing parties in Europe to put in place cuts on education, social care, and government spending to cover the cost of bank bailouts and the resulting recession.

It will be interesting to see how generation politics plays out in Spain and then the rest of the EU. And it will be interesting to see what impact social media can play. This level of concentrated tweeting is not yet possible in the Arab world. The protesters in Madrid have more access to mobile communication than the students in Tahrir, but will that make any difference.

Update: 19th of May in the early morning and we are still seeing very high and concentrated tweeting from the demo. We are continuing to see the highest local concentration of tweets coming from the protest area using the high density tweeting tool.

This level of concentrated high tweeting is far greater than anything seen in the protests in Cairo and Bahrain. So the Spanish have the technological edge over protests in the Arab World. This will make for an interesting test of the true level of effectiveness that technology is playing in the revolts. Will the Madrid protests be able to change the way the financial crisis is being paid? Will they be able to reverse the trickle down of banking bailouts through the society and the rise of even more free market policies in Europe?

On the 20th of May we continue to see high levels of levels of concentrated tweeting from the protest site.

Update June 3rd: After watching this space for a few weeks we ventured down to Madrid to take a look at the tend city and meet some of the bloggers and tweeps there. What we saw was pretty interesting. During the few weeks of the protest a pretty well developed and organized little community has emerged, with community kitchen, library, meditation center and food store.

It is interesting to see how a real community, with different areas of work and responsibility has emerged out of what was only a computer network a month ago.

June 9, the continued high and concentrated tweeting from this area compared to the rest of Madrid is really amazing. This may be one of the largest web supported event in recent history.

FIFA 2010 Arsenal Star Fabregas Pictures