it. oh and welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle the new weapons of mass mobilization you tube facebook and twitter they are favored tools able to bring segments of society together in the name of change this is been witnessed in the arab spring europe season of discontent and america's own anti wall street protests powerful tools indeed but can social networks really alter the political landscape. and.

cross-talk digital technologies and media i'm joined by danny schechter in new york he is a journalist author and independent filmmaker in san francisco we have john perry barlow he is co-founder of the electronic frontier foundation and in london we go to laurie penny she is a journalist and feminist activist all right folks this is cross talk to me as you can jump in anytime you want and i very much encourage it but first marcia is social media driving the process i think it's more complicated than that but what we have witnessed over the course of less than here is remarkable three north african regimes down the larger part of the arab world a blaze and now civil uprisings are gripping settings from it away to the u.s. to japan to that and many have raised questions about how much information technology accounts for the scale of the process and as recent events in egypt and elsewhere have shown we are only just beginning to comprehend the effects of the information revolution on power in this century that the internet and technology were part of the arab springs narrative is beyond question the video clips of the first protests in tunisia. were recorded using mobile phones and posted on facebook

making their way across the arab world and eventually being picked up by news channels later many will refer to the tunisian revolution as the twitter or the wiki leaks revolution and bloggers will be basking in recognition likely now ben many has even been suggested as a contender for the nobel peace prize. i think we should recognize cyber activism as a movement that can change things make things better and recognizing that is what governments in countries like egypt libya and syria have done to control dissent by cracking down on online media and even in europe protests over budget cuts had authorities contemplating the same we are working with the police the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence disorder and criminality even though governments have always had to worry about information flows this is the first time there was finding it hard to control political discourse and it marks an important paradigm shift in which the powers that be are

now under intense scrutiny but then it could also prove to be a double edged sword to talk about the double edged sword thank you very much for that much more if i go to you first in london activism overrated can cyber activism change the world well i think in some ways mistakes are being made between what cyber activism can help people do and what's the effect of cyber activism on protests because these protests across the world aren't happening because of the internet they're happening because of a global crisis of capitalism people rising up in hundreds of countries all over the world that nine hundred cities at the moment are occupied because of anti hysterically movements because people are dissatisfied with their lives they feel there's a crisis in represented in representative democracy if their governments don't represent them so let's get that sorted first people don't just you know log onto the internet one day and decide to have a revelation what social networks can do is they can make that process much faster

they can make the sharing of information much quicker much easier especially if you have people on board like anonymous little sec. cyber activists and what some people called how to best can facilitate the process of information of in for a nation liberation if you like and. ok danny if i go to you and we look at what is going through with the arab spring and we have what's going on in wall street here what difference is social networking making because there is the anger out there just social networking make us more aware of it but you can be more in touch with people because it really has nothing to do with the root cause it's just a tool for others to communicate their their discontent even their rage. well you know it's interactive so people can connect with each other as well as with information it's also quick and rapid and it's a way to get access to information some of it though rather superficial what you

have is for example twitter feeds that are linking to mainstream media articles it's not all you know generated in the social media world it's often generated in the mainstream media that's why i think you need a sort of sense of a media a college easier that all this media that amplifies what's going on it makes it something that the public itself finds out about here in new york three by a three to one margin new yorkers say they support you know occupy wall street that doesn't mean they're all online they're reading about it they're seeing it on t.v. and they're going down to the park and they're meeting people there and getting you know exposed to it and turned on by it and we're seeing more and more surveys showing approval of the scent the central message even though people don't know a lot of specifics about it the idea that people are fighting back or resisting or

raising these economic issues or targeting wall street all of that is a turn on for people over the world and they getting information from multiple sources it's very interesting if we can go to john you just if i could is going to john real quick here john you know it's i think it's very interesting and we look at it because bridge of how social media is used in mainstream media and i'm thinking of television specifically bill covered chair anything related to terrorism terrorists different groups around the world groups that the united states doesn't like and its allies but you know when it comes to social discontent and these kind of protest occupation protests people find out through social media first not through the mainstream. well i think that's because these movements are social in their nature they're not ideological and that's a significant difference in the past what you usually had was some firebrand who wrote. a big book that contained an ideology that led to revolution and now what

you can get is this tender field of discontent that is said only ignited by almost an arbitrary incident and blows up to be a movement overnight that doesn't have an ideology and doesn't have a leader and i think that's profoundly different from anything that you've seen before also i think because of the digital media people are able to marshal a lot more information that is within their own media ecology they develop a media ecology and i would say that that a lot of people who didn't know very much about the banking system didn't know very much about the the way in which the lobbying combine works are suddenly very well informed on that by virtue of the fact that they're passing around a lot of charts and graphs and data about the grotesque concentration of wealth in the upper one percent on a global basis. ok more do you want to jump in there laurie i'm getting a lot of break up there well i'm laurie. yeah breakup that's replicated to some

extent offline if you go down to the occupy wall street protests and in london you find it full of information leaflets pamphlets lots and lots of books the idea is that we're very very fruit sense information is power and you know amassing information and informing of self almost replaces a defined ideology in terms of you know having a leader to behind but also the fact of being involved in social networks and the of the fact of being involved in what you call in the media ecology i think in which governments cannot control access to information really changes the relationship of the individual with power because one of the ways that individual that government sorry exert power over individuals is to censor to control information especially in times of crisis you seeing from london to terrorist square governments cracking down on the use of the internet use of mobile phone

technology you know when there's civil unrest and actually the fact having internet technology and being able to break those censorship those censorship in force meant really empowers people in a very very likable real way it makes people a lot of people are able to experience that just in real time almost as a mean ok. i think so i think so but i don't fully agree with it you know in terms of people are getting turned on just by the internet they're getting turned on by participation by peeing part of a community by sensing a movement that is in just thirty days gone from one park in new york to the whole world i mean i didn't hear some of what john had to say because the audio seems to be breaking up at least in my head here but anything he says i tend to agree with but you know i would say that we are not being educated enough and there are

a lot of people at the park and in the movement who feel it needs to be more education i personally you know been doing a lot of work on financial crime i've made a film about it i've i've written a book about it you know and i find that a lot of the people there are not very well informed about the details of it because it hasn't been covered either in the independent media or or in the in the in the social media so i think we have a long way to go here in trying to educate this movement so that they realize this is a long term struggle it's not something that's going to change tomorrow morning john you want to jump in there and i talk about phil i'd like to talk about filters too because a lot of people instead of things are going to john i'd like to back up a bit go ahead. yeah you know yes it does allow for a kind of very thin but broader participation but i want to issue a couple of cab it's one of which is that you know there used to be the term

armchair revolutionary the well no no there is even more widespread phenomenon which is the mouse pad revolutionary. which is somebody who's sitting in his computer you know probably in the basement with mom on the first floor. thinks that he's actively engaged in a revolutionary struggle when all you're doing is tweeting about it and i've been somewhat guilty of that i say well if i mean it's going to the things that matter involves involve getting getting out with your body and being there and being present ok no you know i think if you want to jump in there before we go to the break go ahead lawrence and me yeah firstly hundreds of thousands of people are in the streets putting their bodies in the line secondly you know i did this. revolutionary what we could understand is that these protests are not just physical process this symbolic process they're about changing minds and changing ideas and some people are able to engage you know better i don't mean to that watching these

videos we're not just you know this is not just about reading blogs on twitter we have videos taken from underneath horses' hoofs in times square i don't know what you are coming correct anyone he says that this movement's been going for thirty days this didn't actually start with occupy wall street much as the focus is going to jump in here we're going to go with brains and after that short break we'll continue our discussion of protests in social media state with r.t. . to each. move them it's.

easy to. fix a bank exit . was. cool to the latest in science and technology from around russia. we dumped a few jerks covered. welcome

back to crossfire computor about to mind you were talking about the influence of social networking on global change. ok danny where you wanted to say something right before the break so go right ahead yeah yeah i did yeah i did and you know i'm not saying that the whole movement started thirty days ago i'm saying that the occupation of the park here in new york city started thirty one or two days ago and it's quite amazing that in that short amount of time this whole example spread around the world the way it did but obviously there were at the scene the site in june i was in madrid in the possibile soul which had a big encampment the indignados of spain have been part of this this this movement and movements like it are not new but what is new is this media component and also this sense of global solidarity it's not just the national deal anymore

a local deal that the protests in egypt started two years earlier before exam you know any found that it's actually or square there were people active so so you know you should there is a lot about those facts and the chronology but about what the impact is and what it's likely to be ok john go ahead you want to jump in because i want to ask everybody a question about the arab revolutions really there's several foot ok there's several things that are new and i think they're important one of them is that. to an even greater extent than i saw in the sixty's this is a generational phenomenon. where the people who are sort of natives of cyberspace have a very different sense of the world then the people who are immigrants. they're there much more able to communicate organize assemble and change their views using digital media then their parents would be all right that's

important and i the really important thing though is the absence of ideology in the absence of leadership and i think that those are both in principle extremely good things but when you get around at the end of say a successful revolution and you try to form a government you go suddenly you've got a vacuum and this is much of the problem in the arab world at the moment and i'm very concerned about what's going to happen that still you know edge sword here and what is what happens when you succeed i mean stand i'd like to ask everyone a question here could could we have seen the i don't want to know i don't know if i want to agree with the word revolution but the changes in egypt in tunisia without social media would have it would have happened anyway or was that a critical element a critical tool for it to happen laurie what do you think about that. well i don't i am going to see lauren here in london for me sorry may i speak a few days into the egyptian revolution. shut down mean that's right and to

everyone's huge surprise severance huge surprise at the revelation carry don't have it wasn't just social media people from all over the world were actually getting information to activists on the ground sometimes using fax machines and this is not just about the technology itself it's about the mindset created by that technology and part of that is emerging from the technology but that is just the time people are fed up with being controlled by the dictators they're fed up with capital working in the way it does they're fed up with being controlled by big business they're fed up with not having a real say in their own lives in god i understand but i think some of the posturing we're not not the way we're discussing it now but some of the posturing in the mainstream media over this is the twitter revolution is quite depressed at this i find because it seems to suggest that this comes that this happens because of the internet rather than because of a massive deep global crisis of capital and people being fed up with that ok jenny

what do you think about that i mean how critical are you seeing the sudden had this sudden all this sudden let me just jump in here you know all of the sudden the conversation has changed to the issue that wasn't really being discussed the power and abuses of wall street of economic power is now being discussed all over the media you know things start in one way but they also morph into something else you know back in the sixty's we chant the whole world is watching well now the whole world is watching let's not forget al-jazeera is wrong the role of other t.v. outlets in bringing this to large audiences all the world that helps spread this message also i think this notion of an. you know it's a little fuzzy i mean the people don't have to have a political line they have a shared set of values and convictions. and a sense of who the enemy is and what's wrong and i think that that is some merging in these protests that's just it's not being done under the banner of the old left

it's being done under the banner of a new generation but many in the older generation gray heads like myself are also involved in being supportive so it's multi-generational it's multi racial it's international it has a lot of coverage going to play there and it's very you know. go ahead john. i think that the absence of ideology is almost always a positive thing and i don't think that there's an absence of understanding i mean simply because there's not a an ideological take on this because you know it's not marxist or something like that i think that this is actually quite valuable because what we're doing here is identifying and clarifying the problem and then collectively getting together to come up with solutions to it which i think is vastly superior to having some guy. describe the problem at some point and have everybody fall in line with his

solution ok you know it's i think we learned a lot it was remade here the revolution will be got a lot on your article development from the but it is it's take it's take another view here whatever you know is this really just if it's also just a failure of what was generally called mainstream media because people are looking for alternative news to looking for an alternative point of view i mean we in mainstream media in the u.k. in the united states are still very dismissive of the occupation movement and things like that they're a bunch of loons they're on the fringe they're a lame thing was i mean let's go to laurie go to laura first was laurie but that is we're going to head laurie. if i can if i if i can come in. the the the tension between mainstream media and online media is very very interesting at the moment because obviously it's not a straight divide you have people out there who are journalists like myself blogging and tweeting and you have people who are mainly involved in the movements organizing online going and writing op posts for mainstream papers like the

guardian or the new york times but the tension is very much between many to many medium which is the internet and associated digital technologies and a few to many medium which is the traditional mainstream print radio television press and the relationship with power that that generates people feel that they don't want the mainstream media dictating what politics is and how simple how sick how the symbolism of politics should work anymore and you've seen that over the summer with you know that scandals with the murdoch press people are very very people are sick and tired of living in living under the dictates of the third estate people don't want what they see as corporate interests controlling the media involved in their politics and now having digital technology allows people to feel that they're more in control that they are the media they can create the media they don't have to wait for protests to be mediated as it were they can they can make

that leap that they can you know. very direct from a protest. you know at the same at the same time and i'm speaking now as an independent journalist who was also at one point a network journalist you know i see an interplay here you know i don't think we want just to talk to ourselves i think we want to talk to the whole society and the media started off by ignoring it then after the police attack people here in new york they started covering it then they started ridiculing it and making fun of it now they seem to be reporting it in a much more serious way and public opinion is showing itself to be very supportive which is a good thing it adds to the movement's power it adds to the movement's appeal and i think we want that to happen to the same time the social media is able to that the mainstream media is really is a green idea had been set manipulate them. as as i think people understand people

i'm sorry in the mainstream media they can manipulate rather than certain that manipulates them and that's what's most clever about this movement if you go down to any of the big occupations in london. in matricular find at the center of the paper work people are putting out press releases you know speaking to the mainstream press on the phone generating the story themselves is a movement that's very very smart very very interesting with how the media well this is not what still people are saying this is a bunch of crazy hippie that crazy hippies then have the guile to write press releases that there's much punch as i've seen these guys do ok john you touched upon something earlier in the program which is in tripoli john i think it's a. meeting john and i go to john in san francisco is that you mentioned something really is very interesting is that when what is success for this kind of social movements i mean it when they win what does that mean ok how does the world change because you know what you pointed out i mean there's a lot of people sitting in their basements writing you know tweeting and things

like that and there's no critical mass here so if there's no critical mass in the movement how can there be critical mass and some kind of outcome oh i think there can be. critical mass and the outcome i mean obviously i don't i don't believe that what we're trying to do here in the united states is in any way similar to what had to be done in egypt say where they really literally had over overthrow the government and and probably have to do it again now. but what we have to do is to is to get people to seriously take a look at how our government is working and start to put in the necessary inhibitors to this kind of of spin up in the concentration of power and wealth people need to know what the hell's going on first of all there has to be a movement of understanding that sees that the plutocracy has literally taken over the well supply and the power supply. and already i'm going to do the thing all over here i noticed and laura you want to say something kind of lori may you be the

last word in the program go ahead. i think one of the things that's important about that stone saying is it's not government that need to be overthrown necessarily in this case this is a movement that is global it's globalized and the technology the internet allows people to start thinking about global solutions to a global problem like john says this is the telcos see this is globalized principally top course the end monopolization of wealth that needs to be forward simply overthrowing a government is not going to do all right and all right danny you want to throw in your two cents a real going to be such a bad idea i'm sure you would just say you know don't over don't dismiss overthrowing governments governments that are not doing their job that are broken that are not responsive to the people don't deserve to be there but it's not just a political issue it's an economic crisis and we have to focus on that we find a lot agreement on this program here many thanks to my guest today in new york san francisco and in london thanks to our viewers for watching us here are can see you

next time and remember crosstalk.

well the british sign it's time to. go to. the. market. find out what's really happening to the global economy for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines. was a report. as many libyans celebrated the country's the clarity liberation questions remain over whether the price they paid in the form of lost lives in ruling infrastructure what's too high. public figuring but now breakthrough the search for a solution to the debt crisis that is some of them brussels hit the buffers while

the french and british leaders argue over the euro's future. and two decades without nukes we visit while was once the world's largest nuclear test site has a stand which still bears the scars of its atomic legacy despite the program's closure twenty years ago. it's eight am in the russian capital you're watching r t was marina joshie welcome to the program it was a blood stain image which marked the end of the old regime but which some fear also hence at a bloody future the graphic footage of colonel gadhafi is demise and questions over his death continue to cause controversy that as libya's interim rulers rushed to call for a celebration of what they call.