In next month’s Foreign Affairs, see “The Political Power of Social Media“. Our thanks to My Marrakesh, an expat with moxie, verve and a killer wardrobe. Excerpts from article:
Access to information is far less important, politically, than access to conversation.
Far more people in the 1500s were reading erotic novels than Martin Luther’s “Ninety-five Theses,” and far more people before the American Revolution were reading Poor Richard’s Almanack than the work of the Committees of Correspondence. But those political works still had an enormous political effect.
Access to information is far less important, politically, than access to conversation. Just as Luther adopted the newly practical printing press to protest against the Catholic Church, and the American revolutionaries synchronized their beliefs using the postal service that Benjamin Franklin had designed, today’s dissident movements will use any means possible to frame their views and coordinate their actions;
Just as Luther adopted the newly practical printing press to protest against the Catholic Church, and the American revolutionaries synchronized their beliefs using the postal