Maria Kivimaa: Social Politics

Following her thought-provoking piece on how she’d like the industry to improve, FCB Inferno’s social media curator Maria Kivimaa gets political in her latest piece for shots.net, turning her attention to the news earlier this week that Turkey’s prime minister has restricted the country’s access to Twitter.

“It’s quite amusing as well as alarming how hapless some politicians and world leaders are with social media. Amusing is the case of, for example, David Cameron, who, bless him, does try (below), but ends up being ridiculed.

I've been speaking to @BarackObama about the situation in Ukraine. We are united in condemnation of Russia's actions. pic.twitter.com/7Rk2k8iOIK
— David Cameron (@David_Cameron) March 5, 2014

Alarming is the current case of Turkey, whose government and especially prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, do not seem to grasp the true meaning of ‘social media’.

Social media is not a mere thing on the Internet. It's not a channel, a site for uploading videos or posting short messages. At its core, social media is people. It's us.

Cutting communication

Banning YouTube, Twitter or any of the several “channels” is the same as banning people from talking face to face. It’s like banning telephones because harmful information was once exchanged over the phone, or like banning language because politically flammable opinions were once put in a sentence following certain grammatical rules.

Tech turn off

What Turkey’s prime minister also fails to grasp is that once you’ve given people an inch of freedom, you cannot take it away. A ban on everything might still work in North Korea, as the nation has never collectively experienced anything else than a prevailing dark hole. But despite the few former attempts to ban social media, Turkey has another foot in the Western world with eyes on the EU and its people have become accustomed to a certain degree of free speech. You can take steps back on many other paths, but not on this one.

People power

There's also a wider context than just banning social media in the interest of ‘national security’. The West has occasionally had a tendency to exercise righteous preaching for its own values. Just by looking at WikiLeaks, there's a fair amount of hypocrisy-coloured light shed straight on ourselves. There is no total freedom of speech in the West. We have the kind of freedom of speech that fits our own norms.

But what's enough here is that the Turkish citizens themselves are opposing this. And social media, being both the object and vehicle in this battle, has again proven its power and meaning. It's not all about silly tweets and cat pictures. It's about society, history, values, politics - it's us.”