It is long ago since preparation and mobilisation of people for a demonstration moved to the Internet. Lots of webpages inform protester and follower about possible dates and places, but the organization and communication during the demonstration has been very difficult in the past. Information about different situations and needs in the camps and on the castor transport way have to be transmitted via phone calls or even motorbike couriers. This was very time and cost consuming. It was also not easy to inform the public about happenings on the demonstration.
But finally social networks helped to reorganize information flow. Since the last castor transport two years ago the number of Facebook user grew by 10 Million and per year five million more smartphones have been sold. Most of the protester are always online and exactly know where they are and where others are.
This leads to a new quality of protests. Mobile phones are one the one hand reporter of the happening and connect the actor with the whole world of follower that support the demonstration and on the other hand it is a cheap and universal tool for communication during demonstration.
The Police have their strict rules for communication and it is transmitted via their secured radio. Troops have to report their location and happening. In the command centre the information is assembled centralized and new instructions are given to the troops. In the former times they had a big advantage because the command centre had an overview over the demonstration and could react fast to demonstration movements. But did they develop further? In Germany the police did not manage to switch to digital radio what could help in these situations.
Today most of the protester post there information and location live in the Internet and special web pages display and sort the tweets it is very easy to follow the wave of protest and know which place is most interesting for a protester to support his colleagues. Information Flow is optimized and protester seam fully in advantage but also the Police is not sleeping and so it is also scanning that information. Even appeals are traced and so the department of public prosecution is searching for people that call for illegal actions.
So what would be the future? How will it look like in 5 or 10 years? Will it be a cyber war like in since fiction movies? Who will be faster police or protester? Will there be an Information overflow and spamming and can this be contra productive? Which conclusions can companies draw from that?
In my opinion the major task during a demonstration is to filter and sort the information in order to prevent an information overflow. But hopefully the police can close the gap and prevent protester from overreact to their information advantage.
Sources:
http://blog.zeit.de/open-data/2010/11/05/live-web-der-castortransport-bei-twitter-kartiert/
http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,727610,00.html
http://castorticker.de/zeitmaschine
http://www.anti-atom-demo.de/start/mobilisieren/soziale-netzwerke/
2 comments:
Given the Wikileaks release of thousands of confidential documents today, this is a timely and thought-provoking piece. The gap between the free-form "crowdsourcing" of protesters and the more rigid communications protocols of government authorities is narrowing rapidly, and I'm sure the German police will catch up soon. BTW, I think you've under-counted both the growth in FB users and smartphones, unless you're just talking about a portion of Europe?
Yes, the estimation for FB and Smartphones is just for Germany within that periode. For the world it is a lot bigger of course!
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