In the middle of recent heated protests over election results – believed by some to be manipulated by parties loyal to incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – Neda Agha-Soltan’s fatal June 20th shooting became a rallying cry. “Neda” has become synonymous with the protest movement, not only in the physical world but also in the virtual one, as she and the events surrounding her were among the most popular topics discussed on the Internet in June. People have inspired protest movements before, but what has recently shifted in society is the rapidity with which the world receives information, evidenced in the near immediate spread of the news of Neda’s sacrifice. Internet tools like Flickr and Facebook, developed half a world away, brought her tragedy into every household willing to look.

Strategic Social’s CEO, Matt Bigge, is also quoted in the Washington Life piece. Bigge echoes a recent post here on the StratSoc Blog where we contend that the recent protests in Iran and China were not Twitter Revolutions, but rather a small minority leveraging social media  to amplify the voice of their collective dissent.

As Matt Bigge, the CEO of Strategic Social in Silicon Valley explained, “People all over the [Islamic Republic of] Iran may not be thrilled with the current government, but outside of the capital there is very limited appetite for risking life and limb for regime change… yet this is how a vocal minority can influence the world’s media and leaders while having little in the way of broad national support.”

Drapeau’s piece continues the important discussion around the rise of social media as a tool for global dissent, dialogue between cultures and of course giving everyone their 15 minutes.

China’s real fear during the Uighur unrest has not come from the BBC, NBC or the NY Times, but rather the likes of Facebook, Fanfou (china’s version of twitter), Youtube and other social networking sites. China has most certainly paid close attention to the “Twitter Revolutions” in Moldova and Iran, but it begs the question: why?

In his commentary at NPR.Org, Evgeny Morozov, who has been writing and blogging about this issue on his blog and that of Foreign Policy writes..

The problem with the current media narrative of a “cat and mouse” game is that much of this narrative has been built by the media itself. First, the media finds a story of the next Twitter revolution, blows it out of proportion by manipulating (or simply misunderstanding) the facts, and then this story is accepted as an explanation of what happened.

Couldn’t agree more with him on this point. Tehranians (not Iranians), the elite and Iranians in the West were certainly on Twitter and organizing, but 400,000 protesters in a country of more than 66 million people  (that’s less than 1% for those keeping score at home) does not constitute a revolution.

Thus, having read many accounts of the Twitter Revolution in Moldova, it’s no surprise that the Iranian authorities tried to ban Twitter; whether it played any role in igniting the protests is beyond the point – there is no way that Iranians would not try to block Twitter given that it has been lauded by almost every single media outlet out there as the next revolutionary tool. Ditto the Chinese: what self-respecting Communist party wouldn’t ban Twitter given that it’s often been singled out as one of the reasons why so many Iranians gathered in the streets of Tehran?

Now, we are obviously supporters of the social web here at Strategic Social, however, it should be said that neither Twitter nor its Chinese equivalent Fanfou are going to bring down authoritarian regimes overnight. This does not mean that the power of transparency and real time communication and collaboration will not become a TRUE force for mobilizing millions of disenchanted Iranians, Chinese, or even Burmese down the line. For the time being, however, it remains a tool of the elite . Everyone forgets that the Iranian Revolution did not happen overnight, but rather began building steam throughout 1977 and 1978 before the eventual toppling of the Shah in ’79.

The opening up of closed socities, think Glasnost in the Soviet Union, led to a non-revolution that forever changed geo-politics and the shape of the world as we know it today. In the 80′s, that process of openness and transparency took years to develop. In today’s real time news cycle transparency is accelerated. The prospects for non-revolution brought on by this rapid dissemination of information will only happen if the movement goes viral beyond the elite to generate legitimate grassroots support.

The Chinese have at their disposal a population of millions of social media drones. And, in the grand tradition of the Great Wall, China established a virtual wall to contain, monitor and control the netizens of China. Dubbed the Great Firewall, the system provides China with a centralized capability to monitor and control internet activity throughout China. While some feel that this Chinese Social Media Army will be unable to influence opinion effectively, stating that internet users and companies such as Digg, Youtube and others will revise their algorithms, the future is not so clear. China has effectively used technology, law, and cultural harmonization to create a society of internet users who not only engage in tactical social media campaigns, but actively monitor and report on each other.

In it’s Annual Report to Congress on China – “China Military Power of the People’s Republic of China[.pdf]“ – the Department of Defense provides significant detail on China’s evolving military strategy to include it’s increasing interest in non-kinetic means of warfare. A key excerpt is below:

In 2003, the CCP Central Committee and the CMC approved the concept of “Three Warfares” (san zhong zhanfa – 三种战法), a PLA information warfare concept aimed at influencing the psychological dimensions of military activity:

• Psychological Warfare seeks to undermine an enemy’s ability to conduct combat operations through psychological operations aimed at deterring, shocking, and demoralizing enemy military personnel and supporting civilian populations.
• Media Warfare is aimed at influencing domestic and international public opinion to build public and international support for China’s military actions and to dissuade an adversary from pursuing policies perceived to be adverse to China’s interests.
• Legal Warfare uses international and domestic laws to gain international support and manage possible political repercussions of China’s military actions.

American Truce Team with Chinese Communists

Without a doubt, the Chinese are now in a position to engage in strategic communication across the social media landscape. Their strategy, capabilities, interests and people are all aligned. The question now becomes “What do we do?” How do military and national security practitioners prepare?

That my friends is a question for another post. However, I’m excited to hear your thoughts and opinions. What tactics, techniques and procedures do we need to develop to deal with adversarial social media teams?