Abstract
This article uses accounts of the different ‘Facebook Revolutions’ of 2011–2012 (the Arab Spring, European Anti-Austerity protests, Occupy) to speak to a broader narrative in contemporary culture: the cyber-utopian belief in social media as a fast track to political change. To critique this narrative, the article turns to the work of Machiavelli (specifically the vision of temporality expressed in his concept of fortuna). Machiavelli’s nuanced theory of politics, with its attentiveness to both slow-moving community-building, as well as audacious, fast-moving action, makes him ideal for thinking through transnational activism in a globalized and accelerating world. Such a framework can help us think critically about social media, avoiding the pitfalls of cyber-utopianism, while embracing opportunities that information technologies might provide us with. It also reorients our thinking about Machiavelli, rescuing him from his caricature as a ‘thinker of speed’, instead highlighting his attentiveness to the multiple temporalities of political life.
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Notes
Though note this is not the same as claiming that social media ‘caused’ the Egyptian revolution, or even more strongly, that social media necessarily leads to a more open society (see Khondker, 2011; Castells, 2012; Hussein and Howard, 2011, 2012).
For a description of Machiavelli’s republican ethos, see Viroli (1990) and Bernard (2008).
See Deudney’s (2007) work on what he terms the ‘Iron Law of Polis Republicanism’ (p. 93).
See here Deibert (2000) and Keck and Sikkink (1998).
Again, see here Deibert (2000).
No discussion of the role of digital networks and social media in popular movements in the future will be complete without an analysis of the role of new techniques of censorship and surveillance. For a starting point to such an analysis, see Deibert (2013).
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Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Daniel Levine, Jairus Grove, Antonio Cerella, R.B.J. Walker, and Elisabetta Brighi for their help on this article.
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Glezos, S. Virtuous networks: Machiavelli, speed and global social movements. Int Polit 53, 534–554 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2016.14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2016.14