Facebook, Twitter, and other social media has made it possible for people in countries like Tunisia, Iran and Egypt fuel their protests and send their messages across the world. Normally people around the world would have to wait to hear or see what is going on in Tunisia on their nightly news program. Now we are able to see what is happening literally seconds to minutes after it has occurred but can it be said that Facebook, Twitter and other social media are responsible for the revolutions. In a Op-Ed piece in the New York Times written by Andrew K. Woods he explains that chatter on Twitter or Facebook can not replace true activism.
"Critics like Evgeny Morozov respond by noting that the influence of new media has been exaggerated by a press enthralled with “techno-utopianism.”Social media enables fast coordination, critics say, not the narrative or resolve necessary to sustain a movement; flashmobs do not a political organization make."
(Evgeny Morozov is a Belarus born American scholar who has written a book titled "The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom)
To say that Facebook and other social media caused a revolution in Tunisia would minimize the decades of oppression these people went through. It reduces their plight to 160 words of a tweet or a status update on Facebook. Kentaro Toyama writes in an article for The Atlantic:
"Thus, claims of communication technologies as the primary cause -- or even the catalyst -- of large-scale positive social change are misleading, and they lead to poor policy in foreign affairs and international development. They commit the classic error of confusing correlation with cause. It's not so much that tweeting foments rebellion, but that in our age, all rebellions are tweeted."
Social media cannot cause a revolution but it can help to feed the fire that was already smoldering.