"Argo" and Political Network Activism

This weekend, I went to see the movie "Argo". It tells the true story of the CIA operation that got six U.S. State Department workers out of Iran in the wake of the 1979 take over of the embassy in Tehran. Though the movie is predominantly about the execution of the operation and the cooperation -- or sometimes lack thereof -- between the U.S. government departments involved in trying to resolve this diplomatic and national sovereignty nightmare, it also subtly highlighted the use of media technology by both the Americans and the Iranian revolutionaries.

 What particularly struck me were the scenes depicting the Iranian students' use of live television and radio broadcasts to both to alert the world to their views and demands and to keep the movement alive. It was a clear of example of "activists... historically [relying] on media outlets for purposes of mobilization, validation and scope enlargement." ("The Whole Online World is Watching"; Harp, Bachmann, and Guo, International Journal of Communication 6 (2012): 301). Above is an ABC news report from Nov. 11, 1979, just six days after the hostages were taken. Though not from the students' perspective, it does show how they would utilize the media attention they had garnered from their initial act to perpetuate their movement. Like the Egyptian activists of 2011, those who took over the U.S. Embassy were utilizing all the latest media technologies(particularly the growing satellite networks of news broadcasters) at their disposal to reach the entire world with their demands.

Merlyna Lim argued about 21st century Egypt that "[social] media were not the only or even the principal source of information of political mobilization", and the same can be said of the Iranian Revolution (Lim, "Clicks, Cabs, and Coffee Houses", Journal of Communication, 62 (2012): 244). The media were just the brokers of connections between groups that were already fired up over the perceived injustice of the U.S. granting asylum to the Shah after what he had done to their country, and the means to globalize (possibly unintentionally) a domestic movement (Lim, 244). We should all be impressed they managed to keep fervor for the situation alive for 444 days without having a Facebook, Twitter, Blog or texting campaign.

As I stated in class, a network doesn't have to be formulated around the Internet. People have been forming networks for thousands of years; it's what we do to expand our capabilities. But what the Iranian Revolution and the more contemporary Egyptian revolution highlight is that technology has accelerated networking and subsequent political activism. Whether it be through TV news broadcasts or through Facebook, media are just another means to connect to networks that will extend our voices and our ideas, helping those who wish to utilize them for political ends achieve their goals in a shorter time frame with wider involvement.

Globaloney: No, the world isn't flat

We've previously hypothesized about the fading relevance of national borders in this ever-globalized world. In response to our many class discussions the extent of globalization and internationalism with Professor Hayden, a reality check from Professor Pankaj Ghemawat, an economist and professor at IESE Business School in Spain:

In his TED talk, which centers on a few key data points, Ghemawat chalks up the popularity of talking about the “world being one” and how “the world is flat” to lack of research, peer pressure, and "exaggerated conceptions of how technology is going to overpower—in the very immediate run—all cultural barriers, all political barriers, all geographic barriers.”

He acknowledges how he is often confronted with questions about Facebook’s role in connecting people across borders. “Theoretically,” he says, “[Facebook] makes it as easy to form friendships halfway around the world as opposed to right next door.” However, he poses, “What percentage of people’s friends on Facebook are actually located in countries other than where they are based? For all this talk about how flat the world is, Ghemawat highlights how approximately only 10 to 15 percent of Facebook users have friends that are not geographically located in the same country in which they live. This amount—although not negligible, he admits, indicates that although “we don’t live in an entirely local or national world,” the level of globalization in the world is “very, very far from the 90 percent level you would expect.” 

So, he argues, extreme views of globalization propagated by authors such as Naomi Klein and Tom Friedman (for whom the game of golf is an inspirational source) is pure baloney, or as Ghemawat puts it, “globaloney!” 

He goes on to say that:

“Globaloney is very harmful to [our] health. Being accurate about how limited globalization levels are is critical to even being able to notice that there might be room for something more, something that might contribute further to global welfare. Avoiding overstatement is very helpful because it reduces and in some cases even reverses some people’s fears about globalization.” 

His data supports such assertions. Taking an extreme view of globalization does seem at worst, naive, and at most, dangerous. Erring on the side of caution is best. Overestimating how interconnected our world is—and how inclusive it is, in Castell's sense of the word—puts us as risk for pigeonholing our perspective of the true effects and the short-, medium- and long-term trajectory of communication.