Protest 2.0

The most prominent example of this type of protest this year is not from Switzerland, however, but from Turkey. In Istanbul on Taksim Square, a similar digital protest started a few weeks earlier. While this case was also about a shopping center, the consequences of the protests are a lot more massive than in Bern. In fact, they are so profound that parallels were quickly drawn with the Arab Spring during the demonstrations in Istanbul. At first glance, it seems that way. If you look closer, there are major differences between the Turkish protests and the uprisings in the North African countries of 2010. Particularly with regard to the use of social media, which contributed significantly to both movements, at least the following three are worth mentioning:

First, while Internet penetration in the North African countries is between 0 and 15 percent, Internet use is more than common in Turkey. Indeed, Turks go online via their cell phones a good twice as much as the European average. There are now more than 40 million 3G subscribers (as of 2012). The fact that the protests against the removal of Gezi Park in Istanbul were heavily organized via Twitter is therefore no great surprise. And that brings us to the second difference. The Arab Spring, it was said, was set in motion thanks to social media. But if we compare the origin of the tweets, we see striking dissimilarities. Ninety percent of the tweets with the hashtags #occupygezi, #direngezipark and #geziparki came from Turkey, and of those, half again came from Istanbul itself. In the Egyptian revolution of 2010, only just under 30 percent of the tweets were "geolocated" in the Arab region; the rest came from the international community - moreover, most of the tweets were directed at Anglo-Saxon readerships because they were written in English. This is then where the third difference ties in. Almost all of these domestic tweets were written in Turkish. This clearly indicates that Turkish citizens used Twitter to communicate with each other and to organize themselves. The use of social media in the protests around Istanbul is truly remarkable. In part because the domestic mass media wanted little to nothing to report on it, the protesters have begun to communicate what is happening on the ground, like a live ticker, to those not present, including with the help of videos. They even encouraged each other to turn off the TV and "read Twitter." Meanwhile, under the hashtag #BgünTelevizyonlar?Kapat, which means "turn off the TVs today," a new boycott is underway.

Dear companies and governments, remember this: People, whether as customers or as citizens, want their concerns to be taken seriously. And what happens when they are not? Where do they make their concerns known? Through the channels with which they are familiar. It's quite simple: If you block the classic channels, people will avoid them and organize themselves through other channels. And today, this naturally includes social media. All the more reason to take these new platforms seriously.

By Manuel P. Nappo, Director of Studies CAS Social Media Management HWZ Hochschule für Wirtschaft Zürich. www.fh-hwz.ch/smm