SO INSPIRED BY MARTIN LUTHER

            “Much literature on new media and contentious politics has implicitly assumed that these new forms of communication primarily help activists against regimes. But although regimes have been caught off guard by new media activism, they have also responded by co-opting, shutting down, or overwhelming activists.”

            That’s what Aday said. And through his analysis of countries like Kenya where social media made things worse and Iran where social media helped propel a (failed) revolution (for good or worse depending on your politics), his report Blogs and Bullets showcases that social media does not always make positive changes in the world even though the “Facebook” and “Twitter” Revolutions in Egypt and Iran were, generally, seen as positive.

            What I took from this analysis was that Internet and social media can be are generally detrimental to nation-states. Even if a nation-state has a strong grip on censorship and uses those same technologies made possible by Internet to monitor its citizens, the government still has to work undoubtedly hard to constantly keep up with citizens that are motivated to dissent. As any negotiation strategist knows, in a war a government may be netter equipped, but guerillas and insurgents can never lose because they’ve got the enduring motivation to fight. In this case, the citizens are the insurgents: there seems to never be a shortage of political dissidents.   

            That brings me to Martin Luther. Although we’ve talked about this like four times already, I’m still mad inspired by this cat. I’m so inspired by his inability to go from a relatively unknown academic to the leader of a reformation of an institution like ~*The Church*~ that I have actually reactivated my twitter account. There are times when I get ideas that I think are pretty much equivalent to his 95 theses and what if people start catching on to my ideas? But seriously – if Luther was able to depend on word of mouth, pamphlets, and wood carvings on getting his message of reformation out to a huge portion of European Christendom  five hundred years ago, I think I can manage to get my ideas out through twitter. I mean look how far he got:

            You can follow me @holybibleswag