So recently, we heard a lot about how social media helps empower protest, and that's true, but after more than a decade of studying and participating in multiple social movements, I've come to realize that the way technology empowers social movements can also paradoxically help weaken them. This is not inevitable, but overcoming it requires diving deep into what makes success possible over the long term. And the lessons apply in multiple domains.
最近,我们时常听到 社交媒体如何支持了抗议活动, 那是真的。 但是经过十多年来 我对多种社会活动的研究和参与, 我认识到 科技辅助社会运动的方式 也可能反过来起到削弱的作用。 这并非不可避免, 但是要克服这个问题需要 深入了解长久以来到底什么是 取得成功的关键因素。 这些经验适用于不同的领域。
Now, take Turkey's Gezi Park protests, July 2013, which I went back to study in the field. Twitter was key to its organizing. It was everywhere in the park -- well, along with a lot of tear gas. It wasn't all high tech. But the people in Turkey had already gotten used to the power of Twitter because of an unfortunate incident about a year before when military jets had bombed and killed 34 Kurdish smugglers near the border region, and Turkish media completely censored this news. Editors sat in their newsrooms and waited for the government to tell them what to do. One frustrated journalist could not take this anymore. He purchased his own plane ticket, and went to the village where this had occurred. And he was confronted by this scene: a line of coffins coming down a hill, relatives wailing. He later he told me how overwhelmed he felt, and didn't know what to do, so he took out his phone, like any one of us might, and snapped that picture and tweeted it out. And voila, that picture went viral and broke the censorship and forced mass media to cover it.
举个例子:2013年7月 土耳其盖奇公园示威活动, 我曾回到过现场研究这个事件。 推特是组织这个抗议活动的关键。 推特遍布整个公园,还有催泪弹。 不完全是高科技。 不过土耳其的人民早已 习惯了推特的力量, 因为在一年前 一个很不幸的事件中, 军队飞机轰炸并杀死了 靠近边界地区的34个库尔德走私者, 土耳其媒体完全封锁了这个消息。 编辑们坐在新闻办公室里, 等待着政府的指令。 一位感到沮丧的记者再也无法忍受了。 他自掏腰包买了飞机票, 去了事发的村子。 他看到了这样一番景象: 一排排的棺木从山坡上往下移动, 亲属们在悲泣。 他后来告诉我,他感到非常悲痛, 不知如何是好, 于是他拿出手机, 就像我们所有人一样, 拍了照片,用推特传出去。 不出所料,这幅照片如同病毒一般 打破封锁,逼得大众传播开始报道。
So when, a year later, Turkey's Gezi protests happened, it started as a protest about a park being razed, but became an anti-authoritarian protest. It wasn't surprising that media also censored it, but it got a little ridiculous at times. When things were so intense, when CNN International was broadcasting live from Istanbul, CNN Turkey instead was broadcasting a documentary on penguins. Now, I love penguin documentaries, but that wasn't the news of the day. An angry viewer put his two screens together and snapped that picture, and that one too went viral, and since then, people call Turkish media the penguin media. (Laughter)
一年后,当土耳其的盖奇示威发生时, 开始是因为一个公园被夷为平地, 但演变成了反独裁示威。 不出所料,媒体封锁了这个消息, 但有时实在太离谱。 当事件演变到非常激烈的程度时, CNN国际频道在伊斯坦堡 进行了现场直播, CNN土耳其频道同时播放的却是 企鹅的纪录片。 我很喜欢企鹅记录片, 但是那不该是那天的头条新闻。 一位愤怒的观众将两个电视荧幕 放在一起,照了一张相片。 那张相片也开始疯狂传播, 从此,大家就称土耳其媒体为企鹅媒体。 (笑声)
But this time, people knew what to do. They just took out their phones and looked for actual news. Better, they knew to go to the park and take pictures and participate and share it more on social media. Digital connectivity was used for everything from food to donations. Everything was organized partially with the help of these new technologies.
但是这次,大家知道怎么做了。 他们带上手机去寻找真正的新闻。 或者他们干脆去公园照相、参与示威, 在社会媒体上分享信息。 数字化通讯系统已经应用到了各个领域, 譬如食物、捐款。 所有事件组织都借助了新技术。
And using Internet to mobilize and publicize protests actually goes back a long way. Remember the Zapatistas, the peasant uprising in the southern Chiapas region of Mexico led by the masked, pipe-smoking, charismatic Subcomandante Marcos? That was probably the first movement that got global attention thanks to the Internet. Or consider Seattle '99, when a multinational grassroots effort brought global attention to what was then an obscure organization, the World Trade Organization, by also utilizing these digital technologies to help them organize. And more recently, movement after movement has shaken country after country: the Arab uprisings from Bahrain to Tunisia to Egypt and more; indignados in Spain, Italy, Greece; the Gezi Park protests; Taiwan; Euromaidan in Ukraine; Hong Kong. And think of more recent initiatives, like the #BringBackOurGirls hashtags. Nowadays, a network of tweets can unleash a global awareness campaign. A Facebook page can become the hub of a massive mobilization. Amazing.
用互联网来动员、宣传抗议活动 实际上要追溯到很久以前。 大家记得萨帕塔事件吗? 那是在墨西哥南部的 恰阿巴斯区的农民起义。 由一个带着面具,抽着烟斗, 颇具魅力的名为马克斯的副指挥官所领导。 那应该是第一个 由于互联网而得到全球关注的事件。 或想想99年的西雅图事件, 跨国基层民众协力让全球关注到了 那时仍默默无名的世界贸易组织。 他们也是运用了这种数字科技 来协助组织这个活动。 最近,一个接一个的事件 震撼了一个又一个国家: 巴林到突尼斯、埃及的阿拉伯起义等; 西班牙、意大利、希腊等国的抗议者; 盖奇公园的示威人群; 台湾;乌克兰的亲欧盟示威运动; 还有香港。 还有最近的,例如#把我们的女孩带回来 的口号 (14年4月尼日利亚寄宿学校若干女生被绑架) 如今,网络短消息网络 能够发动全球觉醒活动。 脸书网页可以成为 一个大规模动员的枢纽。 多么惊人啊!
But think of the moments I just mentioned. The achievements they were able to have, their outcomes, are not really proportional to the size and energy they inspired. The hopes they rightfully raised are not really matched by what they were able to have as a result in the end. And this raises a question: As digital technology makes things easier for movements, why haven't successful outcomes become more likely as well? In embracing digital platforms for activism and politics, are we overlooking some of the benefits of doing things the hard way? Now, I believe so. I believe that the rule of thumb is: Easier to mobilize does not always mean easier to achieve gains.
但想想我刚提到的那些例子。 他们所能取得的成就和效果, 与他们所激发的民众数目和能量 并不成比例。 他们合法激起的希望却并没有 得到他们想要的结果。 这就带出了一个问题: 当数字科技让一些活动变得更容易发起, 为什么却不容易得到成功的结果? 将数字平台用在 行动主义和政治活动的同时, 我们是不是忽略了传统活动中 那些有利的方面? 我是这样认为的。 我相信常规的方法是: 很容易发动并不总是意味着 很容易实现目标。
Now, to be clear, technology does empower in multiple ways. It's very powerful. In Turkey, I watched four young college students organize a countrywide citizen journalism network called 140Journos that became the central hub for uncensored news in the country. In Egypt, I saw another four young people use digital connectivity to organize the supplies and logistics for 10 field hospitals, very large operations, during massive clashes near Tahrir Square in 2011. And I asked the founder of this effort, called Tahrir Supplies, how long it took him to go from when he had the idea to when he got started. "Five minutes," he said. Five minutes. And he had no training or background in logistics. Or think of the Occupy movement which rocked the world in 2011. It started with a single email from a magazine, Adbusters, to 90,000 subscribers in its list. About two months after that first email, there were in the United States 600 ongoing occupations and protests. Less than one month after the first physical occupation in Zuccotti Park, a global protest was held in about 82 countries, 950 cities. It was one of the largest global protests ever organized.
我再解释一下, 科技的确推动了某些领域的发展。 科技力量不容小视。 在土耳其,我见到4个年轻的大学生 组织了一个全国市民新闻网络, 叫做140Journos, 它成为了全国非监管新闻的中心平台。 在埃及,我也见到了4个年轻人在2011年 解放广场附近大范围冲突事件中, 用数字化通讯系统 为10所战地医院 组织了志愿和后勤服务, 那是非常庞大的系统。 我问这个活动的发起者 ——”解放支援“组织, 从产生想法到付诸行动 究竟花了多长时间。 ”5分钟,“他说。只有5分钟。 而他对后勤事务一无所知。 再想想2011年震撼全世界的 占领华尔街运动。 仅仅从《广告克星》杂志的 一封电子邮件开始, 转发到了9万订阅者的手中。 邮件发出去的2个月之后, 全美国就发起了 600起占领和抗议事件。 在祖科蒂公园占领事件之后还不到1个月, 82个国家、950个城市 开展了全球性抗议活动。 这是有史以来最大一次 全球性示威活动。
Now, compare that to what the Civil Rights Movement had to do in 1955 Alabama to protest the racially segregated bus system, which they wanted to boycott. They'd been preparing for many years and decided it was time to swing into action after Rosa Parks was arrested. But how do you get the word out -- tomorrow we're going to start the boycott -- when you don't have Facebook, texting, Twitter, none of that? So they had to mimeograph 52,000 leaflets by sneaking into a university duplicating room and working all night, secretly. They then used the 68 African-American organizations that criss-crossed the city to distribute those leaflets by hand. And the logistical tasks were daunting, because these were poor people. They had to get to work, boycott or no, so a massive carpool was organized, again by meeting. No texting, no Twitter, no Facebook. They had to meet almost all the time to keep this carpool going.
与1955年阿拉巴马州 发生的民权运动相比, 即种族隔离公交系统, 呼吁大众拒绝坐公交。 这个运动酝酿了很多年, 在罗莎·帕克斯被捕之后 才被认为是时候该付诸行动。 但是要怎么传播信息呢—— 明天就要开始进行抵制了—— 那时候并没有脸书、短信、 推特之类的媒介? 于是他们需要影印5万2千份传单, 这一切都要夜深人静之后 偷偷潜入一所大学的复印室暗中进行。 然后他们借助全城联系密切的 68个非洲裔美国人组织 来亲手发放这些传单。 后勤工作非常难组织, 因为这些都是穷人。 毕竟他们都去上班赚钱, 抵制还是不抵制的确是个难题, 所以大量的拼车活动组织起来了, 还是通过集会。 没有短信,没有推特,没有脸书。 他们总是要碰面 保证拼车顺利进行。
Today, it would be so much easier. We could create a database, available rides and what rides you need, have the database coordinate, and use texting. We wouldn't have to meet all that much. But again, consider this: the Civil Rights Movement in the United States navigated a minefield of political dangers, faced repression and overcame, won major policy concessions, navigated and innovated through risks. In contrast, three years after Occupy sparked that global conversation about inequality, the policies that fueled it are still in place. Europe was also rocked by anti-austerity protests, but the continent didn't shift its direction. In embracing these technologies, are we overlooking some of the benefits of slow and sustained? To understand this, I went back to Turkey about a year after the Gezi protests and I interviewed a range of people, from activists to politicians, from both the ruling party and the opposition party and movements. I found that the Gezi protesters were despairing. They were frustrated, and they had achieved much less than what they had hoped for. This echoed what I'd been hearing around the world from many other protesters that I'm in touch with. And I've come to realize that part of the problem is that today's protests have become a bit like climbing Mt. Everest with the help of 60 Sherpas, and the Internet is our Sherpa. What we're doing is taking the fast routes and not replacing the benefits of the slower work. Because, you see, the kind of work that went into organizing all those daunting, tedious logistical tasks did not just take care of those tasks, they also created the kind of organization that could think together collectively and make hard decisions together, create consensus and innovate, and maybe even more crucially, keep going together through differences. So when you see this March on Washington in 1963, when you look at that picture, where this is the march where Martin Luther King gave his famous "I have a dream" speech, 1963, you don't just see a march and you don't just hear a powerful speech, you also see the painstaking, long-term work that can put on that march. And if you're in power, you realize you have to take the capacity signaled by that march, not just the march, but the capacity signaled by that march, seriously. In contrast, when you look at Occupy's global marches that were organized in two weeks, you see a lot of discontent, but you don't necessarily see teeth that can bite over the long term. And crucially, the Civil Rights Movement innovated tactically from boycotts to lunch counter sit-ins to pickets to marches to freedom rides. Today's movements scale up very quickly without the organizational base that can see them through the challenges. They feel a little like startups that got very big without knowing what to do next, and they rarely manage to shift tactically because they don't have the depth of capacity to weather such transitions.
而如今,这一切都变得很简单了。 我们可以建立一个数据库, 哪些人有空车,哪些人需要搭车, 用数据库进行协调,用短信沟通。 我们不再需要那样集会。 不过再想想: 美国的民权运动 进入了具有政治危险性的雷区, 面临镇压,冲破镇压, 赢得了重大政策让步, 组织和创新的每一步都充满了危险。 对比而言,占领运动掀起了 不平等的全球话题3年之后, 支持这种不平等的政策 丝毫没有改变。 欧洲也发生了许多反紧缩抗议活动, 不过并没有取得任何成效。 在充分利用这些技术的同时, 我们是不是忽略了缓慢长期的活动中 有利的一面呢? 为了搞清楚这一点, 盖奇抗议活动一年后 我回到了土耳其, 采访了一些人, 包括活动家、政治家、 统治集团、反对集团、各种运动。 我发现盖奇活动的抗议者感到很绝望。 他们很沮丧, 他们所达到的效果离期望相差太远。 这也呼应了我在全球接触的 其他抗议者的声音。 我开始认识到一部分问题在于 当今的抗议活动有点像 借助60个西藏夏尔巴人 来攀登珠穆朗玛峰, 而网络就是我们的夏尔巴人。 我们在做的是 找到最快的路径, 却没有利用传统方式的好处。 因为你们想想看, 以前组织的所有后勤工作 都很繁琐、单调, 并不只是为了完成工作, 这些工作创造了一种组织, 能够让大家万众一心, 一起做出艰难的决定, 达成一致、有所创新, 甚至更重要的是, 在求同存异中前行。 当你们看到1963年3月 在华盛顿的这些人群时, 看着这张照片, 马丁路德金在人群中 进行了他的著名演讲, 1963年的“我有一个梦想”, 看到的不只是浩荡的游行人群, 听到的不只是伟大的一篇演讲, 大家也看到了聚集人群所需的 长期艰辛工作。 如果你掌握着实权, 你会认识到,你必须考虑 游行所显示的巨大能量, 并不只是游行, 而是游行所传递的实实在在的能量。 对比来看,占领华尔街的全球抗议活动 在2周内就组织好了 可以看到很多不满的情绪, 但并不一定能看到长远效果。 关键问题在于, 民权运动在战术上进行了创新, 从抵制、到餐厅静坐抗议、罢工纠察员、 游行、再到自由乘坐公交。 如今的运动缺乏有效的组织基础, 规模扩张得太快, 无法预见到可能面临的挑战。 有点类似于小型创业公司发展过快, 却还不知道下一步要如何发展, 而且也很少转换战略, 因为他们没有深厚的实力 来平和度过这段过渡期。
Now, I want to be clear: The magic is not in the mimeograph. It's in that capacity to work together, think together collectively, which can only be built over time with a lot of work. To understand all this, I interviewed a top official from the ruling party in Turkey, and I ask him, "How do you do it?" They too use digital technology extensively, so that's not it. So what's the secret? Well, he told me. He said the key is he never took sugar with his tea. I said, what has that got to do with anything? Well, he said, his party starts getting ready for the next election the day after the last one, and he spends all day every day meeting with voters in their homes, in their wedding parties, circumcision ceremonies, and then he meets with his colleagues to compare notes. With that many meetings every day, with tea offered at every one of them, which he could not refuse, because that would be rude, he could not take even one cube of sugar per cup of tea, because that would be many kilos of sugar, he can't even calculate how many kilos, and at that point I realized why he was speaking so fast. We had met in the afternoon, and he was already way over-caffeinated. But his party won two major elections within a year of the Gezi protests with comfortable margins. To be sure, governments have different resources to bring to the table. It's not the same game, but the differences are instructive. And like all such stories, this is not a story just of technology. It's what technology allows us to do converging with what we want to do. Today's social movements want to operate informally. They do not want institutional leadership. They want to stay out of politics because they fear corruption and cooptation. They have a point. Modern representative democracies are being strangled in many countries by powerful interests. But operating this way makes it hard for them to sustain over the long term and exert leverage over the system, which leads to frustrated protesters dropping out, and even more corrupt politics. And politics and democracy without an effective challenge hobbles, because the causes that have inspired the modern recent movements are crucial. Climate change is barreling towards us. Inequality is stifling human growth and potential and economies. Authoritarianism is choking many countries. We need movements to be more effective.
我想表明: 成功的秘诀不在于蜡纸油印。 而是同心协力、同舟共济的能力, 这种能力只有通过长期的 准备工作才能建立起来。 为了理解这个问题, 我采访了土耳其执政党的高级官员, 我问他, “你们是怎么赢得选举的?” 他们也大面积使用了数字科技, 所以这不是根本原因。 那么秘密是什么? 他告诉我, 他说秘诀就是他喝茶从来不放糖。 我说,这有什么关系吗? 他说,他的选举团队 在他选举获胜的第二天 就开始准备下一场选举了, 他每天都要去那些支持者家里走访, 参加他们的婚礼、割礼仪式, 然后他与同事碰面交流会谈笔录。 每天他都要与群众会面, 每一家都会请他喝茶, 他无法拒绝,因为那样很不礼貌, 每一杯茶里连一块糖都不能放, 因为加起来会有好几公斤糖, 他根本数不过来, 那时我就明白 为什么他说话这么快。 我们是在下午会面的, 那时他已经摄入了太多咖啡因。 但是,在盖奇游行的那一年 他的团队轻松地 在两场重要选举中获胜。 无可否认,政府部门 有很多不同的资源可以利用。 条件不同, 但是其中的差异非常具有启发性。 就像所有类似事件, 这不是技术获胜。 关键在于技术能够辅助我们 去做我们想做的事。 当今的社会运动总想要以 非正式的形式操作。 他们不想要任何机构的领导。 他们不想跟政治扯上关系, 对腐败和招降举措感到恐惧。 他们有自己的办法。 现代具有代表性的民主在很多国家 已经被强大的利益扼杀。 但是这种方式让他们很难实现持久战, 并且在社会上产生足够的影响, 这就会导致沮丧的抗议者退出, 政治体系变得更腐败。 不面临有效的挑战 政治和民主就无法进步, 因为激励现代运动的原因非常关键。 气候变化的问题日益严峻。 不平等问题压制了人类的进步, 发展潜力和经济增长。 独裁主义让很多国家饱受摧残。 我们需要更有效的社会运动。
Now, some people have argued that the problem is today's movements are not formed of people who take as many risks as before, and that is not true. From Gezi to Tahrir to elsewhere, I've seen people put their lives and livelihoods on the line. It's also not true, as Malcolm Gladwell claimed, that today's protesters form weaker virtual ties. No, they come to these protests, just like before, with their friends, existing networks, and sometimes they do make new friends for life. I still see the friends that I made in those Zapatista-convened global protests more than a decade ago, and the bonds between strangers are not worthless. When I got tear-gassed in Gezi, people I didn't know helped me and one another instead of running away. In Tahrir, I saw people, protesters, working really hard to keep each other safe and protected. And digital awareness-raising is great, because changing minds is the bedrock of changing politics. But movements today have to move beyond participation at great scale very fast and figure out how to think together collectively, develop strong policy proposals, create consensus, figure out the political steps and relate them to leverage, because all these good intentions and bravery and sacrifice by itself are not going to be enough.
现在,一些人认为问题在于 当今那些举办运动的人 所面临的危险远不如以前, 但这并不是事实。 在盖奇、这埃及解放广场运动, 我见到人们舍家弃业 投入到这些运动中去。 事实也不像马尔科姆·格拉德威尔说的那样 (《纽约客》杂志撰稿人及畅销作家), 当今抗议者的凝聚力不足。 这是不对的,这些人参加抗议活动, 跟朋友一起参与,与从前没什么两样, 有的时候甚至还能 遇到志同道合的挚交。 现在我还是会跟10多年前 在萨帕塔全球抗议活动上 认识的朋友见面聊天, 陌生人之间的联系并非毫无价值。 当我在盖奇遭受到催泪瓦斯的攻击, 陌生人帮助我和其他人一起撤离, 而不是只顾自己逃命。 在埃及解放广场运动中, 我见到了很多人,抗议者, 拼命保护周围人的安全。 数字化宣传是个很不错的途径, 因为改变思想是改变政治体制的基石。 但是当今的运动需要 超越大范围快速的参与, 还要想办法让大家万众一心, 发展强有力的政治意愿, 保持高度一致, 制定政治决策的发展步骤, 并想办法付诸实施, 毕竟仅有这些好的意愿、 勇气和牺牲精神 是远远不够的。
And there are many efforts. In New Zealand, a group of young people are developing a platform called Loomio for participatory decision making at scale. In Turkey, 140Journos are holding hack-a-thons so that they support communities as well as citizen journalism. In Argentina, an open-source platform called DemocracyOS is bringing participation to parliaments and political parties. These are all great, and we need more, but the answer won't just be better online decision-making, because to update democracy, we are going to need to innovate at every level, from the organizational to the political to the social. Because to succeed over the long term, sometimes you do need tea without sugar along with your Twitter. Thank you. (Applause)
人们的确进行了很多努力。 在新西兰,一群年轻人正在建立 一个叫做Loomio的平台, 用来进行大规模参与决策的制定。 在土耳其,140Journos正在举办“黑客松” 这样他们就可以同时支持社区活动 和大众新闻报导。 在阿根廷, 一个叫做DemocracyOS的开源平台 让议会和政治党派也能够参与进来。 这些都非常好, 我们还需要更多这样的组织, 不过办法并不只在于更好的网络决策, 因为要改进民主制度, 我们需要在每个阶段都有所革新, 从组织层面到政治层面,再到社会层面。 因为要获得长久的胜利, 有时候你还是需要喝不放糖的茶, 尽管你有推特。 谢谢大家。 (掌声)