Protests in Moldova Explode, With Help of Twitter - NYTimes.com - The Diigo Meta page

• 21 Jan 10
  

  Max Forte

  cyberactivism Twitter network protest social_media activism politics Moldova Russia diplomacy Open_Society_Institute

  • A crowd of more than 10,000 young Moldovans materialized seemingly out of nowhere
  • The sea of young people reflected the deep generation gap that has developed in Moldova, and the protesters used their generation’s tools, gathering the crowd by enlisting text-messaging, Facebook and Twitter, the social messaging network.

    • Twitter, youth, power
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  • The protesters created their own searchable tag on Twitter, rallying Moldovans to join and propelling events in this small former Soviet state onto a Twitter list of newly popular topics, so people around the world could keep track.
  • After hundreds of firsthand accounts flooded onto the Internet via Twitter, Internet service in Chisinau, the capital, was abruptly cut off.

    • Vulnerability
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  • “Moldova is like a sealed jar, and youth want more access to Europe,” he said. “Everyone knows that Moldova is the smallest, poorest and the most disgraceful country. And youth are talking about how they want freedom, Europe and a different life.”
  • Young people have increasingly used the Internet to mobilize politically; cellphones and text messages helped swell protests in Ukraine in 2004, and in Belarus in 2006.

    • Youth, technology, power
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  • Election observers from the European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe had tentatively accepted the voting as fair, though they expressed some concern about interference from the authorities. But the results were a deep disappointment in the capital, where Communist candidates lost the last round of municipal elections.
  • In 2001, angry citizens backed the return of the Communists and their social programs.

  • The protests apparently started on Monday, when organizers from two youth movements, Hyde Park and ThinkMoldova, began calling for people to gather at an event billed as “I am a not a Communist.” Natalia Morar, one of the leaders of ThinkMoldova, described the effort on her blog as “six people, 10 minutes for brainstorming and decision-making, several hours of disseminating information through networks, Facebook, blogs, SMSs and e-mails.”

    “And 15,000 youths came out into the streets!” she wrote.

    • Vanguardism
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  • Mihai Moscovici, 25, who provided updates in English all day over Twitter, painted a more nuanced picture. He said the gathering on Monday night drew only several hundred people. The protesters agreed to gather the next morning and began spreading the word through Facebook and Twitter, inventing a searchable tag for the stream of comments: #pman, which stands for Piata Marii Adunari Nationale, Chisinau’s central square. When Internet service was shut down, Mr. Moscovici said, he issued updates with his cellphone.
  • Evgeny Morozov, a specialist in technology and politics at the Open Society Institute in New York, a group that works with democratic movements worldwide and has been active in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, said Facebook and Twitter had apparently played a major role in the protests.

  9 more annotations...

• 28 Apr 09
  

  Adam Bohannon

  moldova twitter protest politics youth

  • In a television broadcast, he said the protests were “well designed, well thought out, coordinated, planned and paid for.”

Public Stiky Notes

• 
  Max Forte on 2010-01-21
  Twitter, youth, power
• 
  Max Forte on 2010-01-21
  Vulnerability
• 
  Max Forte on 2010-01-21
  Youth, technology, power
• 
  Max Forte on 2010-01-21
  Vanguardism

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