From Indymedia to Tahrir Square: The Revolutionary Origins of Status Updates on Twitter

Abstract

One of the most important developments in the history of the Web was the development of the status update. Although social media has been approached by a number of critical theorists as an instrument of control and surveillance, it should be remembered that social media began as liberatory technology harnessed by social movements. In this essay, we trace the origin of the status update for spreading news from protest-driven community networks like Indymedia and text messages for protest coordination via TxtMob. In fact, the use of status updates by Indymedia and the wider anti-globalization movement prefigured their usage in Tahrir Square and the Black Lives Matter movement in the USA. This historical link goes through Twitter itself, as the early Twitter engineers were veterans of Indymedia. There is still much to learn from Indymedia: Framing social media as invented and then harnessed by social movements may even provide innovative solutions to issues of content moderation and censorship. Exploring the origin of social media in social movements provides a perspective on the history of the Web from the tradition of the oppressed.