Recently on Al Jazeera, an episode of Empire, titled Social networks, social revolution was aired. I found the following excerpts particularly insightful.

• Clay Shirky contends that social networks offered an urban environment information, like a metropolis for ideas. In his words, ”The densifying of the public sphere in advance of the revolution matters as much to whether or not an uprising turns into a revolution […] as the events on the ground.”
• Amy Goodman explains one of the failures of mass media. She says, ”In the united states, we don’t have State Media, but you have to ask, “In this country, if we had State Media, how would it be any different?” So, when you have the protests, February 15, 2003 before the war in Iraq, millions of people Rocked the Globe for Peace, right before the US attacked Iraq. And yet you get, at best, a major picture on the front page of the papers; you see millions of people screaming. Most people don’t identify with that. But when you hear someone talking—and when was the last time you’ve seen these grassroots activists brought into not the mainstream media, but the corporate media’s halls to explain themselves, to give a face and a name? It’s letting people speak for themselves instead of what we get on all of these networks: this small circle of pundits who know so little about so much explaining the world to us and getting it so wrong!”

I think there are parallels to draw, here. To what, exactly, I’ve yet to see. But they’re in there, somewhere. I’ll find ‘em.