The false perception of twitter revolution in Moldova
On April 5, 2009 parliamentary elections took place in Moldova. Most of the young people anticipated victory for the democratic opposition. Nonetheless, that night the Central Election Committee of Moldova announced the victory of the communist regime. What followed was understood as the twitter revolution of Moldova. But what really happened?
Spontaneous protest of young people
Before the elections the communist ruling party used all administrative resources to manipulate the public opinion and discredit the opposition parties. The morning after the elections a small group of young activist decided to organize a spontaneous peaceful flash-mob to manifest the disagreement with the voting result. To promote the manifestation the information was spread using web 2.0 tools like twitter, facebook and odnoklassniki (Russian social network). Organizers expected fewer than 1000 participants, but at 6 o’clock the same day, the central square of Chisinau more than 20 000 young people gathered. The protesters demanded an investigation on the freedom and the fairness of the parliamentary elections. Youth protested till late in the evening, deciding to return the next morning.
7th of April – the news about the Moldovan revolution spread in the entire world
The next day at 10 o’clock, thousands of young people blocked the centre of Chisinau calling for an investigation on the election process. There is a lot of negative energy in Moldova against the Communist regime, having ruled for the last nine years. At one moment, a group of people started throwing stones, destroying the windows of two state buildings. Strangely the police did not intervene and let the protesters destroy and enter the buildings. Later, the communist regime used the argument to accuse the opposition for having organized violent actions.
The theme “Twitter revolution” was the main subject of many foreign media sources
The Moldovan protest was interesting for the foreign press, especially because of the use of web 2.0 tools to organize the protest. Few people know that this was the result of the internet blockade of the main news websites edited in Moldova. This was a state action to limit the access to information, orchestrated by the communist authorities from Chisinau during the young peoples’ protests.
As Evegeny Morozov, a fellow at the Open Society Institute of Moldova, pointed out: “Twitter’s more important role was getting the information out to the world, bringing it international attention and keeping the story alive.”
A blogger named evisoft stated: “Twitter was used for the initial organization and consequent spread of information. There is no doubt about Twitter’s role on starting and helping organizing the protests, but they have evolved into something bigger and way too hard to coordinate just by the tool itself.”
Posted in YNEM| 09.05.09
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