Three reminders – from China, the Soviet Union and the early days of the British Empire – that social media isn’t new. Conversations in public have always been an enabler of change:
Posting on Democracy Wall
‘Walls have ears’ according to wartime propaganda. The wall on Xidan Street in Beijing, however, developed a loud voice. During the winter of 1978-79 when the Communist leadership allowed a temporary thaw in its hardline, the wall became the focus for democratic dissent. On this wall – called Democracy Wall – activists, artists and others began to post banners (dazibao) for others to read and respond to.
As the protestors grew more confident and numerous, thousands of posts began to spring up at Democracy Wall and in other parts of the city – including on a fence by the mausoleum devoted to Mao in Tiananmen Square. Before long, however, the authorities decided to suppress the movement.
Rather than ban posting, the authorities opened a state-designated ‘protest wall’ in a city park. Access to this park was then – gradually – restricted. The leaders of the movement were eventually jailed. The wall on Xidan Street, however, inspired a similar Democracy Wall in Hong Kong. This played a part in the development of democracy in the British colony before it was handed back to China. Given subsequent changes in the approach of the Chinese authorities, the voice of the posts on the wall in Xidan Street may still be resounding?
Samizdat – self-publication
Social media – before the Internet age – was important in the Soviet Union where access to mainstream media was tightly controlled. Samizdat (meaning, in Russian, ‘self- published’) documents played a key part in the dissident movement in the Soviet bloc. People produced and reproduced texts that were banned or censored using carbon paper – either copying by hand or with a typewriter. Printing presses and copy machines were also sometimes used illegally at night to make samizdat copies.
Samizdat literature included poetry as well as political texts. There were samizdat newspapers and journals. These contained reports from prison and of arrests and State persecution as well as criticism of Party corruption and letters and comments on current affairs and content in previous issues. In these ways, samizdat enabled a conversation that was, in time, critical in the overthrow of Soviet Communism.
Empire of the chat room
Social media was influential in Britain too, long before anyone had a smartphone. The British Empire was, perhaps, based on it and the insurance industry which formed in London from the late 17th century onwards certainly arose from it. The new industry centred on conversation in City coffee shops like the famous Lloyds Coffee House (after which Lloyds the world centre for insurance was named).
London coffee shops were frequented by merchants and sea captains returning from trade abroad. They became hotbeds of information about shipping and trade. At a time when the arrival of one ship carrying the right cargo could make a fortune (but when merchant vessels frequently sank or were robbed) conversation over coffee was highly prized. It enabled merchants to make a fair assessment of the risk of each other’s ventures and to hedge against disastrous losses by sharing them. This greatly enabled the expansion of British trade which underpinned and drove the creation of the Empire which, at one stage, ruled not only the seas but a quarter of the land surface of the world.
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