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OPIATE_MEDIA

                                            August 29, 2011
                                            May    27, 2012


Noam Cohen wrote a survey of recent results
concerning the effects of communications        New York Times,
("social media") on political events.           August 28, 2011:

                                                   http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/business/media/in-times-of-unrest-social-networks-can-be-a-distraction.html?hpw=&pagewanted=print

 Navid Hassanpour-- a Yale poli-sci grad
 student, with a Stanford phD in EE--
 claimed that the events surrounding the
 removal of Murabek in Egypt showed that
 the network interruption actually helped       “Media Disruption Exacerbates
 spread the revolution.  He argued that it      Revolutionary Unrest”,
 increased revolutionary fervor by              APSA 2011 Annual Meeting Paper
 eliminating a distraction, by forcing more     http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1903351
 face-to-face communication, getting people
 out into the streets.
                                                  CONTROL
 Cohen sites a blog post by a Jim Cowie
 (CTO, Renesys) claiming that Libya was
 an example of a more intelligent
 management of communications, instead
 of a total shutdown, they used a            Just like a clumsy
 selective degradation of service.           dictator might shut
                                             down a paper like the
    This is a more subtle                    New York Times, but
    attack: the authorities                  a smarter regime
    avoid a blatant show of                  would just subvert it
    fear, and produce less                   at critical moments.
    of a sense of immediate
    outrage.



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