Memories of social media use in the Greek Referendum of 2015
In the context of the question:
How does a network amplify or weaken voices?
One could observe that in the context of fetishistic online self-exposure, public political opinions appear quite often on electronic walls. While polling organisations complain that more and more people are not willing to reveal their voting intentions, in social media, there are a lot of announcements. Although numerous monitoring tools have been developed, social media functions inherently in a way that in many cases is sufficient for the psycho-emotional management of their users.
An example that remains vivid in my memory is the legendary Greek referendum of 2015 and the overwhelming number of tweets bombarding the trending topic #greferendum. Both sides of the debate, #YES and #NO, were broadly using Twitter as a propaganda weapon for their campaign. “Talkwalker”, a social network monitoring and analysis company, within the context of advertising their service, published a study about the fluctuations of the two hashtag campaigns, based on data extracted from Twitter. I can imagine that analysts and researchers use these kinds of studies to confirm the predictability in the movements of virtual crowds, according to the rules of spectacle. For me, it was just disappointing to see the virtual reflection of real-life social-emotional and intellectual vulnerability.
According to the study, after the referendum was announced, the #NO campaign took an early lead over the #YES campaign, both in Greece and globally. Nevertheless, some days later, #YES surpassed #NO in Greek Twitter accounts, following the sudden imposition of capital controls by the government. After that, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras speech on national Greek TV boosted the #NO trend again. The Prime Minister asserted the citizens that their money is secure and he is personally responsible for it. He encouraged them to vote #NO and reminded them of their historical duty over this crucial moment. “Talkwalker” published the following on its marketing blog;
“Tsipras’ and Varoufakis’ use of social media seems to lead the debate, generating more conversation and buzz than Junckers and Lagarde. Alexis Tsipras is eight times more active socially than Jean Claude Juncker. He also generates three times more social engagement than Mr Juncker. Varoufakis’ tweet that “democracy deserves a boost in Euro related matters, we just delivered it, let the people decide, funny how radical this concept sounds” was retweeted over 9,400 times, “favourited” over 6,300 times.
Tspiras’ tweet (which coincided with his speech) in which he said “the dignity of the Greek people in the face of blackmail and injustice sends a message of hope and pride to all of Europe” was retweeted over 4,800 times and “favourited” over 3,200 times. Tsipras’ social performance, in particular, appears to have given a big boost to the “No” campaign with his 37 tweets using “No” hashtags resulting in close to 18,000 retweets. Juncker was the last to finish this “high-quality” political race, receiving only 2,240 retweets and being “favourited” 1,390 times.
Twitter offered everyone the convenience of publishing their online opinion uninhibited, thinking that “since political figures like Varoufakis and Tsipras send radical tweets, so will I!”. Some people thought that Twitter's massive movement would cause the explosion of cyberspace; that the system would be unable to stand the vast number of hashtags and the enormous expression of public opinions, unmediated by TV channels. Many people hoped that the referendum’s result, supported by radical expression on Twitter, would cast away all the austerity measures of the memorandum and the minimum wage would rise again. A lot of social media users had the impression of being informed independently from TV channels. They wanted to punish the classic TV personas, who were considered to follow orders from big corrupted political parties. They wanted to give mainstream TV channels a lesson, for promoting #YES in favour of their bosses, against the “common good”. The mentality of the average Greek person at that moment was the: "Finally, we proudly stood up to these goddamn Germans. #NO!"
Unfortunately, things didn’t work out as expected. Despite the major #NO result, the agreement with the European authorities came as a big disappointment, (#greekment in Twitter language), introducing the new memorandum. Subsequently, a new hashtag burst onto the internet; a physics professor in Barcelona introduced #ThisIsACoup, writing on July 12: “The Eurogroup proposal is a covert coup d’ Etat against the Greek people. #ThisIsACoup #Grexit.” Of course, Twitter went crazy again.
To sum up: July 2, #NO stands up to European Creditors; July 12, #ThisIsACoup shakes the world. A comment on a TV channel’s website says: “The last two hours #ThisIsACoup is ranked 1st. Germans are condemned in real-time by the whole world.” I think that this is actually how the networked mass becomes a victim of psychological management by itself. The all-powerful TV cannot do this in such a masterly way. The transition from “we-will-show-them” to “look-what-they-do-to-us” is not uncommon for Greek “Petite bourgeoisie” and its obsessions. However, as long as a medium that appears to be “alternative” validates this dynamic, the result is the self-assertion and reinforcement of a petite bourgeoisie attitude. Admittedly, I am writing this while being ignorant of all the mechanisms which work together to generate such situations. Nevertheless, I am almost entirely convinced that corporate social networks are adequate for the role of mass psychological management.
Visit the turquoise room to read about some of my contradictory self-exposure stories.