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On April 6th, 2009, a peaceful protest was called in Moldova in reaction to what
some claimed were fraudulent parliamentary elections that led to the reelection of
the incumbent Communist Party. Characterized as a flash mob, the gathering on
April 6th quickly swelled to a large protest on April 7th with an estimated 30,000
participants. The events gained international attention as many journalists and
technology pundits began asserting that they were organized using the social
networking tool, Twitter. Headlines included Moldovas Twitter Revolution,
Protests in Moldova Explode, With Help of Twitter, and Moldovans Turn to Twitter
to Organize Protests. How central was Twitter and other social networking
technologies to the organizing of these events? How did participants perceive the
events? What was the political motivation behind them?
This paper seeks to answer these questions about the events of April, 2009 but also
to situate them in the context of Moldovas complex history and identity. Rather
than concentrate only on the role of Internet Communication Technologies in a
single event, this paper strives to explore the role of identity
4
politics in Moldova, especially in relation to Moldovas Communist Party (PCRM) that,
though weakened, still enjoys broad support from the populace.
Part 1 of the paper will focus on the April, 2009 events dubbed the Twitter
Revolution. After a brief historical overview of the event followed by a theoretical
discussion of the role of ICTs in political mobilization (e-mobilization), qualitative
data from participants will be examined as well as an analysis of the #pman tweets
that caught the attention of the international media.
Part 2 will delve into Moldovas history, discussing the question of national and
ethnic identity in Moldova, especially their association with language. This will set
the background for a discussion on the Communist Partys 2001 electoral victory
and subsequent dominance of national politics.
Lastly, I will draw conclusions from the preceding sections and discuss how a
convergence of identity politics, youthful idealism, and Web 2.0 technologies
brought about a Twitter Revolution in Moldova.
Twitter Revolution
The #pman hashtag began at 7:40 in the morning on April 7th by Vitalie Esanu, a
software developer in Moldova:
Morning, I propose we use the tag pman for messages from the national assembly
square.3
Vitalie attended the event on the previous night (April 6th) arranged by Natalie
Morar and her colleagues at the pro-democracy NGOs Think Moldova and Hyde Park
to protest the results of the previous days election. A young journalist, Natalia
Morar used SMS and social networking tools including Twitter to spread the word
about the protests against the election results. Morar intended to call together all
the young people in Moldova who didn't vote for the Communist party to come into
the streets with candles to commemorate a national day of mourning. Morar
expected about 300 people to come, but she about 15,000 people ended up
attending the national day of mourning.
In a blog post, Vitalie described the peaceful mobilization on April 6th4:
I was there on the evening of April 6th, 2009, in the square, without a candle (Im
not a fan of these things being displayed in public), and I remained wide-eyed with
wonder. There were so many people.
At the time, there was an estimated 100 Twitter users located in Moldova. 5 As the
protests in Chisinau turned violent (police clashes and the vandalization of the
presidential and parliamentary buildings), the news about #pman spread over the
Internet and it was only a matter of hours until election protests in a relatively
unknown country were dubbed the Twitter Revolution by the international media
(Morozov, 2009). Even though it started as a communication channel for people
attending the protest, the hashtag
2 The so-called Golden Vote
3 Tweets and other subject data were translated from Romanian by the author
4 http://www.esanu.name/vitalie/
5 According to a Google Search of Twitter users who state their location as either
Chisinau or Moldova
7
#pman on Twitter quickly evolved into a hub for people around the world to get the
latest information about what was happening in Chisinau. Approximately 32,000
tweets were sent through #pman from its creation on April 7 through April 12, 2009
when the protests ended.
Protests in small, poor Moldova would normally not capture the attention of the
international media. Using Twitter was "a great way to get attention on the events
because it was the flavor of the month in social media and mentioning cool new
tech was a great way to get journalists to cover an event they might otherwise
miss (Zuckerman, 2009). Most of the articles about the events in Moldova
mentioned Twitter first in the list of social networking sites (SNS) used by protesters,
even though other SNS such as Facebook, LiveJournal, and Faces.md were more
actively used in Moldova (Ionescu, 2009). The events in Moldova were dubbed the
"Twitter Revolution" because in the midst of the events and rapidly spreading news,
it was believed that Twitter played a crucial role in organizing the demonstrations
(Morozov, 2009). In his blog, Vitalie Esanu states:
Although the mobilization of the protestors wasnt only done through Twitter (I
personally learned what was going on through Twitter), but also other social
networks and SMS. However, Twitter Revolution sounds cool.
Esanu submitted an email with Morozovs article attached to the editor of
TechCrunch, a popular site for technology news, and Student Protests are Turning
into a Twitter Revolution soon appeared on the sites front page6. Esanu attributed
the wide distribution of this article via RSS and syndication on other sites to the
explosion of interest in the #pman tag on Twitter and the subsequent coverage of
the Twitter Revolution by CNN.
The fact that tweets were publicly accessible allowed for a large number of people
to get to the information and interact with the existing social and informational
networks. NGOs and many young people of Moldova were not only present at the
protests but some were actively engaging with Twitter readers about the protests.
All this led journalists and media analysts to believe that Twitter was a tool used
during the events and for its organization. The role Twitter played in the events at
Chisinau continues to be contested- some believe it was less about the organization
of a social movement as proffered by media outlets but more as a platform to
rapidly spread the news about the protests to a global populace who may have
never otherwise known they were taking place (Serbanuta, 2009).
Esanu agrees with this last argument in the conclusion to his blog post with the
following:
6 http://techcrunch.com/2009/04/07/student-protests-are-turning-into-a-twitterrevolution-in-moldova/
8
Thus, the Twitter Revolution began to be used and given as an example in all
conferences on social networks. But, one thing should be clarified: In our case,
Twitter did not have a role in organizing, but rather informing people outside
MoldovaThe name Twitter Revolution was preferred only because it was cool,
because it was more appealing than Facebook Revolution, Odnoklasniki
Revolution, SMS Revolution or Social Network Revolution. It was rather a new
type of marketing for promoting an event, a crucial event for the destiny of a
community.
Moldova and ICTs
Tweet Data
Over 5 days (April 7 to April 12), 32,107 tweets with the #pman hashtag were
generated from 1,979 unique users to organize, discuss, and promote the events in
Moldova.16 Each user posted an average of 6 tweets on April 7th and by April 12th,
a smaller set of users posted an average of 15 tweets. Though no geographic data
is associated with the Tweets, the language of the majority is Romanian with English
coming in a distant second. As Russian is a popular language in Moldova, the small
number of tweets in Russian indicates the network of people involved in the #pman
content are primarily Romanian speakers.
In the Appendix, a series of Word Clouds show the most common terms used in the
#pman Twitter discussion each day. Romanian remains dominant throughout the
discussion, indicating, as Ethan Zuckerman points out in his blog, that the
conversation stayed focused on the events in Chisinau rather than shifting to an
English-dominated discussion about the wonders of Twitter. Dominant URLs posted
to #pman link to Romanian language blogs describing the event, opposition party
Web sites, Romanian streaming TV, Romanian news stories about the event, and
Youtube videos uploaded by those present in the Square. Clearly, the #pman Twitter
content was produced by and written for Romanian-speakers. The paucity of Twitter
users stating their location as being in Moldova suggests that either the majority of
users active on #pman are Romanian nationals or that the Moldovan diaspora
(many of whom reside in Romania) was actively using Twitter to track and react to
events in Moldova.
heated debate. Though there are a few renewed calls for mobilizations, the crowds
never reappear to the degree they did on April 6 th and 7th.
While it seems that Twitter could not have played much of a role on the ground
organizing, the content
Further Research
The meaning of social media in protest can vary based on the political and social
environment. A stable framework for analyzing the role of these emerging
technologies in political action across countries has not yet emerged. One possibility
for further research on the Twitter Revolution is Social Network Analysis. Social
Network Analysis uses network theory to view social relationships as consisting of
nodes and ties. The structure of a social network can be identified and analyzed by
mapping the relationships (nodes and ties) in the network. The #pman content
consists of Twitter users (nodes) with varying numbers of followers (ties). A map of
this network could reveal the influence or authority of some users in driving the
popularity of the #pman hashtag by looking at both the number of Tweets and how
many followers they reached. This could lead to more directed interviews that
isolated those with the most influence within the network. An important question in
the Moldova Twitter Revolution context is the nationality of the users (Moldovans
abroad or Romanians?). A social network analysis would also 41
facilitate the isolating of influential users to determine their geographic location at
the time of the protests. In addition to network mapping of #pman Twitter users, a
more comprehensive and random sampling of attitudes of participants on the
ground would provide more data to support conclusions about motivations to
participate.