A study released in September by the project on Information Technology and Political Islam at the University of Washington argues that social media including Facebook, Twitter and Youtube played a “central role” in the Arab Spring. They find that a spike in the volume of Tweets in Egypt, for example, anticipated the high volume of physical presence in Tahrir Square just prior to Mubarak’s resignation. There is some very interesting data and analysis here. It is clear that the autocrats in Tunisia and Egypt did not have the technological resources to combat Twitter’s obvious value as a tool for the political opposition. And Twitter’s de-centralized implementation makes it particularly difficult for governments to censor. We must be careful, however, not to read too much into these findings.

There were complaints early this fall among members of the Occupy Wall Street movement that Twitter has been censoring the #occupywallstreet hashtag, not allowing the term to reach the highly visible trending topics section. While Twitter has dismissed these claims, it is important to remember that it’s a private company whose interests do not necessarily resonate with those of the OWS movement. J.P. Morgan reportedly has a 10% stake in Twitter (also, see this and this), though indirectly via the Chris Sacca managed Digital Growth Fund. There is no law preventing Twitter from interfering with Tweet traffic.

Jonathan Albright at the University of Auckland has poked holes in Twitter’s argument that people simply do not understand how their proprietary algorithm works. And there has been enough suspicion on the ground to prompt adoption of Twitter-alternative Vibe. Unlike Twitter, Vibe “tweets” disappear after a fixed time and can be limited to a specific physical radius. Trust doesn’t (and shouldn’t) always scale.