David Patrikarakos (2017), War in 140 Characters: How Social Media is Reshaping Conflict in The Twenty-First Century, New York: Basic Books
Pukar Dahal
A London-based author and journalist, David Patrikarakos, in his book War in 140 Characters: How Social Media is Reshaping Conflict in the Twenty-First Century demonstrates the impact of smartphones and social media in the conduct of present-day war and politics. The central theme of the book is to show how social media has assisted in shifting the power balance from government and state institutions to the hands of individuals and network of individuals.
The book begins by stating “Social media has transformed the way that wars are waged, covered, and consumed.” The readers are then introduced to the hyper empowered, powerful, globally connected, and social media networked individuals; who possesses the potential to alter the conduct of twenty-first century conflicts which wasn’t possible 20 or 30 years ago. The author calls these new species of technologically skilled humans as Homo Digitalis. The Homo digitalis, whose profile has been offered in the book are, Farah Baker, Anna Sandalova, Eliot Higgins, and Vitaly Bespalov.
Farah Baker is a sixteen-year-old Palestinian girl who used twitter to draw global attention during 2014 Gaza-Israel conflict. With her smartphone she became a citizen-journalist and by highlighting Palestinian suffering, she was able to spark international outrage against Israel. Her followers on twitter increased exponentially in the span of few weeks. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) was bound to take them seriously and in response, the IDF also used the similar platform – the social media, and posted video evidences that contradicted with Farah’s narratives of the conflict. The author argues that “a lone teenage girl can now battle – and threaten – the institutional power of one of the world’s most powerful armies”. Later, she was also called as ‘sudden Gaza spokesgirl’ by Al Jazeera America. Author further mentions that these activities might not have a tangible impact in the battle field, however, it helps in generating greater international sympathy for Palestine which could be important for political dialogues in future.
Anna Sandalova is a Ukrainian citizen and a ‘Facebook warrior’ who used Facebook to raise money in order to provide food, uniforms, and armor equipment to the under-resourced Ukrainian soldiers during the 2014 conflict. The author mentions that individuals and the network of individuals were able to mobilize resources during the time of conflict, when the corrupt government of Ukraine couldn’t do the same. He, thus argues, “As the state fails, Homo digitalis rise to take its place” and stresses on the shifting of power from state institutions to the hands of individuals.
Eliot Higgins is a founder of the Bellingcat website and an online gamer who build a team of social media experts and made an investigation on drowning of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17). Staying inside a room having internet connection, his team was able to prove that the flight MH-17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down on 17 July 2014 by a Buk missile fired by the pro-Russian separatists from eastern Ukraine. The investigation further stated that it was the Russian government who had supplied the missile. Author argues that their investigation was able to challenge the effectiveness of intelligence agencies of number of global super powers.
Vitaly Bespalov is a Russian youth who became an internet troll for the Internet Research Agency (IRA) in St. Petersburg, Russia. He worked at a Russian ‘troll farm’ that would create trolls to boost the support in Russia and eastern Ukraine for the Kremlin’s policies. They would create trolls at a very high intensity which would create confusion among the social media users regarding the actual fact and thus, the people wouldn’t know what is really happening.
The book is a swift read, the languages used in the book is easy to understand and the author coherently presents his argument to stress the significance of social media in the twenty-first century conflicts. The stories of Farah Baker and Anna Sandalova is based on real-life personal observations of the author while he was navigating the conflicts in Israel-Palestine and Ukraine as a journalist. The profiles of Homo digitalis as presented by author are detailed, enlightening, and interesting for the readers.
One point where author fails to convince the readers is when he stresses much on social media and argues that it has superseded the physical battlefield as a domain of warfare. Social media might have changed the discourse of conflict but the readers are unlikely to reach to the conclusion that winning virtual battlefield is more important than winning physical battlefield. Even today, one cannot ignore the importance of winning the physical battlefield. Other than that, the author is successful in persuading readers the core thesis of the book i.e. social media has altered the conduct of contemporary warfare. Also, author want readers to better understand how the twenty-first century conflicts have become an ambiguous contest of adversarial narratives and how social media possesses immense power in shaping these narratives.
This book can be helpful and interesting for the students and professionals interested in conflict studies, national security, cyberspace, intelligence studies, strategic studies, and similar subjects. In the nutshell, the book is fundamentally about the power of social media in present-day conflicts. It provides readers with series of stories that connects readers with the personal lives of individuals. The book makes readers think about the changing nature of contemporary conflicts and asserts that social media has changed the discourse surrounding the battlefield. David Patrikarakos has explored new paradigm of present-day warfare in his book.
