Conclusion: The Compression of Social Time

Summary

Global Connections and the Digital

The year 2019 was one of global unrest, from the gilets jaunes in France to the Anti-Extradition Law protests in Hong Kong, the October Revolution in Lebanon and a major revolt in Chile that launched a new constitutional process. All these movements responded to their own set of underlying conditions that cannot always be related to each other. However, they were also characterized by the ubiquitous presence of smartphones and the use of social media to share information and opinions, organize people, mobilize resources and inspire various forms of struggle. The last revolution in Lebanon in 2019, a massive mobilization of youth every night in the central square, and the occupation for several days of the Martyrs’ Square, was embodied by smartphone and online applications that enabled its extension (The Atlantic 2019; Sinno 2020; al-Rammal 2022). Every evening, the Lebanese diaspora from all over the world, thanks to smartphones and digital applications, delivered meals to the demonstrators occupying the square. This transnational, cross-border solidarity allowed the movement to take root and become visible, creating the conditions for its endurance. When the protests in Chile started in October 2019, all social media channels in the country were flooded with images of protesters facing the police on the streets (Scherman and Rivera 2021). At some point, images and coverage of the protests in Hong Kong from earlier in the year started to circulate, and with them depictions of tactics and organization (Rachman et al. 2019). In Hong Kong, protesters had clear roles, from brave frontliners with helmets, face covers and makeshift shields to medical students acting as paramedics and volunteers managing logistics, security and public information via Telegram, Facebook and Twitter (Hernandez and Scarr 2019). Moreover, the protesters in Hong Kong had already devised tactics to confront the police, for example, by using laser pointers and umbrellas to reduce visibility and the recording of protesters. Soon afterwards, similar tactics were being used by Chilean protesters (Cole 2019). Unlike in the revolutions of the twentieth century, there were no professional revolutionaries travelling the world offering their teachings. In the compressed social time of the twenty-first century, as the contributions in this book show, online and offline are two faces of the same coin, and communication happens in a more immediate, extensive and multifaceted way.