“The revolution will not be televised, but it will be tweeted.” Such sentiments were expressed frequently during the turmoil over last summer’s Iranian elections. When foreign press was barred from attending demonstrations against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Twitter became the easiest way for dissidents in the country to make their voices heard.
The phrase could also apply to last week’s annual general meeting of the Canadian Federation of Students. The controversial Motion 6 passed, making it harder for member unions to defederate. (Thirteen campuses across Canada have defederation campaigns underway; 11 have already submitted petitions. A spokesperson said the changes will not affect petitions filed before the national executive meeting in January.) A massive reform package, aimed at making the CFS more transparent and accountable to its members, was mostly rejected.
The CFS allowed one journalist accreditation to cover the AGM: Emma Godmere, Ottawa bureau chief of the Canadian University Press. But journalists from the McGill Daily and the Concordian came as members of their student union, and proceeded to use Twitter to cover the event at #cfs09. Godmere also used Twitter to live-blog the event.
The CFS stopped the unaccredited McGill Daily and Concordian reporters from posting under their papers’ banners; they continued tweeting under their own names. The reporters from the Quebec student papers posted tweets like “…no francophone media at all will be allowed in. Shame.” Godmere, with tweets such as “Motion referral carries with amendment,” was allowed to continue posting as a CUP reporter.
“I was approached by a CFS staff member who casually mentioned that if the other two papers kept tweeting, the official media credentials for CUP could be retracted in the near future,” said Godmere.
Twitter opened a floodgate of opinion and debate from people who would not otherwise have had a say, either because they did not attend the AGM or because CFS policy forbids reporters from interviewing delegates until after the closing plenary.
Twitter accounts covering the event came in four categories. Pro-CFS posts came mostly from CFS staffers or supporters, while anti-CFS posts were mostly made by student politicians and reform supporters. Live blogs had journalists and others giving play-by-plays. Lastly, joke accounts were designed to disrupt, add humour, or embarrass members on either side.
It wasn’t always easy to follow the action. Both the pro- and anti-CFS factions would endlessly re-tweet the same sentence, occasionally leading to a wall of identical text.
There were also accounts with minute differences in their names, making it difficult to distinguish legitimate accounts from saboteurs. For @cfsQuebec, an account from frustrated Quebecois students, there was @cfs_Quebec, posting, “I need some gum to cover my beer breath.”
Reactions to the passing of Motion 6 elicited such responses as “Motion six defeated, 1/3rd of delegates question top-down authoritarianism, BUT chair fails to recognize result” from @CFSQuebec.
“Thousands of students across the country getting ready to revolt against the CFS if motion 6 passes…” from @TBYS_.
And from @csuconcordia, “CSU and other schools walk out of CFS meeting!”
On the lighter side, an account claiming to be the “Cdn Fed of Goats” said, “but i wanted bleat on motion 6!!!” “Concerned delegates cannot find hot dog cart. Can an insider please confirm where the hot dog cart is located,” chimed in @foodsolidarity, while @cfspalin contributed such tweets as “All the mavericks in the house put your hands up.”
Joey Coleman, a blogger for Globecampus who was following #cfs09, told The Varsity the social network “broke the wall.” Coleman, referencing the CFS’s reluctance to allow media coverage, added, “Twitter is impossible for the CFS to stop, short of installing cell-phone jammers.”
Coleman has followed past CFS AGMs, and said Twitter made this one different. “[Previously] we didn’t really find out about what was going on behind the scenes—you heard whispers.”
Godmere, at the closing plenary session when all the motions were voted on, used Twitter to provide up-to-the-minute coverage. She said she enjoyed the discussion the site facilitated, but worried about the “negative voices involved in that dialogue.”
Godmere said that some of the joke accounts added humour to the proceedings, but others only added further divisions. “You had no idea if it was someone inside or outside [the AGM] tweeting,” she said, adding that some delegates voiced concerns of privacy violations.
For more coverage, see “Double or nothing,” also in this issue. Follow The Varsity on Twitter here.
