No. It isn't just the social media.

The mass media is full, and I mean brimming around the edges, with obsessive coverage of how "new social media" based on internet and inexpensive personal mobile communications is pivotal in defining the current disruptions in the Middle East.  And to a degree, they're correct.  It isn't hard to observe that Facebook and Twitter and their ilk have transformed observably the tactical and strategic cat and mouse game of establishment versus disestablishment in the current conflicts.  Yet it is easy, entirely too easy, to overstate the significance of these technologies as causes, rather than means.  And this, I believe, is where the mass media is largely getting it wrong.  

Let's clarify for a moment.  In the sciences, including political science, beyond simple observation, our primary focus is establishment of regularities - patterns or relationships that are enduring when repeated.  We divide these relationships between variables into three general types:

1. Correlations - Look at the word and you'll see it pretty much defines itself - when one variable changes, the other changes - they co-relate.  This is an ambiguous term however - it implies we know that when you see X you tend to see Y, but we can't strongly demonstrate that X comes before Y in time, or vice-versa, or if there is some extra variable that is acting on both at the same time.  We know, in other words, that they are interrelated, but we can't really show definitively how.  To choose "correlation" over "cause," then, is an act of scientific humility.  

2. Reflexive Relationships - Again, the terms nearly define themselves - as in the case of correlations we see that when variable X changes, variable Y changes - here we see the same thing but we have some reason or reasons to suspect that X causes Y causes X causes Y causes X causes . . . well, you get the picture.  In other words, both variables are suspected as serving, in their own time, as cause and effect, so attempts at discerning "original cause" is largely fruitless - very chicken and the egg.   The example I use most frequently with my classes is the cycle of violence principle - those people most likely to be abusive are those who were themselves abused - this is both linear and, sometimes, perfectly reflexive, such as when an abused child responds by abusing their own parents in their old age. 

3. Causal Relationships - Now, this is the relationship that non-scientists tend to use to describe all relationships (inaccurately).  Cause and effect refer to a specific type of correlation, one in which the one variable invariably comes in time before another variable - X precedes Y.  It also infers something very specific - that X is necessary for Y to occur (though it still may not be sufficient).  If something isn't necessary for Y, it isn't a cause - that doesn't mean it isn't important, or that it doesn't shape events (and therefore may be considered causal of a second or later stage in a "causal chain"), but that strictly speaking, it didn't cause Y.  

Okay, chief, you're saying.  I'm bored.  Move on.  What the hell does this have to do with Twitter?  There are a host of underlying causes of radical disestablishmentarianism in general, and of the Third Wave in particular, but these causes fall into two general categories.  On the one hand we have what you might call the conditional causes (institutions and structures), on the other the "causers," being the individual actors, mostly elites, whose decisions ultimately are a reaction to the perceived costs, benefits, and risks of different responses to those conditional causes.  

Why can I say that new media didn't cause these disruptions? Because that is not unlike saying that the U-Boat caused the First World War.  The U-Boat changed the war, altered it, forced new responses (some successful, some less), but the war was caused by human beings making rational decisions in response to the circumstances they perceived around them.  The fundamental rules of human behavior, and the general principles that explain why human beings engage in violence, didn't change.  In the same sense, Twitter, Facebook, and new media clearly did affect and is affecting the way the current disruptions are preceding in the Middle East.  They allow for simple, rapid, mass communication that is incredibly cheap, on the one hand, while also giving states unique intelligence gathering opportunities.  But the causes of these disruptions, ultimately, lay in the decisions of disestablishmentarians to engage in mass resistance in response to domestic and interstate conditions (which I'll go into at another time).   

The proof in the pudding?  Human beings have always been prone to internal disestablishmentarianism - revolts and civil wars are relatively common in virtually every civilization during virtually every period of time.  The legitimate means and ends of these revolts, sometimes tied up in pure pragmatism, sometimes in theology, sometimes in ideology, have changed, but the phenomenon is very old and tends to emerge whenever we see governments that fail to guarantee high levels of governmentality (state penetration into society), functionality, and/or legitimacy.  The only thing technology has really changed is that it has "conquered" space and time - actors now have the ability to coordinate over larger areas faster - and it has made it easier to incorporate larger numbers of people into movements through the development of mass media - that is to say, it has allowed for the development of command polities, economies, and societies.  Strategies and tactics, yes; causes, no.  

So when you want to explain why the Tunisian people stood up a few weeks ago, remember - a man killed himself in protest, shocked his nation, and men and women who were already dissatisfied stood up, they looked around, weighed the consequences, and decided to act.