If you tweet a protest, and no one listens, does it make a sound?

November 7, 2014 5:17 AM

Can Minor Languages Make Revolution?, Sarah Kendzior, The Common Reader.
posted by nangar (5 comments total)

This is a salutary reminder that survivorship bias is everywhere in any medium. And I love that a political ritual borrowed from the days of Genghis Khan happened at a Marriott in St. Louis. Thanks.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 6:41 AM on November 7, 2014

Very interesting. I had thought that Twitter implemented some sort of automatic translation a while back, but—and perhaps this supports the article's point—I can't find any non-English tweets in my timeline to verify it with.
posted by Kadin2048 at 7:18 AM on November 7, 2014

If you tweet protest and people do listen, does it actually make a difference and will the media say it does anyway?
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 7:27 AM on November 7, 2014

Glancing at my timeline at the moment, I don't see any translation options. Facebook does offer translation, if a post is in a language that Bing Translate understands and not in one that Facebook believes that you understand.
posted by frimble at 8:32 AM on November 7, 2014

I have been following the Kobane story on Twitter, and there's no automatic translation or the many and varied language which people tweet in. But then, maybe unlike the Uzbek activists in the story, Kurds have been very keen to get news out in English, German, and French, as well the Kurdish, Arabic, and Turkish spoken in the area.
posted by Thing at 8:41 AM on November 7, 2014