Evgeny Morozov, in blog posts for Foreign Policy, has helped spread the word about how anti-government protesters in Moldova last week used Twitter and Facebook to help coordinate their efforts. In his first post, titled Moldova’s Twitter Revolution, he reported:

If you asked me about the prospects of a Twitter-driven revolution in a low-tech country like Moldova a week ago, my answer would probably be a qualified “no”. Today, however, I am no longer as certain … Technology is playing an important role in facilitating [the current] protests, [with] huge mobilization eforts both on Twitter and Facebook … All in all, while it’s probably too early to tell whether Moldova’s Twitter revolution will be successful, it would certainly be wrong to disregard the role that Twitter and other social media have played in mobilizing (and, even more so, reporting on) the protests.

In a follow-up yesterday, after the protests had fizzled, he wrote:

Let me say this upfront: I don’t think that Moldova’s Twitter revolution failed because of Twitter. No, it failed because of politics – and Moldovan politics are not the easiest kind of politics to make sense of. I firmly believe that social media did a great job; political leadership from Moldova’s opposition simply wasn’t there to exploit it in meaningful and smart ways …

In the case of Moldova, it’s possible that Twitter has made much bigger impact on the new media environment outside of (rather than inside) the Twittersphere by simply feeding a stream of blogs, social networks, and text messages with content. In my view, people who point to the low number of Twitter users in Moldova as proof of the mythical nature of [“the Twitter revolution”] have conceptual difficulties understanding how networks work; on a good network, you don’t need to have the maximum number of connections to be powerful – you just need to be connected to enough nodes with connections of their own.

No doubt, the Moldovan protests will be used as an example of how the Net and, in particular, its social-networking and personal-broadcasting functions can be used to support popular uprisings and, more generally, the spread of democracy. And rightfully so. But before anyone gets carried away by the idea that the Net is a purely democratizing force, it would be wise to read a longer essay by Morozov, titled Texting Toward Utopia, in the new issue of Boston Review. In this piece, Morozov shows how the Net can serve as a powerful pro-authoritarian or even pro-totalitarian force as well as a pro-democratic one. He argues that our liberal Western biases may be distorting our view of the Net’s effects, by leading us to ignore examples that don’t fit with our desires.

Here’s a brief excerpt about blogging:

Outside of the prosperous and democratic countries of North America and Western Europe, digital natives are as likely to be digital captives as digital renegades, a subject that none of the recent studies [of the Net’s democratizing effects] address in depth. If the notion that the Internet could dampen young people’s aspirations for democracy seems counterintuitive, it is only because our media is still enthralled by the trite narrative of bloggers as a force for positive change. Recent headlines include: “Egypt’s growing blogger community pushes limit of dissent,” “From China to Iran, Web Diarists Are Challenging Censors,” “Cuba’s Blogger Crackdown,” “China’s web censors struggle to muzzle free–spirited bloggers.”

Much of the encouraging reporting may be true, if slightly overblown, but it suffers from several sources of bias. As it turns out, the secular, progressive, and pro–Western bloggers tend to write in English rather than in their native language. Consequently, they are also the ones who speak to Western reporters on a regular basis. Should the media dig a bit deeper, they might find ample material to run articles with headlines like “Iranian bloggers: major challenge to democratic change” and “Saudi Arabia: bloggers hate women’s rights.” The coverage of Egyptian blogging in the Western mainstream media focuses almost exclusively on the struggles of secular writers, with very little mention of the rapidly growing blogging faction within the Muslim Brotherhood. Labeling a Muslim Brotherhood blog as “undemocratic” suggests duplicity.

It’s a paradox worth remembering: Democratic media don’t necessarily support democratic values.

UPDATE: Ethan Zuckerman provides a deep analysis of the Moldovan tweets.