Recent
revolutions underlined the new role played by social Medias. The new internet
generation characterized by a convergence of social Medias as well as advances
made in the field of new technologies found on internet a new public space to
express its opinions.
The nature
of contemporary revolutions like the movement “Occupy Wall Street” or the
revolutions in the Arab world may lead us to wonder whether nowadays social
Medias became a necessary base to efficient revolutions.
It’s worth
notice that without internet, it would be difficult for militants to be heard
insofar as social Medias appear as a tool of mobilization.
The movement Occupy Wall Street
demonstrated the efficiency of an action led at the same time in the street and
on line. The movement started with the
publication of an article written by an American Journalist, David Degraw. He
declared that 99% of the American population wasn’t politically represented; he
then created the Movement of the 99%: a social network where citizens could post
propositions of economic or social reforms. After that, the group Anonymous offered him to create a safer
website on which the NGO Adbusters spread the idea of a pacific sit-in for July
13th. For the Guardian “the movement Occupy Wall Street uses the
social networks as a tool of organization”. Indeed, according to the British newspaper “Anonymous developed a Twitter application, Urge, which campaigned to
forbid violence during the manifestation”.
Though, the
protest movement wouldn’t have had the same echo without this
“double-revolution”. The new Medias created the information as well as they
spread it. They appeared as an alternative
to the traditional Medias that didn’t relay the event. Indeed, the American
conservative channels like CNN or Fox News remained silent about the movement;
their refusal of transmitting the information was given the name of “Black-out” by the indignants. At the same time a wave of protest took place
on the web where American Medias were made fool of.
The
movement really developed on the web. All the means of new communication have been mobilized to amplify and share the
message of the movement on a global scale. The indignants shared their
thoughts on blogs , websites like Global Revolution permitted to follow
the events continually,
while Global-square allowed the
cybernaute to visualize an interactive map of the world where the movements
were taking place. Internet appeared as
a public space, the website Global-square
was an answer to the need of creation of
a virtual assembly, a platform that would “foster individual participation and structure collective action” as
argued the creators of the website. The creators admitted that Facebook or
Twitter had been helpful for “disseminating
basic information and aiding mass mobilization” but they didn’t provide
them “with the tools for extending a participatory model of decision making
up to the global level”.
“What we need (…) is a global square where
people of all nations can come together as equals to participate in the
coordination of collective actions and the formulation of common goals and
aspirations. “
The use of
the new Medias by the movement proved that internet highly contributed to the
development of new democratic practices by creating new places for social
participation. The internet generation is using new technologies in order to
get involved in the actuality at a time where a reconsideration of the
principles of national-state is developing. Indeed, internet for example
appears as a way of getting round censorship of information, while the control
of information by a state is one of the most important mean to exercise its
power. As far as Occupy Wall Street Movement is concerned; many militants
turned into “citizen-journalists”.
As an example, Tim Pool a former skateboard
videographer filmed the movement with his Samsung Galaxy S II phone and webcastedthe action. His videos knew a world-wide success:
he had more than 20 000 simultaneous viewers and 250 000 visitors in
one day, his video were also broadcasted by Al-Jazeera English.
Though, nowadays
New Social Medias play an essential role in the development of revolutions. The
actors adapted their tools of action to the evolution of society. They knew how
to take advantage of the advances in the field of technologies in order to
spread their movement. The new social
Medias became tools of organization as well as platforms for social
participations reshaping the traditional forms of democracy. They revealed
necessary for the development of participative democracy and question the
actual tools of governing.
They actually
appear as active forms of counter-power:
a concrete example can be given through an event which occurred in Lithuania which
shows how citizens used internet to oppose to a justice decision. The affair
started in 2004; Deimantel a 4 year old little girl told her father how her
mother (they were separated) used to prostitute her. In 2009, the Lithuanian
justice which had been seized accused the father of slander, actually many
politic men were involved in this scandal. The justice gave a ruling on
reaccording the custody of the child to her mother. The father
then decided to webcast a video of her daughter where she described the
pedophile acts in order to denounce the scandal. Many Lithuanians opposed the police force;
they camped in front of the house of the mother. Anonymous called the
population to help policemen from giving back the little girl to her mother on
#OpLithChild and a petition has been started on Change.org. .
Audrey Diboine
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