Protest in the Age of Social Media

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Introduction As low levels of 'conventional' participation are being noted, the pattern of participation in political matters is changing. Political protest is on the rise in all of its forms from petition signing (demanding the least commitment) to public demonstrations and violent protests (the other extreme) (Moyser, 2003). This essay will focus on political protest in its more extreme form – the form of lawful and unlawful mass protests. In the wake of the 21st century, technology is spreading quickly to every corner of the globe and access to the Internet, smartphones, and computers is easier than ever before. Social media are one of the prominent uses of these technologies, mostly by youth, but use of social media by other demographic semgments of the society are on a rise. The number of social media users is increasing every second and the amount of statuses, tweets, images, and videos they produce is more than overwhelming. There are over 1,15 billion facebook users, and over 500 million of both Google+ and Twitter users with their numbers growing every day (Ajmera, 2013). Also, over 23% of Facebook users log in more than 5 times per day! (ibid) Various kinds of social media brought with themselves new opportunities and methods to express oneself and to gain popular support. They have brought new means and methods of mobilizing society, whatever the objective might be. This essay will try to analyse how social media affect the way protests are organized, executed, and how can the aftermath of a protest be influenced by them. The impacts being argumented for and explained in this paper are: a) social media offer an alternative channel of event coverage, which is not controlled by governments thus changing the perception of ... ... middle of paper ... ...2. Fitzpatrick, A., (2013, June 3) Turkey Protesters Take to Twitter as Local Media Turns a Blind Eye. Mashable. Retrieved January 7, 2014, from http://mashable.com/2013/06/03/twitter-turkey-protests/ Letshc, C.,(2013, December 28) Turkey: Erdogan under new pressure to quit as protesters take to the streets. The Guardian. Retrieved January 6,2014, from http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/28/erdogan-pressure-quit-turkey-protests Levinson, C. (2005) Egypt's Growing Blogger Community Pushes Limit of Dissent. Christian Science Monitor, 24 august. Moyser, G. (2003) ´Political Participation´in: Axtmann, R.(ed.) Understanding Democratic Politics. London: Sage Publications, pp.174-187. Tadros, S., (2011, February 2) The Story of the Egyptian Revolution. American Thinker. Retrieved from http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/02/the_story_of_the_egyptian_revo.html

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