The facebook and Twitter revolutions: Active participation in the 21st century

• Authors: Stefano Passini
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

In the past few years, a wave of protest has spread across the world. The particularity of these uprisings lies in the way the Internet is used to support them. Scholars have analyzed these movements as being closely related to a generation that relies on the Internet as a means of organizing themselves as a force of social change. That is, the Internet is seen as a way of promoting the active participation of young people in political issues. Public opinion and the mass media hail the Arab Spring revolutions as movements beneficial to the democratization of oppressive regimes. By contrast, when disobedient movements emerge in democratic countries, they are generally more cautious in evaluating these movements as enriching democracy. This cautious opinion also concerns the use of social media. In this article, the so-called Twitter revolutions are discussed in light of the theories of social psychology that analyze the relationship between disobedience and democracy.

Keywords

EN

disobedience; democracy; protest; Twitter revolutions; Arab spring; values

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Human Affairs
• Year: 2012
• Volume: 22
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 301-312

Dates

published

2012-07-01

online

2012-06-25

Contributors

author

Stefano Passini

• University of Bologna

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/s13374-012-0025-0