What Is The Role Of Protest And/Or Technology In Democracy?

Student’s Name Institutional Affiliation Course Title Instructor Date What Is the Role of Protest and/or Technology in Democracy? Introduction In “Fences of Enclosure, Windows of Possibility”, Naomi Klein writes about fences, both real and virtual, that keep people from the promised benefits of globalization. The idea she presents is that most public resources are finding their way into private hands and people are protesting in a bid to break down the ‘fences’ that prevent them from accessing these resources. Protest and technology have over the years proved instrumental in the formation of networks that are critical when people want to demand for their democratic rights from their governments. In the past, people relied on protests, demonstrations, sit-ins and other forms of physical activism to fight for democracy. Currently, modern technologies and the internet have enabled people to connect via social networking sites to collaborate more easily and quickly when seeking the same rights. Whereas both strategies are commonly used in the current generation, evidence indicates that they tend to differ in terms weak and strong ties of the networks and the level of risks involved. In an article entitled “Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted,” Malcom Gladwell gives an example of a sit-in that was organized by four college students on February 1, 1960 that led to the civil rights movement in the U.S. He says, “These events in the early sixties became a civil-rights war that engulfed the South for the rest of the decade—and it happened without e-mail, texting, Facebook, or Twitter” (Gladwell). This is a clear indication that protests are of huge significance when it comes to attaining specific objectives such as fighting for democracy. Klein talks about fences, which are either real or virtual, and people use protests to dismantle barriers that attempt to separate or block people. She says that fences are “usurious operations that put bars around fences” and people use protests as a means of freeing themselves (p.196). This paper critically analyses the role of protest and technology in democracy. Protests play an instrumental role in fighting for democracy, particularly when the participants have a unified goal and they are organized in terms of hierarchical structure and leadership. The protests that started with only four students ended up becoming a national movement throughout the south. Gladwell says that in demand for equal rights, among the students who participated in the sit-ins “Thousands were arrested and untold thousands more radicalized.” As the world goes through a state of revolution, evidence indicates that social activism has been reinvented with the introduction of new technologies such as social media. With tools such as Twitter and Facebook and other social networking, the traditional relationship between popular will and political authority tends to be tipped over. This implies that it becomes much simpler for people who are powerless to coordinate, collaborate, and get a voice of spreading their concerns. In 2009 for instance, more than 10,000 protesters in Moldova demonstrated against their Communist government and their actions were branded as a Twitter Revolution (Glad...