Australian journalist Peter Beaumont, in one of his articles, asked “Can social networking overthrow a government?” Apparently, unfolding events in the Middle East and North African nations of Egypt , Bahrain , Tunisia , Moldova , Iran and Libya
Indeed, the events which led to these revolutions, whether for the overthrow of a government or for protesting Presidential election results, gave birth to the concept of ‘Twitter Revolutions’ and to the question of whether these events can be considered as such. Well, as one blogger put it, “‘Twitter Revolution’ is more catchy than an ‘E-mail Revolution’. But I shall not digress.
The point is that the contribution of Internet to these uprisings cannot be denied. The extent of this contribution, however, cannot be given a similarly concrete position. My personal position is that social media of course deserves credit, but this recognition cannot be monopolized by ICT since people power equally proves to be a major force. We can actually cut the debate on what caused what, and simply acknowledge that these revolutionary occurrences in these countries are products of a partnership between ICT-People Power.
Beaumont himself impliedly provided for the answer by stating in his article that the phenomena is best summed up through an encounter he had with a group of young Tunisians during a demonstration when he arrived at Tunis:
"I asked them what they were photographing with their phones.
“Ourselves. Our revolution. We put it on Facebook,” one replied laughing, as if it were a stupid question.
“It’s how we tell the world what’s happening.”"
- Phebean Belle A. Ramos, entry #15
Image Source: http://joscard.com/blog/page/3/
See this link for Beaumont's article: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/can-social-networking-overthrow-a-government-20110225-1b7u6.html
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