The Internet as a tool for change

One of the main advantages that the Internet has brought to our society is its potential as a tool that allows citizens to organize themselves. People from different countries can arrange meetings and demonstrations with an ease that was only a dream just a decade ago. The first examples of this cyberactivism were the protests organized by the movements against globalization which followed the summits of the G-8, the G-20 and the IMF. But the real capacity of change that the Internet can bring to the free world has been seen in the recent protests in the Arab world. Although the official media can be easily controlled by totalitarian governments and dictatorships, the web has provided the people with an instrument to make public what their leaders want to keep hidden. Censorship is not as easy as it used to be, although some countries, especially China, have unfortunately succeed in their attempts to control what appears and what must be deleted fromn the Internet, as the tragic example of the late Nobel Peace Prize shows. Although Liu Xiacobo was already imprisoned when he was awarded with the prize, his conditions of confinement toughtened after that. Besides, his wife and other dissidents were also arrested. But none of these is known in China, as far as the government has achieved to block all the news concerning this matter on the Internet.

However, the uprisings in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia show that the Internet can also cause changes in the countries where democracy is a dream and freedom a utopy. The Net has been the main tool used by the people in order to organize themselves and to occupy the streets peacefully. Social networks such as Avaaz launched in 2007, have become a powerful arm in the quest for freedom in the Eastern countries. Besides, the new technologies have also turned these demonstrators into street journalists, as far as the images we can see from these revolts have been taken and transmitted by them. Their governments did not want the Western world to know what was going on in their countries, but we have seen what happened thanks to the common people. It has been proved that a mobile phone can be as dangerous as a gun, and the fall of Mubarak is a proof of that.