The Protests against the FARC in Colombia on February 4, 2008 drew millions of Colombians in over 27 cities in the country and in over 104 worldwide.
The protest in Colombia turned out to be the biggest in the country’s history “The national police operations commander, General José Riano, said an estimated 4.8 million people turned out for 365 marches in the country. International protests were held mainly in Latin America, but some marches took place in Europe, Asia and the United States.”
“Spain’s EFE news service put the number of marchers worldwide at more than 10 million.”
Traditional resource mobilization theory states that there is a high cost involved to create and mobilize people as a social movement. With the internet, however, the costs of organizing people are negligible, if not zero. We often hear about the three traditional powers being the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. After the advent of newspaper, television and radio a fourth power that influenced all three came about: known as the traditional media. Now we could say that the internet and social media is giving rise to a 5th Power in which this facebook phenomenon fits in.
To analyze the success of the Colombian protests one must put the facts into the context.
The protest started as a group called 1.000.000 voices against FARC and due to its exponential growth shortly after its creation Oscar Morales, the creator, and his friends decided to organize a national march. “Oscar invited 20 friends, which is the maximum number of invites you can send in a 24-hour period. In less than 12 hours the group had more than 900 members, tripling the number of users every day after that.” The traditional media in Colombia akin to the governments agenda gave widespread publicity to the group and were instrumental in galvanizing the protests beyond facebook to the general public.
Facebook is only a spec of the much bigger picture that is Social Media. The rise of the 5th power is now evident not only through facebook but also text messaging. President Joseph Estrada in the Philippines was ousted from office in 2001 by what he called a “coup-de-text”. The Colombian protests have shown that social movements are now cheap to start and social capital is cheap to harness. Similar organizations have been created for other causes such as the pro democracy protests in Myanmar by the monks. The potential for growth of political movements using social media is immense and their success is now up to their ability to harness this power.
Generacion Y is a blog ran by cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez that recently made it to Time Magazine Top 100 most influential people.
More important, under the nose of a regime that has never tolerated dissent, Sánchez has practiced what paper-bound journalists in her country cannot: freedom of speech. The pieces she has been clandestinely sending […]
I am constantly rambling that the internet is not necessarily a good thing for democracy. I believe, and here reiterate, that the web is just another social tool like the radio, television, book or telephone. What is novel about the web is that it has broken the strangle hold that the corporate world has had […]
The Garden State, home of the the NY Giants, the Jersey Devil, Bon Jovi (and Springsteen) has 1-uped it’s 49 competitor states again. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has marvled at the 16 lane Garden State parkway or graduated from the illustrious Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. What has the […]
This is a subject that requires a more in-depth analysis and I will probably cover it across the span of several posts. It has been reported widely on how effective terrorist groups are using the internet to operate, but mostly, for recruitment or social media terrorist marketing. Kevin from buzznetworker prompted us to look into these groups […]
I know… I’m repetitive, I ramble but it’s true…social media open up the way for greater surveillance. My previous posts have gone on about how the web allows authorities to (potentially) perfectly monitor our social activities, at least as we or our friends report them on facebook/twitter. But today the NY Times brings us a […]
At last weekend’s Bar Camp Orlando, Andres, Gabriella and I gave a presentation in which we claimed that the social web has broad significance for social movements and political demonstrations. One of our claims was/is that large organizations and governments have been unable to capitalize on the social web while small groups and […]
As the torch-run reaches its end, it’s interesting to see that as CNN reports the events from helicopters far away, protesters are using twitter to update events minute by minute, giving orders as where to go and organize, within minutes they are alerted of changes.Photostream for the olympic torch. These pictures show both protesters and […]
Protesters in San Francisco are already mobilizing for the olympic torch tomorrow, and they are using web 2.0 to its fullest extent. Tomorrow the Olympic torch will be heading towards San Francisco, its only stop in the U.S.
Already there have been protests as the torch passed through london and paris. In london, the torch […]
The Indonesians and the Dutch are at it again! The AP, Reuters and others are reporting that a dutch legislator has created a film that not only depicts Muhammad (a no no for Muslims), but also encourages Muslims to “tear out ‘hate-filled’ verses from the Koran”. What has been the response […]
Whether it is a protest organized through social networks and SMS or web videos of presidential candidates, the tremendous impact of the social web on politics is hard to ignore. Pulsepolitics is a social media and politics journal that covers and analyzes instances where social media is changing the way politics work.
Our Team:
Andres Barreto
Is an […]