Do “Liberation Technologies” Change the Balance of Power Between Repressive States and Civil Society?
The very first “study of the day” is actually a dissertation found on Patrick Meirer’s Irevolution.net The following text comes from his website.
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Do “Liberation Technologies” Change the Balance of Power Between Patrick Meier, PhD Do new information and communication technologies (ICTs) empower repressive regimes at the expense of civil society, or vice versa? For example, does access to the Internet and mobile phones alter the balance of power between repressive regimes and civil society? These questions are especially pertinent today given the role that ICTs played during this year’s uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and beyond. Indeed, as one Egyptian activist stated, “We use Facebook to schedule our protests, Twitter to coordinate and YouTube to tell the world.” But do these new ICTs—so called “liberation technologies”—really threaten repressive rule? The purpose of this dissertation is to use mixed-methods research to answer these questions. My dissertation is available for download here in PDF. |
Tags: Civil Society, social media
