Online networks as a trigger for regime change

MARKO PRPIC and SEAN NOONAN examine the benefits and vulnerabilities of using social media tools to organize protests and revolutions using examples of various protests organized over the recent past that achieved varying degrees of success and failure.

In a Stratfor analysis, "Social Media as a Tool for Protest", they state that while social media undoubtedly offered advantages in disseminating messages quickly and broadly, a revolution required much more including organization, funding, mass appeal well beyond the internet-savvy youth and an ability to inspire and motivate individuals to get away from the comfort of their homes and face off against the government on the streets.

They caution that an over-reliance on social-media tools was no substitute to effective real-world leadership and ingenuity to tackle government counter-protest tactics while they could also be detrimental to the evolution of the leadership beyond cyberspace and potential isolation from alternate political movements with whome they may have shared goals.

Cyber Power

JOSEPH NYE of the Harvard University avers that the low price of entry, anonymity and asymmetries in vulnerability meant that smaller actors had greater capacity to exercise hard and soft power in a highly volatile environment such as cyberspace than in more traditional domains of world politics and could create power shifts among states such that small states could leverage asymmetrical warfare to leapfrog larger adversaries. In an essay for the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, "Cyber Power", he concludes that cyber-power was unlikely to be a game-changer and that while governments would continue to be the strongest actors, the cyber-domain would increase the diffusion of power to non-state actors illustrating the importance of networks as a key dimension of power in the 21st century.