The Global Impact of the Internet - Essay Example

The Internet has profoundly changed political interaction. People are now able to meet in a digital environment. The use of social media has been a phenomenon. Youths who had been agitated by dictatorial regimes shares idea on social websites and plan on how to execute the uprising. A case study in Iran shows that the government tried to restrict the use of social media. Websites like youtube.com were blocked so that the youths would not communicate with the rest of the world. Facebook.com was extremely crucial in that agitated youth used to chat and plan the next move.

University students used Facebook to urge their colleagues to rise against the government. This passing of information could not have happened in the past few years. The invention of voice over internet protocol (VoIP) allowed calls to be done on the internet. Sentiments and anger were expressed through the internet. Personal posts on social media like Facebook and Tweeter had a profound effect on society. Emails were also sent to people constantly. Through the use of smartphones, emails were forwarded within the warring society.

Emails allow people to get access to detail information unlike the short message services on the normal cell phones Through Skype, people made calls to their relatives and asked for ideas and information concerning the uprising. In some countries, journalists were updated through the use of Skype because it was too dangerous to be on the ground. People were interviewed by media houses through this Skype feature. This exposed to the rest of the world what the situation was like on the ground. Videos of the excessive use of force by the government troops were posted on youtube.

com website. This was done by suffering citizens from their hideouts. Most of these images were captured by the use of cell phone camera and video recorders. People standing on the balconies of their house or peeping through the windows were able to capture some of the atrocities propagated by these dictatorial regimes. It is hard to imagine what would happen if the internet was none existent. In particular, the use of cell phone with 3G internet features allowed people to access any part of the world even when there were state-imposed curfews.