E-Revolution

What is an e-revolution?

In the political or social sense, a revolution is a movement that brings about, or attempts to bring about, sudden and profound change in a state’s political and social structure. It occurs when a group rebels against the authorities in power and takes, or attempts to take, control.

By extension, any change or innovation that radically overturns the established order in any field may be called a revolution. [Source: Wikipedia]

Based on this definition, we can say that an e-revolution is a revolution driven by information and communication technologies (ICTs): their intensive use to raise awareness, communicate and promote ideals aimed at bringing about radical change in a country’s political sphere.

The netizen: the role of bloggers and influential internet users

The merging of traditional journalism with online communication is visibly changing public relations around the world. E-journalism, e-democracy and e-revolution are new concepts that could disrupt the status quo in several countries currently under the control of certain governments.

These concepts are likely to encourage highly democratic public debate and make it easier to build new kinds of political networks — unlike our political parties, which operate as closed circles — that could improve relations between new decision-makers and the people.

What is striking is that these people, disillusioned with Wade’s politics, do not belong to any political party because they have broken with them. They are developing civic and democratic networks: a new way of doing politics in the face of political parties, and further proof of a decisive rejection of politicians. The emergence of these civic movements on Facebook could give Senegalese young people a new sense of maturity in their decision-making.