How operates the empowerment of citizens? In what ways? And what is its limit?

The notion I’m going to deal with is Seats and forms of power. To begin with, I would like to give a definition of this notion: Power implies a form of control on somebody or something. It is the fact one can influence a way of thinking or acting, and it generally implies a form of contestation against it. It is defined by seats but also forms: executive, legislative, judicial, and also press which is considered as the “fourth power”.

I would like to illustrate this notion through the empowerment of citizens. So we wonder how operates the empowerment of citizens? In what ways? And what is its limit?

To answer to these questions, my presentation will fall into 3 parts: first of all, I will concentrate on new technologies; then I will analyze how new technologies have empowered citizens; before finally focusing on the limits of citizens’ empowerment.

New technologies:

First we will see the different tools that are easily available to citizens and what they can do with them. There are tools to share information and other tools to search and find information. So I’m going to talk about Google or Wiki leaks: the power of the media. Google is one of the largest Internet Company. This search engine allows you to search and fin all sorts of information in any field. So it’s a form of power because Google is popular in all around the world, millions of people use it every day. We can also talk about social networks like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. Thanks to social networks, each people can share with other people, pictures, musics videos…

Thanks to the various existing media, they allow us to inform us and make us our own opinion on any subject. However, information has no borders, so we can constantly enrich our knowledge and react. We will see its limit in the last parts.

To illustrate form of counter power we can speak of wikileaks because it is a website where you can publish anonymously information supposed to be censored, or about corruption and oppressive regimes. As wikileaks attacks established authorities, this is a form of counter power.

How new technologies have empowered citizens:

Now I’m going to show that the new technologies have empowered citizens. We can see how people can organize themselves quickly thanks to technologies. This is the case of the flash mob that represent mobilization of individuals, that is to say, the gathering of a group of people in a public place to perform actions agreed upon in advance, before dispersing quickly. The gathering is usually organized through the Internet, with social networks like Facebook, Twitter…

Also new technologies allow to the citizens to inform themselves.