Is internet making the world more democratic?

Internet is a global network that provides variety of information and data for everyone all over the world. There are some good qualities that Internet provides to the society. For instance, People can easily get access to the Information and data, which is empowering for instance, having access to the Internet make the society aware of their surroundings and the world, through which, people can easily participate, raise and express their ideas and views and make the society more interconnected with a good standard of living. It also helps to create an informed society, which is more exposed to different viewpoints, culture and values. Internet helps in making the world more democratic. It leads to an increased involvement in political debate through which people can participate in government.

For example- on January 1, 2008, as word spread throughout Kenya that incumbent presidential candidate Mwai Kibaki had rigged the recent presidential election, text messages urging violence spread across the country and tribal and politically motivated attacks were perpetrated throughout Kenya. A group of Kenyans in Nairobi and the Diaspora launched Ushahidi, an online campaign to draw local and global attention to the violence taking place in their country. Within weeks they had documented in detail hundreds of incidents of violence that would have otherwise gone unreported and received hundreds of thousands of site visits from around the world, sparking increased global media attention.

Further, internet gives information of that situation to all around the world. People also get to know about other authoritarian and democratic governments all around the globe and learn from it and sometimes apply it on their own government. For example, the Tunisia's revolution, when internet allowed information Egypt reacted on this event, which made it easily understandable that overthrowing a government was not entirely possible.

 Farheen Manzoor Lone

20153058