The potential for Twitter and Facebook to bring together those who are unhappy with society and give them a platform to voice their anger has always been apparent.
Social media has the social ability needed to bring the politically restless together and the mediatising ability needed to give them a voice. Like the newspapers that helped to fan the flames of revolution in America or the flyers that did the same in Russia a century and a half later, social media helped to release the Arab Spring and they are currently fuelling the flames of anger that burn in Ferguson and throughout the US after Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown.
In a show of unrest that is less acerbic and more restrained, the Twitter hashtag #CameronMustGo has broken British Twitter records, staying on top of the UK trends charts for days on end. Obviously people on both sides of the Atlantic are feeling somewhat unhappy and are showing it.
Several years ago, during the Arab Spring, all the British newspapers were full of praise for the silenced masses finding their voices on the internet. However, now that the protests are closer to the presses where these papers are printed, affecting the governments where their allegiances lie, the portrayal is less unilaterally supportive of the protesters. More than 350,000 tweets under #CameronMustGo have been dismissed as the words of a loud and brash minority whilst those under #Ferguson and #MichaelBrown have been seen as displays of misguided anger. There may be some shreds of truth to these claims, but how long is it since any of the declining papers doing the dismissing got 350,000 letters on one subject, and how long is it for that matter since they claimed the kind of profits that Facebook and Twitter are claiming now. The popular battle between traditional political systems and their new opposition is running in parallel with the battle between the traditional media systems and their own new opposition.