La question de l'autonomisation des citoyens dans notre société moderne

In this oral presentation, we’re going to debate about the empowerment of citizens in our modern society.

In introduction, we can assert that citizens always had influence in society, but what about today, do citizens really play an essential role in the world?

To answer this question, we will initially highlight techniques having allowed to increase influence of citizens in the world order and in a second time, we will show that even if the power of the civil society increases day in day, there remains nevertheless limited and prone to many controversies.

In 2015, 1.4 billion people is registered on Facebook, 1 billion attend Youtube and one person out of two on our planet would use social networks.

By there, we can remarq that new technologies had completely revolutionized our way of seeing and apprehending world : we communicate faster, easier and just from a basic computer !!

The rise of the social networks thus marks a big step in the increasing influence of citizens in the current society.

• Since a decade, prostestors movements appear as « We are the 99 % » which is a political slogan chanted by the protesters of the « Occupy Wall Street movement », refering to the 99% of Americans who have almost nothing compared to the wealthiest 1%.

They also reproch polititians to support policies that benefit the few at the expense of everyone else.

Those actions are created thanks to and on social networks to be massively relayed by media and Net surfers, thus illustrating the weight that take citizens in modern society.

• Another particulary impressive example is the « Flash mobs », which is a sudden and planned gatherine of people at a particular place, previously planned on an internet site. Some of them gather thousands of people in order to defend various claims, as a Flash mob in the Philippines realized by nearly 4000 persons to protest against violences made to women. Once filmed, they are posted on Internet and users watch them millions of times, thus illustrat the power and the impact of citizens in the world.

• Finally, let’s talk about Wikileaks, an international, non-profit, journalistic organisation which publishes secret information, news leaks and classified media from anonymous sources. It’s the perfect example that highlight the empowerment of citizens thanks to new technologies : It started from nothing, only a computer and a man and 9 years later wikileaks became the 1st world information agency.

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