Can social media be used as a tool by one individual to successful push change in society?

Any individual can be the first snowflake to begin an avalanche but without being joined by many, many others they will remain just a snowflake. Social media is a great way of making individual voices louder and stronger. Traditional media has often allowed only a relative handful of individuals, journalists, celebrities, broadcasters and writers, to have the loudest voices to influence change. But above them has always been piublishers, producers, advertisers and distributors who control the mechanisms of the media to disperse those opinions.

By contrast, social media is made up of amny, many individual voices, with the odd celebrity or journalist elevated somewhat, by having more followers for instance, but no more access to or control of the medium than any other individual. In this context the reach of any opinion is only as extensive as the number of other individuals wiling to share it. Perhaps a celebrity might be able to infuence fans to share a little further than an ordinary individual, but what really helps an idea to spread on social media is how much it touches and connects with other individuals.

Thus an inspiring idea, a petition, a protest, a call to action, coud get lost in a sea of competing voices. But it could also get picked up, shared and shared again and spread to th point that it trends and goes far beyond the original community of voices who first connected with it and becomes a catalyst for action or change.

The ability of dissenting groups to meet, share their opinions, realise they were not alone and then, only after the other things had been established, to co ordinate their actions, was central to the events of the Arab Spring in 2011, particularly in Egypt. However, the roll back in most of these countries, and the carnage in Lybia and Syria, make it clear that traditional power, or violent methods of obtaining it, are still quite a bar to change, even from so powerful a medium for bringing people together as social media.