Communication has always been a crucial element of the existence of human beings. Being able to communicate in a group increases the chances of survival and allows groups to have better living conditions. Over time, this instinct that we have as human beings has pushed us to seek out different and accessible means of communication and has brought us to the age of the Internet. The way we communicate has transformed and this transformation has shaped us and our societies in profound ways. These changes in social structures and communication channels have forced people to use new tools to express their ideas and rally around a cause. The Internet has changed the way people organize and rebel against injustice. Over the past decade, the Internet has become one of the key elements of social movements and protests. This changed the formation of the movements from its roots and, like any change in the past, it raised questions. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Movements and revolutions are an important part of our social history and are therefore of central importance to sociology. Movements are created by society, so understanding movements is a necessity for understanding society. This mission attempts to focus on the new emerging way of starting movements and turning them into revolutions. In his book “Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age,” Manuel Castells explores the new types of protests and social movements that have occurred and are still occurring around the world. It focuses on how these protests and social movements developed with the help of the Internet and different communication systems and analyzes the importance of the Internet for the movements. In this essay, I will examine how the Internet and its social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and many others started social movements and how other traditional platforms were a necessity just like the Internet; where the importance of the Internet for movements is compared to the effectiveness of public space and the human body and the possible negative effects of using the Internet as the main social space for movements. I will examine several ideas from different theorists in addition to the work of Manuel Castell. Throughout the history of social movements and protests, people have demanded change for many reasons and in different ways. There was one thing in common that they all did: they fought for what they believed in using every tool they had at their disposal. Social and political movements must form a solid network to exist and act. Every protest and social movement in history has been made possible by people coming together and having a platform to speak out about what is wrong in their country, their community, their workplace and even on their streets . Being able to reach as many people as possible has always been crucial to the success of movements. More people meant more support and being stronger. Uniting against governments and injustices requires an enormous amount of organizational skills and communication networks. The Internet was one of the many tools people used for their cause. In this part, I will examine how the Internet was not the only social space used to reach people during the Egyptian revolution and other platformsused during the movement which gave the protesters a chance that not all countries had during their battle. The Tunisian revolution that toppled the government, the Icelandic protests sparked by the financial crisis and the government's handling of it, the Egyptian revolution against the corrupt government, the events that took place in Spain in 2011, Occupy Wall Street and its global impact, Gezi Park Movement which took place in Turkey, protests which started against the increase in public transport prices in Brazil and the student movement in Chile. All of these revolutions and movements have aspects in common with each other as well as with other events throughout history. Economic reasons, police brutality, corruption within governments, the fight for equality... What significantly differentiates them from the rest of history is the way in which these networks of movements used the Internet to communicate with each other, with the world and to exist in a social space. The Internet was new to the movement landscape, it made the dissemination of information easier than ever, but was it enough to reach as many people as possible? The Internet allowed these movements to arise and have a global impact, but was it only the Internet that transformed the movement into a revolution? Was it enough to reach the entire community and raise awareness of the cause? Does the Internet reach every home and do all members of society trust it? The Egyptian revolution did not rely solely on the power of the Internet to bring people together around the cause. This revolution is undoubtedly one of the most important revolutions that shows how a smartly organized network and the use of the Internet brought people together to bring a change in the country. The spark that ignited the Egyptian protest was a vlog shot by a university student. This spark grew into something with the help of youth movements and Facebook groups. However, later, the part of society that did not have the opportunity to access Internet platforms was informed in different ways. It was important to reach a wider audience. The Egyptian youth were lucky because the Friday sermons were great for the cause. Friday (which first became part of the culture due to religious beliefs, but now it is more than that, it allows people to come together and have the opportunity to socialize) since it was a public holiday, was crucial to reach the older generation of society. and inform them of events. It also helped garner more support for anti-government protests. This was a big part of building a network among the public. Activists had the space to speak directly to people and reach a more diverse audience. This helped build more confidence in the protests and allowed activists to reach more people. The other platform that helped the revolution immensely was television broadcasting. In my opinion, although the Egyptian revolution is beginning to be heard through the Internet and Friday sermons, the most powerful source it had was the Al Jazeera media network. Al Jazeera broadcast the events around the world and in Egypt and stood with the protesters until the last day. This gives protesters the opportunity to be heard in many countries. Al Jazeera's position as a channel during the protests was also very important to the public. Even today, television exerts a great influence on the majority of people all over the world.world. The internet and social media are not considered as reliable as television, and television is capable of reaching a wider audience. To argue that television gave activists a major platform during the Egyptian revolution, I will mention another movement that did not have the same type of platform and support. The events in Türkiye in 2013, known as the Gezi protests, have qualities in common with the Egyptian revolution. The Gezi protests began as a youth movement, much like the Egyptian revolution, and later gained support from other groups in society. Both movements have used the Internet effectively to communicate and tell the world why they are protesting. Both have used the Internet as a platform to directly broadcast what is happening in the streets. This was crucial in drawing attention to their cause and showing the world how their government was handling the protests. What stopped the Gezi protesters was the help Egypt received from the Al Jazeera media network. During the most violent days of the Gezi protests, the largest and most influential television channels broadcast nothing about the protests. People who did not have immediate access to the Internet, mainly social networks, were not informed of a large demonstration taking place in the center of the largest city in the country where they live. They were not informed of the majority of the demonstrations. and extreme police brutality. Turkey's tax-funded national public television channel, known as TRT, aired a documentary about the penguins the night the protests were heating up, which later became a symbol of the country's oppressed media. After the events spread across the country, television channels began broadcasting, but the news took the government's side and presented the protesters as the government wanted. People following the protests in Turkish media had access to only limited information that was strictly controlled by the government. This caused huge division in the country and the protests failed to gain support from the majority of society. The government therefore had the power to present the demonstrators as terrorists and gained the support of almost half of the population against the demonstrations. The importance of other social platforms such as community gatherings and television broadcasts remains highly influential and therefore crucial to the success of movements. Living in the age of the Internet does not mean that everyone has access to it and has adopted it as a reliable source of information. It is a fact that the Internet plays a major role for the movements that have emerged over the last decade by creating a platform where the movement can exist freely in its reality, but is it the most important? In this part of my essay, I will examine where the importance of control of public space and the human body lies for social movements born in the digital world. The Occupy movement (which began as Occupy Wall Street and spread across the world) is an excellent example of combining the judicious use of public space and the Internet to lead the movement towards success. Occupy Wall Street is a movement that was started on the Internet and continued to grow online during the protests. Online interaction on the topic was extremely high and related content was circulating across all social media platforms. The movement gained momentum through online platforms and brought attention to the issue through social media.It started with a hashtag and was tagged with the hashtag. The hashtag that started the movement – ​​#occupywallstreet – was a literal call to occupy Wall Street. However, the movement continued to grow online for months before the first public protest. The Occupy Wall Street protest (and many other spaces around the world after the movement went global) was intended to show that the places occupied by the people already belonged to the occupiers. The movement had more than one goal in itself, but the occupation of the streets and parks of the Wall Street district was both strategic and symbolically crucial to the movement. In his book “Networks of Outrage and Hope,” Manuel Castells examines these events, focusing on their intense use of the Internet as a platform for the movement. To challenge the idea that the Internet provides the best social space for movements, I will mention David Harvey's work on the importance of public space for movements. While Castells draws attention in his work to how the movement originated and evolved digitally and was dependent on the Internet in many ways, as well as the need to have the organization to occupy the space public, Harvey argues that the most important platform of the Occupy movements is the human body and ownership of space. In his blog post "The Party of Wall Street Meets its Nemesis," David Harvey defends the importance of public space, writing: ...Occupy Wall Street's tactic is to take a central public space, a park or a place, close to where many levers of power are centered, and by placing human bodies there, we convert public space into a political commons, a place for open discussion and debate about what does this power and on the best way to oppose its reach... This shows us that the collective The power of bodies in the public space remains the most effective instrument of opposition when all other means of access are blocked. He claims that personally participating in the movement, taking control of a public space as a whole, and using that public space as a platform during the movement is the most important act for success. However, Castells explains the achievements of the Occupy movement through the successful use of Internet networks. According to Castells, “Internet social networks mobilized enough support for people to come together and occupy public space, thus territorializing their protest.” The websites and Facebook groups created “…served as sites to organize the movement, but also to create a public presence for it.” He also adds that this creation was crucial to the goals and clarity of the movement. It is clear that the role of public space and the Internet has been enormous in the growth of movements. However, it can be argued that taking control of public space is more effective for governments because it causes an undeniable disruption in daily life and requires immediate action. action. We have established that it is inevitable to use social media platforms (if they are accessible in the country) for movements forming in our times. In order to answer the question of how important the Internet is to social movements, we need to explore how it might also harm movements. It is a fact that the Internet is a platform that allows us to reach people all over the world and gives us instant access to information. This means it also allows us to support a movement or protest taking place in the streets from a location of our choosing which is generally a safe environment?