Podemos: Citizen Cyberactivism Reaches European Policy

Abstract

The Internet is democratizing the news media and the political system, so that it breaks the one-way mass communication model and it enhances a symmetrical and bidirectional model in which communication becomes universal and free. Especially decisive in this process are social networks, since they democratize information access and allow users to participate in the public sphere so that they cannot be conceived as passive information recipients anymore, but rather as content producers. Virtual communities bind together like-minded people and thus they have become key tools in organizing social movements, which find a new space in the cyberspace to inform, organize and act, allowing for a social and technological revolution. Within this context, the concept of cyberactivism, conceived as the set of digital technologies that allow faster communications among a great audience, helps create a digital democracy that enhances social and political participation through new technologies. This study will analyze how the positive use of social networks has allowed the boom of the political party Podemos in less than three months of existence, since the party gained five seats in the European Parliament, a record in the history of Spanish democracy.