Networks played a role in several dissidence movements
Since the rise of the Internet in the early 1990s, the world's networked population has grown from the low millions to the low billions.
As the communications landscape gets denser, more complex, and more participatory, the networked population is gaining greater access to information, more opportunities to engage in public speech, and an enhanced ability to undertake collective action. In the political arena, as the protests in Manila demonstrated, these increased freedoms can help loosely coordinated publics demand change.