The internet is a powerful thing. 
This is readily evident in the proliferation of online social media such as Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, a variety of sharing sites such as Digg and Reddit, and the massive number of blogs that have appeared on the web. People seem to have this innate desire to create a community of like-minded individuals, and the internet has allowed that to happen at a global scale. Of course this carries with it both the bad and the good of human nature, but overall the effects of social media have been positive. 
Protests and other social activism events have especially benefitted from the rise of social media. For example, the current pro-democracy protests that have spread like wildfire through the Middle East and North Africa probably would not have seen as much outside coverage or have spread so quickly if it were not for the presence of social media sites like Twitter. In fact, it was through Twitter that the first few accounts of the protests in Libya surfaced and captured the attention of Western news outlets. The Chinese government, which is notorious for controlling what the average Chinese citizen can access online, created a filter for the word “jasmine” on social networking sites such as Facebook and the Chinese version of Twitter because they were afraid of “Jasmine Revolution” protests being planned over these sites. 
It should be striking that the first reaction of many governments facing potential or actual protests is to shut down the internet and cell phone reception, as in Egypt. Why should that matter? Why is the internet important? 
The internet is important because information and ideas are finally available at the touch of a button. People can communicate almost instantaneously with hundreds of people with a single Tweet. Planning an event can take little more than sending out a single invitation on Facebook. It is these sorts of mass organizing tools that allowed social media to become so popular, especially among the younger generation. We like to be able to feel connected to something larger than we are; to feel like that we are a part of the online movement. Organizing events through social media is simply a way of joining our online and offline worlds. Protests just happen to be the most vocal of these offline events. 
There is only one caveat I have with the online social activism, and it is this: we should be wary of letting the virtual protest become the only protests. Take the example of Belgium. While most of the protests around the world today are because those citizens want to overthrow their old government, the Belgians simply want a government. University students in the Flemish city of Ghent staged a “Naked Protest” by stripping down to their underwear this weekend in order to shame the government for their lack of compromise. Others decided to hand out free Fries, or Frites, the Belgian national dish, or are joining the online Une Belgique au Poil movement started by Belgian actor Benoit Poelvoorde by growing out their beards until there is a functioning government. The biggest movement is the Camping16 protest, in which participants are virtually “camping” outside the government building at 16 Wetstraat in Brussels. The movement is calling for the return of government tax money collected since the June 13th, 2010 election if an agreement cannot be made by April 19th. It is an interesting idea, but it would probably have a much greater impact on the government if the 153,000+ people who are “camping” online were actually camping in the center of Brussels. 
Social activism works best when it is visible, which is why protests are the most common way that citizens choose to air their grievances. Regardless of our political views, most of us can agree that the right to voice an opinion is a right that everyone should share. The wide reach of social media as well as democratizing power of the internet is something that authoritarian governments are beginning to recognize as a threat and are seeking to control. But it is also the beauty of the internet that those actions are precisely the things that spark the popular protest movements. 
The power of social media and the internet can no longer be denied.