Two-way communication, participation in creating and sharing content on the Internet and complete human experience enabled in cyberspace or social media affected the emergence of a new form of culture – real virtuality. Social power transforms and moves to cyberspace. The internet became the most democratic medium and a framework for updating information on various problems and planning actions in order to solve them. This sets up new aspects of resistance and social organizing. The internet is a powerful technological weapon, and, if used in responsible and proper manner, it can be a meaningful instrument to achieve social changes. This research paper thus investigates social networks as tools to achieve social changes, or means for communication and organization of protests, and in broader sense tools for activism. Beside theoretical background and examples of social networks usage for the purpose of protest coordination, organization and communication among activists, such as Arabian Spring and Occupy Wall Street, this paper presents a case study of the Facebook group Anonymous Hrvatska, which was used to organise a couple of protests in Croatia but which did not achieve much attention.
The aim of this research paper is primarily to get deeper insight in the role that social networks play in social movements. Next I try to answer wheather social networks are just communication tools for organizing protests or whether they even can be catalysts for changes. Furthermore, the goal is to explore the communication and organization of protests in Croatia based on a case study of Facebook group Anonymous Hrvatska – to investigate if there are some significant differences in ways of using social networks in this context compared to the previous cases.
Keywords:Social networks, Protests, Activism, Group Anonymous Hrvatska.