The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium

by Martin Gurri

In the new millenium, the public returned with a vengeance, and its command of the information sphere permitted much greater intimacy with the crowd than had been structurally possible before. The public could invite itself to a protest on Facebook, comment from the streets on Twitter, and reflect on the larger meaning of the event on blogs, Tumblr, Reddit, and other open platforms. For the first time in history, public opinion could fuse, moment by moment, with the actions of the crowd. Such intimacy with the public enabled the crowd to escape predictable scripts and communicate itself directly to the world by posting cell phone videos on the web, endowing the contagion of revolt with the speed of light. This in turn transformed the street into a domain of political uncertainty frightening to all forms of authority.