Action PR Group

Source: sigmalive.com/simerini/news/local/173541

Cyprus has just seen its first digital media revolution – and I don’t just mean the random facebook account or a quick laugh on YouTube. Even if you weren’t involved in the pan-Cypriot online protest against the 2+ lanes that shook the very foundations of this government initiative, you would have heard about it, or at the very least received the e-mail. When the Ministry of Transportation picked the busiest street in Nicosia and decided to make a 2+ lane, which means that you can only be in that lane if there are 2 or more people in the car, or if you are driving a taxi or a bus, the digital world responded fast…and furiously.

The word spread quickly as popular blogs openly criticized the initiative and avid readers sent the link to all their friends and co workers, who in turn sent it to their friends and co workers, who subsequently sent it to all their friends and co workers, and by the end of the first week of the “trial period” the whole of Cyprus had openly spoken against the 2+ lane. Online petitions were signed by the thousands as many joined the NO to the “2+ Lane” in Nicosia group on facebook, and the result couldn’t have been more satisfactory; less than a month since the initiative was launched, it was officially scrapped.

Source: foukou.blogspot.com/2009/06/2.html

This turn of events opens the floor to many questions about how the digital world is changing the way people think and act. Are the days of demonstrating on the streets over? Can they be replaced by digital demonstrations from the comfort of our desks? And more specifically, could this have been avoided if the government had employed a more digital-friendly Public Relations strategy? Are blogs, twitter, facebook and YouTube the new picket line?

In this new digital era, the lines between demonstration, crisis and revolution are blurring fast and furiously. It is time to think fast, think loud, and take digital ACTION…