Virtual Collective Consciousness
= an internal knowledge shared by a plurality of persons.
Discussion
Yousri Marzouki:
"the possibility of a leaderless revolution is likely to be (at least partially) explained by the spontaneity, the homogeneity and the synchronicity of the actions of these cyber-activism networks that were catalyzed by social media. This explanation is supported by what we coined virtual collective consciousness (VCC) referring to an internal knowledge shared by a plurality of persons. Coupled with "citizen media" activism, this knowledge emerges as a new form of consciousness via communication tools. The VCC in this study can be seen as an up-to-date version of the Durkheim's collective representation and as being also highly comparable to Žižek's collective mind or to the more recent Boguta's new collective consciousness to describe the computational history of the Internet shutdown during the Egyptian revolution. Accordingly, VCC has to be: timely, acute, rapid, domain-specific and purpose-oriented, which are potential "qualities" of a successful movement." (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yousri-marzouki/revolutionizing-revolutio_b_1679181.html)
