342 Revista del Instituto Español de Estudios Estratégicos Núm. 1/ 2013 use of this tool is as to virtually mobilise their followers, spread propaganda and misinformation, and infiltrating social networks so as to erode the value of the opposing discourse. Thus for example, at the start of 2011, the Mubarak regime sent messages via Internet with false information about the cancellation of the protests against the government. It equally used Facebook so as to inform citizens not to attend the protests, bemuse of the damage this would do to the economy. A much more aggressive form of misinformation is that one used by the Iranian regime in order to boycott the announcement of protests and demonstrations. Using the social networks, the Iranian intelligence service distributed information about the location of snipers, in a concealed way, and said that these would act when the demonstrators marched past.11. 4. Empirical evidence Empirical research into the political effects of Internet has, for the most part, focused on its effects within consolidated democracies. This work has dealt with significant issues such as the effect of the Internet on the partisan competition12, citizen political activism13, its impact on “social capital”14, or the possibility of exercising “direct democracy” via cyberspace15. However, the amount of work that has dealt with the influence of the Internet on the democratisation processes is much less. The first ones, whilst detecting a certain degree of impact on the process of political opening-up, were unable to establish a strong relationship16. Pipa Norris17, for example, set out the existence of a significant 11 GEDMIN, J. (2010): “Democracy isn’t just a tweet away,” USA Today, (22 April). 12 BIMBER, B. (1088): “The Internet and Political Transformation: Populism, Community, and Accelerated Pluralism.”, Polity, Vol. 31, nº 1, pags. 133–60; RASH, W. Jr. (1997): Politics on the Nets: Wiring the Political Process, New York: W. H. Freeman. 13 COLEMAN, S. (1999): “Can the New Media Invigorate Democracies?”, Political Quarterly, Vol. 70, nº 1, pags. 16–22; DAVIS, R. (1999): The Web of Politics, New York: Oxford University Press; NORRIS, P. (2000): A Virtuous Circle: Political Communication in Post-Industrial Democracies, New York: Cambridge University Press. 14 USLANER, E. M. (2000): “Social Capital and the Net”, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 43, nº 12, pags. 60–64. 15 BUDGE, I. (1996): The New Challenge of Direct Democracy. Oxford: Polity Press; HAGUE, B. N. & LOADER, B. D. (1999): Digital Democracy: Discourse and Decision Making in the Information Age, New York: Routledge; RUBIO NUÑEZ, R. (2000): “Internet en la participación política”, Revista de Estudios Políticos, nº 109, pags. 285-302. 16 KEDZIE, C. R. (1997): Communication and Democracy: Coincident Revolutions and the Emergent Dictator’s Dilemma, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND. 17 NORRIS, P. (2001): Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty and the Internet
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