Abstract

Writing this article was motivated by the wave of protests in 2013 in Bulgaria. The long and massive protest in the summer of 2013 combined three important features: 1) young people and middle class as the main driver of the events, 2) political action for non-economic value and 3) denial of partisanship and political representation, and support for participatory democracy. These features of the protest relate well to the Inglehart’s framework and describe the profile of “postmaterialists”: people with self-expression values. A question I ask is: how, in a “materialistic democracy” like Bulgaria, with only 2% of postmaterialists, was it possible to take place a large-scale protest for a non-economic value like “moral in politics”, which at the same time resembles other protests that have taken place around the world? The protests were closely connected with the usage of the Internet and social networks and in my article I discuss how the Internet can facilitate behavior consistent with higher-order, postmaterial values.