We've had virtual choirs, countless bad cover versions of popular songs and opening credit sequences from nearly every 1980s children's programme that was ever produced... Though the fascination with the ability to syndicate one's individual AV perspective and persona has produced an amazing tool documenting and sharing the complexity and diversity of human creativity and achievement, somewhere amidst the social noise, the possibility of something more than a community of interest - a political engaged citizenry - has been drowned out.

Over the last year, though, a cry from across the Caucasus, the Urals and the Baltic has shown the ability for social media to empower a simple citizen in a corrupt system to raise their voice to the world and call for accountability. This is the story of a beat cop from the Black Sea who decided to take on Putin, and though landing himself in jail for a year on trumped up fraud charges, he inspired a whole society to bring their disparate voices of dissatisfaction and desire for change together. Watch the NYTimes' excellent documentary below. The montage of voices from across Russia in the middle, I find simply inspiring...