Time Magazine named The Protester as Person of the Year for 2011

The Protester was named Time magazine’s 2011 Person of the Year on 14 December 2011. Time defines the Person of the Year as someone who, for better or for worse, influenthat individual action can bring collective, colossal change.

2011 witnessed unprecedented rise in both peaceful and sometimes violent unrest and dissent from the Arab Spring to the Occupy Wall Street movement. People across the globe in Tunisia, in Egypt, in Libya dissented and demanded even when they were answered with tear gas or a hail of bullets. The Mideast was the centerpiece of the year’s protests.

US Special Operations Command and overall commander of the secret US mission into Pakistan in May 2011 that killed Osama bin Laden, came in at second place on the Time list. Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei came in at No 3. Rep. Paul Ryan, who put forth a plan to tackle America’s burgeoning national debt stoof fourth. Britain’s Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, who married Prince William finshed fifth.

In 2010, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg got wa named the Person of the Year.

Time Magazine mentioned that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was the People's Choice for the Person of the Year. In an online poll, Erdogan received 123000 votes nominating him as the most influential person of the year significantly more than any other nominee.

History

Time picked its first person of the year in 1927 with Charles Lindberg, who put aviation on the map. Person of the Year was then called Man of the Year. Since 1927, Time Magazine has chosen has chosen the good, Mohandas Gandhi in 1930 and the bad, Adolf Hitler in 1938as the Person of the Year. Responding to the Cold War, the magazine praised Hungarian freedom fighters in 1958. For the honour it had also chosen Baby Boomers in 1966 and Middle America in 1969.