What is it?....a quick insight into Digital activism!

What is digital activism...

Defined as actions or practices which are campaigned primarily through the use of 'digital network infrastructure' to achieve a specific goal generally related to political or social change (Sivitanides & Shah 2011, p.2).  The term digital technology infrastructure refers to the "combination of networks, code, applications, and devices" which have evolved to be our digital world (Sivitanides & Shah 2011, p.2).

 

Compared to traditional methods of street protests/demonstrations, media interviews (if you're lucky) and walking the streets leaving petitions, it seems digital activism has provided a revolutionary way to have a voice...FREE, QUICK, MOBILE, TRANSLATABLE, EASY & WITH GLOBAL ACCESS!

Take a look at this interesting article written by Ethan Zuckerman, principle research scientist at MIT Media Lab and director of civic media at Massachusetts Institute of Technology...

 

 

 PRO'S...

• Connectivity/Geographic reach; a global audience!

• Cost effective - most online activity is free; saving paper/printing/advertising costs

• Time effective - much more EASILY ASSESSABLE avenues e.g tweets, forums, creating youtube clips, blogs, social network sites - posting updates, creating pages & groups, emails....all this compared to physically walking the streets to get your message across, or having a physical meeting to discuss or protest. Eliminates travelling and time consuming activities

    CON'S...

• Weaker ties and lack of hierarchical structure compared to traditional methods 

• Encourages anti-consumerism, brand activism for example, which can have negative effects on large multi-national corporations; which in turn can affect the economy and globalisation

• Greater opportunity for misinterpretation(cultural differences) opposed to face-to-face interaction

• The new methods of control can also benefit destructive users such as hackers and terrorists  organising and structuring detrimental acts

Scholarly thoughts...

Sivitanides & Shah (2011) assert that technology is the key element to digital activism success.  With the technology as the means, there are two other factors that contribute to the effectiveness; 'geographic reach' and 'support for the cause' (volume of organisations and individuals that react or empathise to this activism). Their view is that overall digital activism allows individuals to have greater say through quick, cost effective tools (technology), hence more opportunity to bring about 'change' in political, social and economic landscapes.

 

Malcolm Gladwell (cited in Cummins 2010) interestingly disputes digital activism, claiming that "activism is tied to relationships and shared experiences - a person is more likely to protest if they know a friend will be by their side".  He argues this point, through the example of the most effective mass protest - the American civil rights movement, by indicating that the strength of this was the "intimate friendships and shared experience, and directed by hierarchical power" (Adams 2010).  Digital activism facilitates the opposite; power/control within the individual, removing the power from traditional hierarchical structures.

 

Mary Joyce, co-founder of DigiActive.org, suggests that the 'easy' part is to join a group, like a page and affiliate yourself with other forms of digital activism.  Although this can somewhat educate and reach a wide population, she does recognise that sometimes these actions won't actually eventuate to any direct result.  She puts some of this down to some users lacking activism experience and knowledge.

 

My thoughts...

Digital activism excels in reaching a global audience, educating and creating awareness in a capacity that could never be achieved without technology.  I suggest that a couple of digital activism's greatest attributes is the resources it provides for organising events and the global connectivity 24/7, with it's downfall being that it allows for inexperience, lack of structure and perhaps too much responsibility on individuals.  Whilst digital activism provides far greater accessibility and tools for activists, I recognise that this is also providing destructive users such as hackers or terrorists with easier and greater opportunity.  So it seems, as with most things in life, digital activism brings great advantages yet also disadvantages...

 

References

Adams, T., 2010. Twitter and Facebook cannot change the real world, says Malcolm Gladwell. [Online]
Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/oct/03/malcolm-gladwell-twitter-doesnt-work?guni=Article:in%20body%20link
[Accessed 10 December 2013].

 

Cummins, J., 2010. The Guardian. [Online]
Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2010/oct/06/digital-activism-facebook-twitter-gladwell
[Accessed 10 December 2013].

Joyce, M 2011, 'Complex and contradictory: a new way to think about digital activism', The meta-activism project, 29 August, http://www.meta-activism.org/2011/08/complex-and-contradictory-a-new-way-to-think-of-digital-technologys-effects
(Accessed 21 December 2013).

Sivitanides, M. & Shah, V., 2011. The era of digital activism, Conference proceedings of CONISAR 2011, Conference for Information Systems Applied Research held in Wilmington North Carolina, USA, http://proc.conisar.org/2011/pdf/1842.pdf
(Accessed 8 December 2013).

Zuckerman, E., 2013. Political Activism is as strong as ever, but now it is digital - and passionate. [Online]
Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/15/political-activism-on-digital-platform
[Accessed 4 January 2013].