ACTIVISM AND NEW MEDIA

Online activism (a.k.a. Internet activism, web activism or cyberactivism) emerged in

the early 1990s in the USA and later spread very quickly to all developed countries.

It initially consisted of mass email and E-bulletin board campaigns. Later,

organisations such as Avaaz, Change.org, MoveOn.org and 38 Degrees brought civic

engagement to a new level and put online activism at the center of political and

business decisions. This very platform, Netivist, aims at contributing to the same

goal. Online activism via petitions and campaigns has become an effective way to

raise awareness about about important political, economic, cultural and social

problems and challenges society is facing. Online activism can be used for advocacy

or awareness purposes, to collect donations, as a means to foster coordination and

mobilization of activists and supporters of a cause, and as an expression of collective

unrest and protest.

Some governments and parliaments are also creating online petition sites. Thanks to

them, citizens have a more direct way to influence policy-making. Wikileaks and the

International Consortium of Investigative Journalists can be considered different

examples of online activism. By revealing thousands of classified documents, these

sites are contributing to transparency and shaping public opinion and governance.

Moreover, online political activism is helping to tip the balance in some contested

electoral campaigns.

In many cases online petitions and campaigns work, and satisfactory manage to

raise awareness, funds or to push governments or introduce regulation. However,

most of the petitions and collective initiatives launched on the Internet don't manage

to fulfil the expectations of the activists that created them. Moreover there are cases

in which cyberactivism produces mixed results. For instance, between the summer of

2014 and start of 2015, social media users helped to make the amyotrophic lateral

sclerosis (ALS) ice bucket challenge viral. People were required to douse themselves

in a bucket of cold water before nominating others with the same challenge. At its

peak of popularity, a host of celebrities—including Robert Downey Jr and Tom Cruise

—carried out the same challenge. All social media participants were required to do,

was to share these videos, making them viral. As noted by many commentators,

these social media users lack any awareness of the condition of ALS, nor displayed

obvious empathy with those suffering from ALS. Yet, a report by the Guardian noted

that it managed to fund important breakthrough in ALS research.

What is "clicktivism"? And "slacktivism"?

While online activism is growing in popularity, the rejection this type of activism

generates among people also increases. The informal and derogatory terms

"clicktivism" and "slacktivism" are increasingly used as synonyms of Internet

activism. "Clicktivism" refers to the use of social media and other online methods to

promote a specific cause by simply clicking on a endorsement or signature button.

Similary the term "slacktivism" refers to a half-hearted form of activism, usually by

posting links, comments, images in support of a cause on social media, but without

further action. These terms capture a frequent critique by "traditional" activists or

advocates. They think that online activism is simply encouraging people to passively

click in support of a cause rather than take concrete action, which may have a

greater impact in bringing about change.

Online activism pros and cons

Before you make up your mind we have summarized here some of the main

advantages and limitations of Internet activism.

Pros of online activism:

Online activism is cost efficient. It requires low effort from the organizers and

supporters of a cause.

Digital activism is democratizing activism. Previously, broadcasting a message was

costly so only relatively big organizations could afford to undertake big campaigns

and mobilize many people. Social media has made it much easier.

Online activism is demonstrating the transformational impact of internet on society.

There are many examples of online petitions that have worked.

As many viral campaigns can attest to, it is an extremely effective means to raise

funds if social media campaigns become viral.

It generates significant debate and awareness amongst people. "Clicktivists" and

"slacktivists" who are simply sharing a link or a post or clicking on a button to

endorse a petition, often learn about problems through this process. Some of them

will later on find out more about that issue or cause and may end up becoming

"fully-fledged activists."

Cons of online activism:

Clicktivists are usually passive slacktivists rather than activists. They demonstrate

poor understanding of these causes, and usually get involved only because of the

hype on social media.

Online activism can become a hypocritical way of getting peace of mind when we

know that we are not doing anything substantial to solve the problems we may be

indirectly contributing to.

Online activism has transformed the way social and political campaigners

communicate their message. Often, messages are being overly simplified and there

is less room for public deliberation and exchange of views than in traditional

activism.

Although the potential to transform society is real, sometimes the impact of online

activism is negative for society. For instance, terrorist groups and xenophobic parties

are also using online activism to achieve their goals.

Online activism can be misleading. Despite having a large showing of force online,

democratic movements often falter. Clicks of supports and shares do not always

translate into a large force outside the Internet. Activism is being banalized and

being transformed into a sort of entertainment.

Emerging questions: Are petition sites and social media encouraging people to

passively click in support of a cause rather than taking action? Are "clicktivism" and

"slacktivism" undermining "real activism"? Do you think clicktivism is positive or

simply a means to have a clean conscience without sacrificing much time or effort

for a cause?

Increasing accessibility and the ability to communicate with thousands of

citizens quickly has made the internet a tool of choice for individuals or

organisations looking to spread a social message far and wide.

Independent activists the world over are using the internet and digital

tools to build their community, connect with other similar-minded people

outside their physical surroundings as well as lobby, raise funds and

organise events.

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Simply put, digital activism is where digital tools (the internet, mobile phones, social

media etc) are used towards bringing about social and/or political change. Examples

of digital activism are scattered throughout the '80s however, things started to really

snowball with the advent of web 2.0 and the dot com boom. The introduction and

rapid growth of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter from 2004

onwards helped buttress digital activism to the point where entire campaigns can

now be run online (sometimes with little to no offline component) and still have a

wide reach. But is reach enough? Many argue that digital tools alone do not suffice

when it comes to galvanising people towards creating change. According to online

activism think tank Meta-Activism Project, digital activism should serve six key

functions: shaping public opinion; planning an action; sharing a call to action; taking

action digitally; transfer of resources.

A good timeline of digital activism around the world can be found here.

The Tools

The tools used by digital activists are vast and the list changes constantly in line with

the rapid general evolution of technology.

▪ Online petitions. Websites such as Change.org and MoveOn.org are hubs of

online activism, where people can communicate with others worldwide regarding

their cause. MoveOn.org initially grew from a small petition that two Silicon Valley

entrepreneurs sent to some family and friends in the late ‘90s, asking for their

support in telling the White House to “move on” from the Bill Clinton and Monica

Lewinsky scandal to more pressing issues facing the country.

▪ Social networks. Sites with high usage numbers such as Facebook and

YouTube have proven beneficial in spreading a message, garnering support,

shining information on a subject that might otherwise be overlooked by

mainstream media. Protests in 2011 in Tunisia and Egypt against their respective

governments were in part organised and promoted via Facebook.

▪ Blogs. Essentially a form of citizen journalism for the masses, blogs provide an

effective means of non-filtered communication with an audience about any topic

and have been used in numerous online campaigns.

▪ Micro-blogging. Micro-blogging sites such as Twitter are used to help spread

awareness of an issue or activist event. Twitter's hashtag function, which allows

people to have their tweets contribute to a multi-user conversation by typing a

keyword or phrase preceded by a hashtag, is used frequently as a digital tool for

spreading a message. The Chinese equivalent to Twitter, Weibo is subject to

scrupulous government censorship however people circumvent this blockade by

using code words when writing about issues that might be government-sensitive.

▪ Mobile phones. Controversy surrounding the 2007 presidential elections in

Kenya led to the introduction of Ushahidi Inc., a company which developed a

piece of software that allowed people to send texts and pictures of violence

following the elections which were plotted geographically on a Google map. The

software has since been used to plot activity in disaster zones following

earthquakes in Haiti and New Zealand and flooding in Australia and the USA.

▪ Proxy servers. As a means of circumventing government intervention when it

comes to online protesting, many people employ proxy servers, which act as

intermediaries between a user and a site, thus essentially circumventing national

restrictions on any site. In 2009, student protesters in Iran took to social media

to voice their concern over the contentious reelection of President Mahmoud

Ahmadinejad. This led to a cat and mouse game of the government trying to

identify which media were being used by the protesters to communicate (social

networks and then eventually proxy servers) and shutting them down.

Getting the Message out There

Image: Flickr, TTC Press Images (CC BY-SA 2.0)

One of the biggest benefits of using digital tools for positive change is the ability to

connect with a large community and, if applicable, globalise a campaign's goals. The

interconnected nature of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter lend

themselves easily to information sharing, meaning an activist can post a slogan,

picture or details about an issue, share it with friends, plug into likeminded online

communities and distribute info through their networks in a much less time and

energy-consuming way than more traditional methods of going door-to-door or

standing on street corners and asking passersby to sign petitions.

In 2012, a protest erupted over new legislation against online piracy being passed

into US law, which many argued fell to heavily into the realm of censorship. The

Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) were put forward as a

way to curb online piracy and halt infringements on intellectual property yet the

tough sanctions they proposed would mean that legal sites that had a section

promoting the distribution of illegal material could face having their entire domain

'blacklisted' as opposed to simply being required to remove infringing content.

A protest was instigated by activists before organisations like Reddit and the english

version of Wikipedia caught on and joined in by 'blacking out' the internert, blocking

access to their content completely or only provided limited access to users. Google,

Mozilla and Flickr also joined the protest and a number of street marches were held

throughout the US to protest the laws. According to Wikipedia ''...3 million people

emailed Congress to express opposition to the bills, more than 1 million messages

were sent to Congress through the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a petition at

Google recorded over 4.5 million signatures, Twitter recorded at least 2.4 million

SOPA-related tweets, and lawmakers collected more than 14 million names...who

contacted them to protest the bills.'' Though the flashy web black outs were what

drew the most attention (and probably caused such a large number of people to

protest), it is the individual activists who kicked off the campaign who have been

credited with its success, with Forbes stating: ''...it was the users who urged and

sometimes pressured technology companies to oppose the bills, not the other way

around. While the big companies eventually came on board, the push for them to do

so came largely from activists using social networking and social news sites,

including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Reddit, to build momentum and exert

leverage, sometimes on the very companies whose tools they were using.'' The

campaign, in part, has been credited with the proposed laws being reviewed and, for

the moment, shelved.

Beyond getting the message out there, digital activism allows anyone with access to

the digital world a platform to make their case and call for change and it can be

particularly beneficial to those who are often silenced or have no vehicle for their

message. Writing about the blurring of offline and online activism that occurred in

the US following the shooting of African American teenager Michael Brown, founder

and director of the Meta-Activism Project, Mary Joyce, stated ''...just like any other

kind of activism, digital activism is only necessary when conventional methods of

addressing injustice fail. “Internet campaigns calling for justice” are only necessary

for those whom the existing system does not serve.''

In April 2014, Boko Haram terrorists kidnapped more than 300 girls from a school in

northern Nigeria. Some 50 girls managed to escape but 276 remained captured

prompting an international outcry that was largely funnelled into a social media

campaign to lobby governments to intervene. The topic #BringBackOurGirls went

viral within a week, with people like activist Malala Yousafzai and US First Lady,

Michelle Obama, tweeting their support. The rapid fire rate that the hashtag

#BringBack OurGirls shot across the internet helped galvanise public support for the

families of the girls while the case drew attention from the international media and

heads of state offered to help Nigeria find and bring back the missing girls.

Where digital activism enjoys the biggest success however, is when it is used as a

complementary tool to offline action or is used as the introductory method to

encourage people to engage in offline action. One of the other key attributes of

digital activism is that it is, for the large part, a non-violent form of protest. Acts of

cyber crime are certainly committed under the guise of 'digital activism' (for

example, cases of cyberterrorism, malicious hacking and extreme cyber bullying of a

company or organisation) however, according to a study by the University of

Washington, these make up around two to three percent of total digital activism

cases.

Reduced to a Hashtag: Clicktivism and the Threat

of Too Many Messages

Generally speaking, clicking like on someone's Facebook post or retweeting a

trending hashtag on Twitter requires less effort and less forethought than signing (or

setting up) a petition or joining in a demonstration on the streets. Because of this,

digital activism has come under fire with some arguing that much of the online

engagement in issues is too reductive and passive, defining this new era of activism

as 'clicktivism', 'slacktivism' and 'armchair activism'.

Detractors of digital activism point out that it requires people to do the bare

minimum to engage in a topic (while allowing them to score some virtual brownie

points for their 'good deed'). Messages and ideals can get brushed aside in the push

for more clicks, likes, impressions and page views when campaigning online and the

information superhighway is now bumper-to-bumper with causes and campaigns

which can make it difficult for any of them to achieve meaningful impact. Just like

with traditional media, a lot of the time, certain campaigns and causes only start to

gain momentum once a prominent individual or organisation picks up on it.

One of the biggest digital campaigns in recent years took place in summer 2014 in

support of Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease.

The campaign featured videos of people, including a number of global celebrities,

tipping buckets of ice water over themselves before nominating three other people

to do the same. As part of what was called the 'ALS Ice Bucket Challenge',

challengees were asked to make a donation to the ALS Association or other ALS

non-profit.

Anthony Quintano

The web-friendly nature of the campaign (the use of videos, the involvement of

celebrities as well as nominating others to do the challenge, thereby ensuring the

spread of the campaign) saw it weave through the web quickly with more than 2

million video uploaded to Facebook and over 3 million up in Instagram, dominating

social media feeds as well as online and offline media. The challenge helped raise

220 million USD globally for ALS yet drew criticism from some about the fact that the

serious aspects of the campaign (the disease) were buried under jaunty, jovial

videos of people dousing themselves in cold water. Some iterations of the challenge

meant that those taking part did not have to make a donation while a number of

videos uploaded made no mention of ALS at all.

Similarly, the efficacy of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign mentioned above has

been called into question with the girls still in the hands of Boko Haram. An article

by Al Jazeera highlights that despite the huge level of awareness raised about the

kidnapping, little has been done to bring the girls back. In the article, protest

coordinator Hadiza Bala Usman stated "People need to remember that 219 girls

remain in captivity. We appreciate the fact that the media propelled a lot of support

around the world, but that support has not translated into any rescue. For us, if

whatever is said and done doesn't translate into the rescue of the girls, it hasn't

really achieved anything." The reaction on social media to the girls' kidnapping was

sharp and swift but attention dropped off as other campaigns and issues (such as

the ALS challenge) took precedence. As stated in an article by the BBC about the ice

bucket challenge, our mental budget for charity is finite.

Co-creator of the Occupy Wall Street protests (which called for an end to social and

economic inequality and challenged the amount of corporate influence on

government) Micah White has argued that this passivity is undermining traditional

forms of activism. In a 2010 piece for the Guardian, he wrote: ''The truth is that as

the novelty of online activism wears off, millions of formerly socially engaged

individuals who trusted digital organisations are coming away believing in the

impotence of all forms of activism. Even leading Bay Area clicktivist organisations are

finding it increasingly difficult to motivate their members to any action whatsoever.

The insider truth is that the vast majority, between 80% to 90%, of so-called

members rarely even open campaign emails. Clicktivists are to blame for alienating a

generation of would-be activists with their ineffectual campaigns that resemble

marketing.''

The 24 hour news cycle coupled with the breakneck pace at which we learn of,

digest and move on from certain issues can often mean that issues and campaigns

can run hot across the web one day and vanish the next.

Computer Literacy, Internet Accessibility,

Censorship and Mobile Campaigning

Of course, a number of factors come strongly into play here regarding who can get

involved and how, particularly in parts of the world where access to the internet and

digital literacy skills are low or where web activity is highly monitored and often

interrupted by the government and authorities.

To help circumvent issues around digital literacy and access to the web, activists use

technology and media that has high penetration in some of these areas. For

example, the number of people who regularly use the Internet in India hovers at the

around the 90 million mark, which is quite low when considering India’s 1,2 billion

population. Based on these figures, there are some who argue that precedence

should be given to mobile campaigning in India (which has already had success

when used during blood donation drives), given that 74 per cent of the population

uses mobile phones.

As mentioned earlier, many activists in China use coded language in order to dodge

the heavy censorship laws in the country. In 2014, as the 25th anniversary of the

Tiananmen Square protests approached, officials placed strict limits and blocks on

any online activity or searches relating to the anniversary or the event itself. To get

around this, the online community went covert, employing actions such as wearing a

black shirt, replacing the protest's date (June 4 1989) with May 35 in online activity

and photoshopping giant yellow ducks over the tanks in the iconic Tank Man photo

and spreading that online. This endless cat-and-mouse game, whereby censors try

to keep up with the codes and ban them, could result in action and codes becoming

so obscure that they have reduced impact, as a 2014 article in the MIT Technology

Review pointed out.

Measuring Success

Linh Do

The success of online and digital activism can be difficult to determine. Mary Joyce,

founder of DigiActive and Meta-Activism Project, states that overall success can be

perceived if the activist’s initial campaign goal was achieved. However, in many cases

of online activism, the goal of the online components may have been achieved

(awareness building, mobilization of people) while the overall goal of the campaign

was not. This trend leaves the field ripe for argument from critics of online activism

to discuss the validity of it as a movement.

The larger-scale campaigns get the attention of the media, however smaller-scale

campaigns can be just as effective and often meet their goals. Examples of this

include non-profit organisations using online platforms to raise funds for a cause or

corporations withdrawing advertising or products as a result of online backlash and

petitions.

While digital activism has a lot to offer the savvy campaigner, it also does sometimes

have limitations as to how much effective change it can generate. With this in mind,

it is worth considering that all online activity should be coupled with offline activity in

order to have greater impact.