Digital media activism

Sharhad haneef

Internet activism

Internet activism is the use of communication technologies such as e-mail, web sites, and podcasts for various forms of activism to enable faster communications by citizen movements and deliver a message to a large audience

Cyberactivists

Internet activists are also called Cyberactivists

They use CMC to promote human rights, animal rights, environmental issues and the rights of marginalized communities

Goals: organize people around these issues try to create social change

Key resource

The Internet is a key resource for independent activists or e-activists

Especially when a serious violation of human rights occurs, the Internet is essential in reporting this to the outside world

Listservs like BurmaNet and China News Digest help distribute news that would otherwise be inaccessible in these countries

Usage of Internet Activism 1/3

Fundraising Groups like MoveOn and Care2 have successfully

used the Internet to raise funds and push their causes

E-petitions Internet activists also pass on e-petitions to be

emailed to the government and organizations to protest against many issues from the arms trade to animal testing

Usage of Internet Activism 2/3

Lobbying Lobbying is also made easier via the internet,

thanks to mass e-mail and the ability to broadcast a message widely at little cost

Volunteering Activists themselves may not realize that they are

“volunteering,” even though they are contacting voters for a candidate, or acting with encouragement from a campaign

Usage of Internet Activism 3/3

Community building Community building is the creation of a group of

individuals within a regional area (such as a neighbourhood) or with a common interest

Organizing To organize activities which take place solely

online, solely offline but organized online or a combination of online and offline

characteristics

Sustainable(grass root level , low cost)

Effective(long term stratergy,appropriate technology)

Reproducible(other activists,other country other issue)

challenges

Connecting online and offline

Elitism and inequality

Hype and transience

Example of digital activism

egypt and tunisian revolution were blogging and sns played a vital role in creating awareness and organizing people Anti corporate campaigns by Greenpeace

example campaign against nestle and in fact Greenpeace has launched a campaign against the sns giant facebook itself

International rallies organised in colombia through facebook

Early example from india

In 1999,Greenpeace located its first worldwide new media campaigner, Hemant Babu, in India - a country with one billion people and a mere three million computers.

Babu's first action involved establishing a cybercafe in front of the abandoned Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, where a gas leak in 1984 killed about 16,000 people and left almost half a million others with permanent health injuries.

Hacktivism

Hacktivism is the combination of the words hack and activism

Definition: Hacktivism is "the nonviolent use of illegal or

legally ambiguous digital tools in pursuit of political ends.”

Criticism

Internet activism Activism faces the same challenges as other

aspects of the digital divide Especially relevant in developing countries, where

many people still lack even the basic literacy needed to access written materials on the Internet

„Cyberbalkanization“: The same medium that lets people access a large

number of news sources also lets them pinpoint the ones they agree with and ignore the rest

Questions to be addressed

How do you scale the infrastructure and practices of digital activism beyond the elite?

How do you make sustainable digital institutions to change the global power structure?

references

Wikipedia.org Digiactive.org Greenpeace.org

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