Online Activism

The question proposed is whether or not online activism can change the world.  This is question is best answered with no, but it can be a powerful tool to help change the world. The difference in both answers depends on whether or not people decide to actually participate in making a difference or if they actually become active in the cause.  People tend to always want to include their two-cents into anything they highly agree with or disagree with.  The difference is only made when they actually do something about it and not just voice their opinion. 

In the article Slacktivism they talked about the meme for marriage equality, which was a red box with an equal sign in the middle of it.  I saw this appear all over Facebook at their time and wondered why people were changing their profile pictures to it, so I did some research to see what it stood for.  Once I understood it significance I was able to determine where people stood on the issue.  However, like everything else, some people just adapted this logo to their profile pictures because “everyone else was doing it”.  Sometimes things like this are just a trend that people just follow not knowing the exact meaning behind the cause.  As stated at the beginning of the Slacktivism article, “While many may have posted it to show support for gay marriage equality, others may have placed it in their profile to follow the crowd — many other friends were doing it, so they joined in. Adoption of the logo therefore may not necessarily have indicated that the Facebook profile owner felt strongly about supporting gay rights equality.”  The article also makes a justifiable point when they say, “the spread of memes is an opportunity for digital activism, or instances of social and political change made possible through digital networks” because the internet is a place where you can quickly make people aware of an issue and gain support from others with the same concern/ideology.  So in this case if people are just following a trend online activism is not making much change, more than anything it is possible only bringing awareness to an issue.  The change will only be made if people actually decide to become involved in the cause.        

At the beginning of chapter 9 on page 181 of Controlling the Message it states that Barrack Obama’s campaign surpassed Howard Dean’s campaign by using social networking.  This is an effective way where online activism can help makes a change.  The 2012 Obama campaign has proven that online activism can help make a difference in helping to change the world.  The best way they did this was to reach out to supporters via twitter and get them involved.  This gave Obama the upper hand in the election and it definitely helped him by directly responding to questions being asked of him.  The online activism used for this campaign did not change the world, but it helped in getting people out to vote and raise funds for the campaign.  Another effective way online activism help make a change was during the Egyptian uprisings that brought down Hosny Mubarak.  As stated in the executive summary, “Online activism multiplied the impact of social protest in Egypt: it made political action easier, faster and more universal. In the tightly controlled Egyptian political space, social media enabled activists to circumnavigate the regime’s repressive structures to convince Egyptians in the online world into taking action in the offline one. This was its main success, for a revolution will always be won and lost on the streets.  People in Egypt did not only voice their opinions in this matter, they actually got out and protested.  This is the way online activism helped change the lives of the Egyptian and the course of an entire country because they literally overthrew their government and online activism played a major role in this movement.       

As far as the #blacklivesmatter, I understand people are trying to bring awareness to the way black people are being treated by police and I completely agree with this.  At the same time when the same things happen to other people of different color, the uproar should be the same.  Equal means equal not based on selection of color.  There are so many things wrong with today’s society that I believe we have become more separated than we have ever been in the past.  Most of, the postings on twitter are only about how black people have been unjustly treated by police, but what about others who are not black? Where is the hash tag #hispaniclivesmatter,  #asianlivesmatter and so on?

References

Myers, V., & Vaughn, J. (2015). Controlling the Message New Media in American Political Campaigns. (Online-Ausg. ed.). New York: NYU Press.

New Briefing Paper: Online Activism and Revolution in Egypt. (n.d.). Retrieved June 27, 2015.

Vie, S. (n.d.). In defense of "slacktivism": The Human Rights Campaign Facebook logo as digital activism | Vie | First Monday. Retrieved June 27, 2015.