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Hub AI
Internet activism AI simulator
(@Internet activism_simulator)
Hub AI
Internet activism AI simulator
(@Internet activism_simulator)
Internet activism
Internet activism involves the use of electronic-communication technologies such as social media, e-mail, and podcasts for various forms of activism to enable faster and more effective communication by citizen movements, the delivery of particular information to large and specific audiences, as well as coordination. Internet technologies are used by activists for cause-related fundraising, community building, lobbying, and organizing. A digital-activism campaign is "an organized public effort, making collective claims on a target authority, in which civic initiators or supporters use digital media." Research has started to address specifically how activist/advocacy groups in the U.S. and in Canada use social media to achieve digital-activism objectives.
Within online activism Sandor Vegh distinguished three principal categories: active/reactive, organization/mobilization, and awareness/advocacy based. Active/reactive refers to either being proactive in efforts to bring about change or reacting to issues after they happen. Organization/mobilization refers to gathering people and information together for online or offline activism. Awareness/advocacy refers to sharing information to make others aware of an issue or advocating for issues and campaigns. There are other ways of classifying Internet activism, such as by the degree of reliance on the Internet versus offline mobilization. Thus, Internet sleuthing or hacking could be viewed as purely online forms of activism, whereas the Occupy Wall Street movement was mainly conducted offline, and only partially online.
Exploring the dynamics of online activism for expressing resistance to a powerful organization, a study developed a critical mass approach to online activism. The results were integrated in a four-year longitudinal process model that explains how online activism started, generated societal outcomes, and changed over time. The model suggests that online activism helped organize collective actions and amplify the conditions for revolutionary movements to form. Yet, it provoked elites' reactions such as Internet filtering and surveillance, which do not only promote self-censorship and generate digital divide, but contribute to the ultimate decline of activism over time. The process model suggests a complex interplay among stakeholders' interests, opportunities for activism, costs, and outcomes that are neither foreseen nor entirely predictable. The authors challenge universal access to the Internet as a convenient and cost-free forum for practicing social activism by organizational stakeholders (customers, employees, outside parties). In fact, the technology enablers of social activism also enable its filtering and repression, and thus, more extreme states of information asymmetry may result in which powerful elites preserve their status and impose a greater digital divide.
In one study, a discussion of a developmental model of political mobilization is discussed. By citizens joining groups and creating discussion, they are beginning their first stage of involvement. Progressively, it is hoped that they will begin signing petitions online and graduating to offline contact as long as the organization provides the citizen with escalating steps of involvement (Vitak et al., 2011).
The issue of the mass media's centrality has been highly contested, with some people arguing that it promoted the voices of marginalized groups while others believe it sends forth the messages of the majority alone, leaving minority groups to have their voices robbed.
One early instance of online activism was opposition to the release of Lotus Marketplace. On April 10, 1990, Lotus announced a direct-mail marketing database product that was to contain name, address, demographic, and spending habit information on 120 million individual U.S. citizens. While much of the same data was already available elsewhere, privacy advocates worried about the availability of this data collected within one easily searchable database. Furthermore, the data would be distributed on CD-ROM and could not be changed until a new edition was released.
In response, a mass e-mail and E-bulletin-board campaign was started, which included information on contacting Lotus and form letters. Larry Seiler, a New England–based computer professional, posted a message that was widely reposted on newsgroups and via e-mail: "It will contain a LOT of personal information about YOU, which anyone in the country can access by just buying the discs. It seems to me (and to a lot of other people, too) that this will be a little too much like big brother, and it seems like a good idea to get out while there is still time." Over 30,000 people contacted Lotus and asked for their names to be removed from the database. On January 23, 1991, Lotus announced that it had cancelled MarketPlace.
In 1998 Dr. Daniel Mengara, a Gabonese scholar and activist living New Jersey, created a website called Bongo Doit Partir (Bongo Must Go) to encourage a revolution against the regime of Omar Bongo in Gabon. In July 2003, Amnesty International reported the arrest of five Gabonese known to be members of Bongo Doit Partir. The members were detained for three months.
Internet activism
Internet activism involves the use of electronic-communication technologies such as social media, e-mail, and podcasts for various forms of activism to enable faster and more effective communication by citizen movements, the delivery of particular information to large and specific audiences, as well as coordination. Internet technologies are used by activists for cause-related fundraising, community building, lobbying, and organizing. A digital-activism campaign is "an organized public effort, making collective claims on a target authority, in which civic initiators or supporters use digital media." Research has started to address specifically how activist/advocacy groups in the U.S. and in Canada use social media to achieve digital-activism objectives.
Within online activism Sandor Vegh distinguished three principal categories: active/reactive, organization/mobilization, and awareness/advocacy based. Active/reactive refers to either being proactive in efforts to bring about change or reacting to issues after they happen. Organization/mobilization refers to gathering people and information together for online or offline activism. Awareness/advocacy refers to sharing information to make others aware of an issue or advocating for issues and campaigns. There are other ways of classifying Internet activism, such as by the degree of reliance on the Internet versus offline mobilization. Thus, Internet sleuthing or hacking could be viewed as purely online forms of activism, whereas the Occupy Wall Street movement was mainly conducted offline, and only partially online.
Exploring the dynamics of online activism for expressing resistance to a powerful organization, a study developed a critical mass approach to online activism. The results were integrated in a four-year longitudinal process model that explains how online activism started, generated societal outcomes, and changed over time. The model suggests that online activism helped organize collective actions and amplify the conditions for revolutionary movements to form. Yet, it provoked elites' reactions such as Internet filtering and surveillance, which do not only promote self-censorship and generate digital divide, but contribute to the ultimate decline of activism over time. The process model suggests a complex interplay among stakeholders' interests, opportunities for activism, costs, and outcomes that are neither foreseen nor entirely predictable. The authors challenge universal access to the Internet as a convenient and cost-free forum for practicing social activism by organizational stakeholders (customers, employees, outside parties). In fact, the technology enablers of social activism also enable its filtering and repression, and thus, more extreme states of information asymmetry may result in which powerful elites preserve their status and impose a greater digital divide.
In one study, a discussion of a developmental model of political mobilization is discussed. By citizens joining groups and creating discussion, they are beginning their first stage of involvement. Progressively, it is hoped that they will begin signing petitions online and graduating to offline contact as long as the organization provides the citizen with escalating steps of involvement (Vitak et al., 2011).
The issue of the mass media's centrality has been highly contested, with some people arguing that it promoted the voices of marginalized groups while others believe it sends forth the messages of the majority alone, leaving minority groups to have their voices robbed.
One early instance of online activism was opposition to the release of Lotus Marketplace. On April 10, 1990, Lotus announced a direct-mail marketing database product that was to contain name, address, demographic, and spending habit information on 120 million individual U.S. citizens. While much of the same data was already available elsewhere, privacy advocates worried about the availability of this data collected within one easily searchable database. Furthermore, the data would be distributed on CD-ROM and could not be changed until a new edition was released.
In response, a mass e-mail and E-bulletin-board campaign was started, which included information on contacting Lotus and form letters. Larry Seiler, a New England–based computer professional, posted a message that was widely reposted on newsgroups and via e-mail: "It will contain a LOT of personal information about YOU, which anyone in the country can access by just buying the discs. It seems to me (and to a lot of other people, too) that this will be a little too much like big brother, and it seems like a good idea to get out while there is still time." Over 30,000 people contacted Lotus and asked for their names to be removed from the database. On January 23, 1991, Lotus announced that it had cancelled MarketPlace.
In 1998 Dr. Daniel Mengara, a Gabonese scholar and activist living New Jersey, created a website called Bongo Doit Partir (Bongo Must Go) to encourage a revolution against the regime of Omar Bongo in Gabon. In July 2003, Amnesty International reported the arrest of five Gabonese known to be members of Bongo Doit Partir. The members were detained for three months.