Activism has a strong tradition in pushing societies to recognize new rights and making pressure in governments to respect citizens. Thus, activism means a method to spread progressive ideas. However, the latest news from Brazil call me to think about possible negative effects of this political practice.

Nowadays, Brazil is living under an economic crisis. I mean the economic growth rates are close to zero. At the same time, there is a big corruption scandal in the state oil company Petrobrás, involving construction companies and politicians (the Justice estimates the stolen amount in R$ 59 million, something like 20 million dollar). Thus, because this investigation in course, some of the most important Brazilian businessmen and politicians are in jail. The Brazilian government is under strong pressure from the political opposition and just 13% of the Brazilian thinks the president Dilma Rousseff is doing a good job.

Brazil faces a crisis scenario. So it’s easy to understand why the public sphere became mostly against the government. This behavior is part of the modern democratic experience. However, some movements call for military intervention or impeachment of president Rousseff (yet without fault for justify his removal according to the Brazilian Constitution).

I would like to talk about the “Revoltados Online” movement, because I believe that this case can help us to think about some situations in which online activism method can work against the best citizen interests. Let’s look closer. This Facebook-based movement has also a blog and a channel at YouTube. There isn’t any formal organization behind the scenes. There is no a positive agenda. The only purpose is put Rousseff away from the power, even if necessary a military intervention. The Facebook page meets 788 thousand people, which is an important amount to the Brazilian Facebook, yet it’s not a huge number. The engagement costs are low. It’s necessary just one click to enjoy. So people can follow and interact with posts.

The “Revoltados Online” finance its operation through the selling of T-shirt. The price range from R$ 50 to R$ 175. However, they don’t offer fiscal invoice, which is crime according the Brazilian legislation. It happens probably because they aren’t a formal organization, so there is no staff to provide this things.

In this context, I think that “Revoltados Online” works against the Brazilian democratic tradition; not just against the current government and its policies. I am not going to proceed a deeply exam of this case, but I’ll address three points:

 

Misinformation

In extreme political context, protesters need to deal the official version looking for the justice and the truth. However, I think that Revoltados Online promotes misinformation by spreading rumors without any confirmation. For example, they usually say that the government is going to change Brazil in a communist country, but there is no any evidence to support this argument. They just don’t like the social policies made by the left government, thus they create or endorse untruths and conspiracy theories.

 

Hate speech

In some contents, “Revoltados Online” use hate speech to attack some politicians and government supporters. In a fast search, I found words like: dirty, wino, thief, monkey. In the comments section, it’s easy find people claim against human rights, once it would be a way for the left-government supporters protect criminal people.

 

Social distrust in state institutions and the law

Across the world we can see examples where people need fight against the government to produce visibility on something wrong. In any place, activists need pressure government or state institutions to recognize citizen rights. This process can produce a lack of confidence in government or institutions. I don’t mean this kind of distrust. “Revoltados Online” support positions against the Brazilian democratic institutions, like the electronic electoral system – recognized one of the most secure and efficient in the world. In his duty against the government, they forget the Brazilian constitution and the democratic game.

 

The goal of this blog post is just remember that online activism is a political strategic available to people do almost anything. In the most of the situations, online activism can promote justice and better life for citizens, but also can be used to attack the democratic rules.

I don’t mean that Brazilian citizens can’t criticize the government – this is my main activity online in the last weeks. I am just addressing arguments that some kinds of activism work against the democratic institutions, which has been made with great difficulty by the Brazilian society. The medicine can not kill the sick person.

In March of 2012, I was 17 years old and a senior in high school.  I remember sitting in class when as one of my friends, who was 16 years old at the time, was making a powerpoint presentation in front of the class on a man named Joseph Kony.  She talked for a while about the horrible atrocities Kony had committed and the thousands of children he had abducted and murdered.  She then proposed the solution to capturing Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) who had been raining terror on northern Uganda for upwards of 20 years: help our high school’s chapter of the Kony 2012 movement by selling bracelets, joining a facebook group and sharing a 30-minute video.

The Kony 2012 campaign was orchestrated by Invisible Children, Inc, a non-profit that had been working since 2004 to expose the atrocities committed by the LRA.  Their mission, was to make Joseph Kony famous so that he would have no place to hide and would be stopped by the end of 2012. Regardless of the effectiveness of the campaign, it was certainly a phenomenon that warrants studying.  Within 5 days of being released, the 30-minute launch video of the campaign received over 26 million views and became the most viral video to have ever been released (see figure 1).  Thousands of activists, most around the age of my friend and a little older, came together across the country and formed groups to figure out what they could do to stop this warlord.

 

 

 

After the movement exploded, it also began to receive a lot of criticism.  The most salient of which made the four following arguments: (1) The campaign left out critical information like the fact that Northern Uganda successfully expelled Joseph Kony years before the 2012 campaign and the LRA was instead loosely operating in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, (2) the campaign provided no actionable solutions that help to capture Kony because he and the LRA were already well known among those in central Africa who would actually be doing the pursuit, (3) little of Invisible Children’s budget actually went to helping those in central Africa, and (4) the Kony 2012 narrative furthered harmful western which paint Africa as a continent which cannot help itself and therefore needs the western world to intervene and save the day.  Perhaps as validation to these criticisms, it has now been over three years since the Kony 2012 campaign, and the world is no closer to capturing Joseph Kony.

Yet, the speed at which this movement took hold is clearly fascinating and it is helpful to look at the movement through the lens of the five principles of organizing as outlined by Marshall Ganz: Building a public narrative, establishing relationships, building and empowering teams, forming a strategy and taking action.

Build a public narrative: story of self, us and now

Within this domain, the digital movement of Kony 2012 transformed into something that the world of political organizing had never seen before.  While the video constructed the public narrative similarly to organized movements in the past, it had a focus on something that was not possible in the pre-digital age: virality.  The video starts by priming people to share content by showing people sharing other videos online before even hinting at the message, and the rest of the narrative is very carefully constructed with virality in mind.

This adds a new dimension to the public narrative.  No longer is it only about the story of self, us and now as Ganz put it, but organizers now have the option of arranging all of those components as something that can go viral.  Whether or not they want to is an interesting question that warrants further study.  As Invisible Children’s CEO discussed in an NPR interview, their story grew so quickly that they were not ready to handle the consequences of such a large public spotlight.  While it may have backfired for Invisible Children, virality clearly is a powerful factor, for better or worse, that cannot be ignored when designing public narratives for a movement in the digital age.

Establish relationships: One on Ones

In this domain, the Kony 2012 campaign operated similarly to many campaigns before it.  They framed the issue in a way people can relate to with the spotlight on the filmmaker’s child and the message that “if this were to happen once in the US it would be on the cover of every single newspaper.” They went around talking to people about what was going on and they encouraged their followers to do the same.

A Team Approach: Build and Empower Teams

In this domain, Kony 2012 succeeded in cleverly packaging team-building around sharing Joseph Kony’s name into a digital product.  Their campaign sent out ‘action kits’ which gave activists posters and 2 bracelets, one for themselves and one to share, each containing a digital code.  This code gave them access to an online portal that would empower them to track the impact they were making on spreading the word.

Yet, at the same time the campaign failed in mobilizing people outside of the digital sphere or empowering them with the ability to do anything other than talk about the issue.  Lots of people shared and watched the videos, and many bought kits and donated to the organization.  Yet on the date of what was supposed to be the climax of the campaign known as ‘Cover the Night,’ people failed to organize in the real world. The teams that were leading the movement were not equipped or accustomed to being activists away from the comfort of their homes and their friends.  Followers of the movement would gladly share information, but the teams of activists were unable to motivate their followers when it came to taking as minimal an action as hanging up a poster. [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/apr/21/kony-2012-campaign-uganda-warlord]

Form a Strategy: Learn and Adapt

Kony 2012 failed miserably in this domain.  They had a fantastically successful initial strategy which led to a viral explosion in interest.  Yet they were not ready for this viral explosion and they failed to adapt to the increased spotlight.  In 2014, Invisible Children, Inc shut down from the same causes which plagued the organization immediately after its initial success.

Take Action: Clear and Measurable Actions

In this domain, Kony 2012 was successful at creating clear and measurable actions for its followers, yet unsuccessful at aligning those actions with a strategy that would actually solve the problem.  They were certainly able to raise awareness, but awareness alone will not capture a warlord in central Africa.

The lessons of Kony 2012 are helpful for any organizer in the digital age.  Virality can be a double edged sword and if one attempts to unsheath it they should have some body armor ready to go.  On top of that, a campaign at this scale must also align the actions of its followers with meaningful progress that works towards solving the problem rather than awareness as an end of its own.

 

 

When I hear the word activist, I usually think of a passionately good-willed young adult holding a sign shouting at the top of their lungs.

Of course, my stereotypical image is a dated view because much of the activism today happens online — where keyboards and monitors replace cardboard signs and the clicking of keys rings louder than the physical voice.

My view is not only off target for this reason, but also the image of a “passionately good willed young adult” is not correct either. Activists take all shapes and forms, especially online activists. I can no longer count on an activist being passionate, for some online activism groups membership is simply getting the emails. Activists come in all ages, from adorable grade school girls to fat old men. Furthermore, I can no longer count on an activist being good willed. In fact, they can be quite evil. However, they can still be understood as an activist group, and indeed, the example I am writing about can be considered in some respects, a wildly successful online social movement which has gotten activists united and committing themselves to furthering the cause, all the while propagating a great deal of hatred. I’m talking about The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS.

If you haven’t heard about ISIS yet, prepare for your day to be ruined. It’s a new radical fundamentalist Islamic group which has been tearing through the Middle East[0]. Their goal is essentially to raise a Caliphate (or state governed under sharia law by a decedent of Mohammad and to bring about the apocalypse[1]. These folks are pretty bad. So bad, that the African terrorist group Boko Haram, who is also in the category of “really fucking bad”, pledged their allegiance to ISIS.

A part of what has made ISIS so successful has been their activity as an online social movement. Of course, I am not the first to notice how successfully they have been using social media.

 

Emerson Brooking notes that they used a translingual strategy, where they upped their presence in English materials in order to evade attention until they had captured a strategic victory at Mosul (a large Iraqi city).[2] This is probably one of the more novel techniques, and could use more analysis. It would be very interesting to study translingual techniques in an environment such as India, where there are N different local languages, studying diffusion patterns would be pretty cool to figure out optimal change-making. Projects like Global Language Network have already built some of the tools that would be needed to perform this study.[4]

One major change for these ‘activists’ has been the use of a global public forum, the likes of which (ie, twitter) have only recently become largely popular. Whereas organization used to take place on interest specific forums, these General-Purpose platforms provide much greater surface area with a broader public allowing an easier access for untrained soldiers.[2] There are negatives to such a platform being made easy for all to use, for instance one ISIS fighter revealed secret locations. [3]. Twitter emerged as an important platform in the region during the Arab Spring as a tool for positive social change, but this illustrates the potential for tools to do both good and bad.

ISIS also employs pro-government tweets as well, showing them performing services targeted at local audiences.[2] This is to raise confidence with the citizenry in ISIS’s ability to run the state, much like how Hamas provides a great deal of humanitarian services,

The Brookings institute has conducted a detailed analysis of the ISIS twitter strategy.[5][6][7] Some interesting notes from the study are that suspensions on the platform, performed by twitter, have been an effective means at reducing the amount of exposure ISIS receives. However, the effects of cutting these activists off from the platform is unknown (it could make things worse). Another interesting note is that there have been many instances with location metadata included, not just the mess-up previously mentioned[3]. Most notably, (in my opinion), is that the researchers posited that there is a small group of highly active individuals who are driving the social media drive. This hints that although it seems organic, it is not necessarily a flat structure: there may be a higher degree of structure to the tweeting as certain individuals act as ‘super retweeters’ to surface and curate the most powerful hashtags and images generated by the masses.

Notably they use Twitter and Facebook as recruiting platforms.[2] This is important because it means not only are they putting out media to scare the US, but also to recruit. This dualism represents a very interesting, perhaps novel, social media tactic where they must simultaneously put out horrifying content while appealing to another demographic.

 

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

[2] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/31/isis-s-use-of-social-media-to-reach-you-its-new-audience.html

[3] http://time.com/3651559/new-zealand-isis-twitter/

[4] http://language.media.mit.edu/visualizations/books

[5] http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2015/03/isis-twitter-census-berger-morgan

[6]http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2015/03/isis-twitter-census-berger-morgan/isis_twitter_census_berger_morgan.pdf

[7] http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/order-from-chaos/posts/2015/03/06-isis-twitter-census-berger

As society progresses and improves, the role and impact technology has on our lives will increase. Technology has even altered the way people look to spark change. In the 1900s, media was nowhere near as complex as it is today. Radios, and later on television, were the main source for broadcasting one’s opinion on an issue in hopes of inciting change. Even though these forms of mass media are considered limited by today’s standards, they still got the job done and allowed people to spark change if they had enough support. In the present day, the new forms of media that were not present in the past has made it even more possible for the average person to have a say in how their government is run. In order to see just how much of a role this new technology had, I decided to examine the Occupy Wall Street Movement.

The Occupy Wall Street combined the methods of the past such as protests and sit ins and the technology of the present to create a movement that sparked debate nationwide. Similar to protests of the past, the Occupy Wall Street Movement managed to get people who believed in the goals of the movement to stage a sit in in Zuccotti Park of New York City. The people involved in the Occupy Wall Street even put up tents and stayed in the park despite the weather. Even though they were consistently besieged by the New York Police Department, the people involved in the movement still held their ground.

 

This movement took their mission a step further by capitalizing on social media. Through websites like Facebook and Twitter, Occupy Wall Street was able to spread the discussion to people who couldn’t physically be a part of the movement. These people were still able to keep up with what was going on through live feeds, pictures, posts and news broadcasts. Social media also helped connect the Occupy Wall Street movement with other “Occupy” movements that were going all over the world. The use of social media helped the Occupy Wall Street expand its outreach to other states, even other countries. This would have been extremely hard to achieve in the past where this technology was just not present.

Over the years, Occupy Wall Street has utilized the new technologies of the present even more. Occupy Wall Street has been able to use mass email, accompanied by social media, to inform more people about upcoming rallies. One of the more interesting uses of the new technology available is how Occupy Wall Street has been able to use crowd mapping to inform people about where the most cops are. By doing this, less people are likely to be confronted by the police and the rallies could go on with fewer police disruptions. The usage of crowd mapping for this purpose has allowed to movement to survive and still have an impact on society. The Occupy Wall Street movement broke the boundaries put on previous movements by capitalizing on the advances made in technology over the past decades.

References

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304459804577285793322092600

http://www.shareable.net/blog/occupy-the-cloud-what-occupy-wall-street-can-take-from-gov-20

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is an organization founded in 1999 by a professor and a civil rights lawyer, both civil libertarians, to “…defend and sustain individual rights at America’s colleges and universities.” They currently spend that vast majority of their resources tackling the issue of student and faculty speech on campuses though publicity campaigns, strategic litigation, and other legal avenues.

FIRE appears to follow a similar model of advocacy to groups like the ACLU or the EFF, but is somewhat more single-issue. Since I’m most familiar with the activities of FIRE, (I’m a donor!) I figured they’d be a good case study.

FIRE’s primary method of resource generation seems to be email. Like MoveOn and other similar organizations, periodic mass emails function to stir interest in the group’s activities and convince people to donate. These emails are almost exclusively about specific issues, seemingly designed to spur individuals with interest in particular cases to donate. This plays well to the monitorial model of citizenship, and closely resembles the actions of many other modern email-based campaigns.

Interestingly, the incentive to garner donations has encouraged FIRE to take a pseudo-journalistic role in addition to their advocacy. In order to send compelling emails, FIRE has to extensively research and document campus speech issues for their donors, to the point that the fire website is a decent source of news and information relating to the issue. The above-linked ACLU and EFF do the same thing.

In fact, sometimes the journalism IS the advocacy. Besides asking for donations, FIRE also uses mass emailing to spread news about important and sometimes time-sensitive information that may spur recipients to further action. For example, once, in response to a FIRE mailing, I sent a letter to the University of Tulsa urging them to reconsider a recent decision. This use of email is different from the donation-seeking use in that it encourages direct action on the part of recipients. The attention these activities bring to the issue helps to sway public opinion, and the mind of the administrators involved (hopefully).

While not a digital media, FIRE does notably still use physical mailings in addition to digital ones. These mailings are functionally similar to the emails, but manage to come off as more personal, probably because of the physical cost associated with sending them.

FIRE also has a social media presence, which they use to spread information. This information can be easily shared over user’s social networks, with provides both increased distribution and social capital, since you are seeing posts shared by your friends rather than mass emails.

FIRE uses the internet to help disseminate some of their publications. They publish several guides to various speech issues on their website, which they allow anyone to freely download.

The more I look into the specifics to FIRE’s operations, the more it becomes clear that they take a very traditional approach to their advocacy, with modest digital inroads to spread their popular appeal. Perhaps this is appropriate for a legally-minded foundation; it certainly seems to be similar to other civil rights organizations that continue to have important social impacts (ACLU, EFF). It seems to be effective for them, and I suspect I may donate again in the future, perhaps in response to some issue-based email.

[Bonus: MGTOW, or: The Blog Post I Wanted to Write

I initially wanted to look into the internet activities of the “men going their own way” (MGTOW) movement, which is a delightfully crazy little online endeavor that has been described as “lesbian separatism for straight men.” In a nutshell, (and please provide your own air quotes where necessary) the basic ideology is or seems to be that since society is set up to favor women and because modern women are increasingly unattractive as mates, reasonable, sensible men should eschew all romantic relationships with the opposite sex and concentrate only on their own pursuits.

They’re totally nuts, but have somehow managed to hew out a corner of the internet for themselves using digital technology. I thought (and continue to think) that they would be a fun movement to pick apart and study, but I failed to find any sufficiently academic or even pseudo-academic sources describing their origins or history. (Exhibit A: I couldn’t find a better link than Urban Dictionary for MGTOW above.) My original research has led me to believe that the movement is centered on a number of forum-hosting websites devoted to MGTOW specifically and/or so-called men’s rights activism, along with certain corners of reddit.

While I wouldn’t say that the movement strikes me as particularly effective socially, the fact that such a movement has gained any purchase at all seems somewhat remarkable, and is probably almost entirely attributable to technology. Without the ability to anonymously connect with similarly minded people all over the country and world, it is unlikely that such a strange movement could have garnered nearly the attention that this one has. MGTOW may actually be a model case for the technology-mediated birth of a counterpublic, as humorous as that statement may seem.]

By the start of the second decade of the 2000’s, Egyptians were tiring of dictator Hosni Mubarak’s rule. Unemployment was high, police brutality was on the rise, and elections were rigged. As access to the Internet and social media in Egypt grew, citizens gained a newfound ability to voice their grievances, and the discontent that had been brewing in Egypt for decades finally came to a head.

The story of Wael Ghonim is particularly telling. A 29-year-old marketing executive at Google, Ghonim was a member of Egypt’s upper class and prior to 2010 had little interest in politics. In June of 2010, though, the story of Khaled Said, a 28-year-old who had been beaten to death by the police, finally inspired him to action. Capitalizing on the groundswell of emotion over this incident across the country, he created a Facebook page entitled “We Are All Khaled Said.” Within two minutes, the page had 300 likes, and within three months, it had 250,000. Egypt’s online revolution was underway. Ghonim’s fluency with online marketing had helped him realize that a Facebook page would spread far more quickly than a Facebook group. Furthermore, he recognized that to maintain credibility with the page’s followers, he should use the pronoun “I” rather than “we” in posts so as to avoid appearing like yet another organization or political party. This was a revolution about personal freedom and liberation from the oppressive institutions and parties of old.

Ghonim skillfully channeled the emotions of an unsettled populace through social media, but he also understood that social media would not be sufficient if lasting change was to be made. To organize physical protests of significant scale, he knew that the vast population of Egyptians without Internet access would need to be reached. He canvassed his page’s followers for ideas on how to best spread the word. They suggested flyers and text messaging, which turned out to be very effective. These interactions suggest a comparison to the classic principles of political organizing. In well-funded political campaigns, like those for higher office in the United States, a large staff of paid organizers can be hired, and these organizers can then recruit further volunteer staff and go door-to-door, send texts, or otherwise interact with constituents. The difference in many social movements is that there is no money, so this initial bootstrapping process with paid staffers cannot occur. So instead a core of educated, motivated activists must form through social media, just as was the case in Egypt. Through online discussions, this core can devise strategies for reaching large offline populations, and these strategies will be very similar to their counterparts in traditional political organizing, except carried out entirely by volunteer activists rather than paid staffers. The end result is the same: a large group of citizens galvanized around a common set of issues.

Needless to say, Ghonim’s efforts were largely successful. Leveraging his existing base of followers and using the Twitter hashtag “#jan25” and a Facebook page that was inclusive of a large number of interest groups, Ghonim helped organize a huge anti-Mubarak protest in Tahrir Square on January 25, 2011. Around two and a half weeks and a few protests later, President Mubarak resigned and the floodgates of democracy were opened. Social media had unleashed the incredible power of the Egyptian people.

Primary source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/books/review/how-an-egyptian-revolution-began-on-facebook.html?_r=0

Last September Mexico was shocked with the news of the kidnapping of 43 rural students of the Ayotzinapa Rural School in Guerrero, one of the poorest states in the country. Unfortunately hearing of disappearances, kidnapping, shootings and violence in the country has been something “normal” for the last years, with the “drug on wars” since 2006 the violence has scaled. But even in a country where we left counting gun shoots, the disappearance of 43 students was something to take in account, it wasn’t just a news, it was a scandal and the spark to go out to the streets and to the net.

During the first days of the news the people went out to the streets, there were demonstrations in all the mayor cities in Mexico, after some weeks the movement went further, there weren’t only cities in Mexico, there were demonstrations all over the world, from Mexico to Argentina to Boston, to Paris to New Delhi and so on. To accomplish this the use of social media played a key role, the use of hashtags in twitter as #AyotzinapaSomosTodos (We are all Ayotzinapa) or #AccionGlobalAyotzinapa (Global Action Ayotzinapa) was useful to spread the word in the first days.

There were also some key events that prompted the use of new hashtags as when the former Mexico’s General Attorney said that he has had enough in a press conference, talking about the reporters that where asking questions, but the phrase was taken by the social movement as a new flagship to say that the people is also tired from the politicians, as the graph shows the hashtag explode the same day.

The organisation of the movement was articulated by social media, groups were formed in facebook, whatsapp was useful to organise the people in the street, twitter was a one to many channel of communication, streams of the demonstrations and photos in instagram were key part to keep the conversation alive. And now more than six months since the kidnap of the students and with different versions of what could happened to them, the networks are still active, the next image shows the network that has been build in Facebook related to xForAyotzinapa, there are groups as BostonForAyotzinapa, HelsinkiForAyotzinapa, etc.

 

The situation in Mexico hasn’t change a lot from six months to now, but one of the main changes that the Ayotzinapa tragedy bring to the country was the construction of networks, they are still active organising forums, rallys, demonstrations and some other actions to put some pressure to the government and try to change Mexico. They are still connected by groups in facebook and twitter, the BostonForAyotzinapa Group is active organising forums in Harvard to rethink the violence and society in Mexico, there are groups working in NY to get the attention of the UN, in Europe to create awareness of what’s going on in Mexico. Even inside Mexico the networks are active, they could been not to mainstream and covered by the press, but the people are still going out to the streets, talking with each other and using social networks to push for a change.

(In Blogged response to “Pick a recent online social movement and describe the ways digital media or new technologies were used to organize activists. …)

[due to time constraint, I cannot link to all sources mentioned in this article. ]

The “Umbrella Movement” in Hong Kong and “Sunflower Movement” in Taiwan are actually not good examples in this topic. The are not “online” social movements. In the contrary, they are quite “offline” because the central activities are limited in the city level, the core leadership is formed at the beginning, and students really don’t need to log on to the Internet to know how their revolutions are going on. However, multiple online storytelling/organizing tools are still used in these movements. And the transmedia organization elements are rich. There are Twitter hashtags, live streaming in Google Hangout and Ustream, Facebook pages and articles, themed songs, Youtube videos and Instagram pictures. Branding icons – yellow umbrella icon and yellow ribbons are used across multiple online/offline media. There are some unique elements such as bluetooth-based mobile apps used to maintain communication channels when Internet is jammed. But overall, the transmedia techniques used in these movements are “standard” or even predictable. For example, one professor asked me for collecting songs written at the beginning of the Umbrella Movement, and he got them just 2 days after.

But since they mainly relied on offline communications, what difference did digital media make? One answer is amplifying the movements’ influence. Thanks to digital media, journalist no longer need to risk themselves going to the protest sites, and they can constantly know what’s happening in the movements in real time. The stories have been in the headlines in both western media and mainland Chinese media (of course in a different way) for weeks. Even today, the Facebook page of the Umbrella Movement is still there and updates nearly everyday, reporting “everything evil from China mainland”. Digital technology helped extend the communities (and hatred) beyond the movement themselves.

Students built their fortress in Facebook and Twitter, whereas their enemies erected their outposts in Weibo and Wechat. There were few exceptions from mainland who jumped over the Firewall and say “hello” on those Facebook pages, only receiving “get out” in return. Students in the protests may think that mainlanders have nothing to do with their affairs. But in reality the fate is never totally at the hands of Hong Kongers and Taiwanese: Service Trade Agreement is about cross-strait relation, and students in Hong Kong cannot have their objective achieved without the decision from Beijing. However, digital media make people feel empowered – since we have the attention and support from (seemingly) the whole world, why do we need politics and dialogue? Optimists think that even though movements failed, “the seed of democracy” is planted in the heart of Hong Kongers and even people in Mainland China. At least the latter part is not the case: I was nearly annoyed by my parents telling me how ignorant the students are during my telephone calls.

What if things happen in another way, saying protesters did not enjoy the hype brought by digital media at first and start to work on their initial cause? There is much nuance in the Service Trade Agreement about how different social classes benefit from the articles, and nomination method is a complex idea. Maybe there is a tiny hope that each party may reach a mutual accepted solution. However, the monsters named “ideology” and “politics“ are so strong and they may be the ones who laughed at last – especially if one does not will or learn to play with them.

(A student-drawn picture depicting the Umbrella Movement as a war against communis Source)

 

(A poster in the Umbrella Movement drawing the Chief Executive of Hong Kong as a wolf. Source)

 

 

(A poster from the Umbrella Movement. Source)

Recently the Guardian announced they were starting a campaign aimed at generating action on issues contributing to global warming. This is an interesting case study for digital activism for several reasons, one being that it is rare that a news organization publicly announces that it will champion a particular cause. If part of the current crisis in journalism is public skepticism about news organizations that try to adopt a neutral voice and are therefore perceived as inauthentic, this is a strong move toward open acknowledgment of what some view as a political position, and a move away from the long-standing ideal of “objective” journalism.

But beyond the novelty of a leading news outlet openly declaring an activist  agenda, what kind of techniques are being employed by the Guardian for this campaign, and how do these techniques compare to traditional organizing? The Guardian’s strategy in part is to leverage it’s reach (an estimated 42 million unique monthly visitors) to declare that climate change is a hugely important story, but one that is very difficult for news outlets to cover.

Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief wrote “The problem with this story is… it’s so big, and it doesn’t change much from day to day. Journalism is brilliant at capturing momentum, or changes, or things that are unusual. If it’s basically the same every day, every week, every year, I think journalists lose heart.”

So this is in part an awareness raising campaign. While the Guardian doesn’t necessarily intend to convince disbelievers, it does seem to hope that increased high-profile coverage of the problem will cause more people to take actions that could lead to policy change. Their main call to action is to increase participation in divestment campaigns. But the Guardian isn’t starting a new online campaign platform from scratch. Their online platform encourages people to sign a petition asking for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust to divest from fossil fuel companies, but this petition is connected to 350.org’s ongoing efforts on this issue. Beyond petition signing, how do 350.org’s efforts compare to classic organizing techniques?

350.org’s technique is primarily to make it easier for individuals to engage in climate change activism by creating a variety of tools to assist the would-be organizer. They offer a suite of free resources, including templates for posters, sign up sheets, and talking points. They of course also push organizational updates through their email list. And they also offer guides to launching local chapters of 350.org. The website seems to suggest a three-tiered approach to accomplish this: meetups, workshops, and actions. Each of these activities is documented with suggestions and steps to be successful. As such, the broad 350.org strategy seems to be in line with traditional organizing principles: that activists need to make connections to people in their local area through regular meetings, and that systematic change can result from these activities. The online component is to offer free resources to help with offline activity, but the main goals are petition drives, group actions, and coordinated activity through local chapters. The Guardian and 350.org are therefore most fundamentally attempting to use their online reach to grow a network of people with the goal of increasing participation in these classic social movement techniques.

There’s oftentimes a fine line between social justice and vigilantism. The internet has made both information collection and sharing quick and effortless, allowing for social movements to spread rapidly while lowering the barrier needed to participate. This, however, means that masses of well-intentioned people working towards change can end up focusing their vitriol on a few defenseless and mostly undeserving individuals who happen to be so unlucky as to have insulted the sensibilities of the majority in some way. The unfortunate cynosures then find themselves the target of the ire of thousands, if not tens of thousands of strangers, and owing to the public nature of the condemnation, facing very real consequences such as death threats and the loss of their jobs and livelihood.

These cases where the internet is whipped into a fury over some perceived slight are as much social movements as any and deserve study. The most prominent recent example involves the owners of a small pizzeria in Walkerton, IN, who when questioned about their state’s contentious Religious Freedom Restoration Act by a local news crew, had the apparent gall to say that while they would never refuse service to gay patrons, they would never cater to a gay wedding. Their remarks, distorted and amplified in enormity, quickly became the latest fixation for many on the Internet. The pizzeria’s Yelp page was defamed with scathing reviews and pornography, the owners were denounced by one of their Senators, and the family that owned the store announced that the store would be closed, and that it might prove impossible for them to continue living in the state.

While it can be argued that such bigoted views are reprehensible, the punishment in this case certainly did not meet the crime. This was a family that owned a small business that had never, in all its years of operation, been asked to cater to a wedding, let alone a gay wedding. Their statements were essentially irrelevant to the national dialogue. Yet their opinions became the front of a national battle over discrimination, when instead the attention should probably have been focused on how ambiguously worded and poorly written the piece of proposed legislation was.

It’s an interesting exercise to see what platforms were used in this bout of off-color activism, and see how they compare to classic principles of political organizing. The story was first published by the local TV station WBND and eaten up by many online aggregations, which regurgitated the statements with little additional reporting. These articles were then shared over Facebook; people took up their complaints on Twitter. The Yelp page, easily findable on Google, was populated with low reviews. As news spread that the store had been closed indefinitely, putting the family in possibly dire financial straits, a GoFundMe campaign was started to provide support. It eventually amassed close to a million dollars. As of the time of writing, a wave of opposing, anti-gay commentary has risen in response to what was perceived as brutal intimidation at the hands of liberals.

It’s easy to draw parallels between what happened in this case and digital campaigning against SOPA – knee-jerk reactions by many who saw their responses as a part of their identities as digital citizens and were therefore more than willing to spread the word and work towards the bill’s demise. Social media facilitated a need that was already there, a desire to distinguish themselves as part of a specific group. The same case can be made for forms of political campaigning that appeal to voters’ loyalties to identity-defining groups such as working class or ethnicity; acting towards the cause then becomes not only a responsibility but an affirmation of one’s own place in a community.

What distinguishes this from traditional forms of political campaigning is perhaps the lack of leaders. Even campaigns embarked by groups such as Anonymous tend to have leaders who are given more responsibilities and power than others. Motivation in this case, however, seemed to stem mostly from each incensed individual. Nor was there really a need for organization as the target seemed so defenseless and the cause so obvious. The restaurant’s Yelp page was easily accessible to any who had the ability to perform a Google search; sending scalding tweets at their Twitter tag also required little more than a desire to do so.

The lesson to be taken away might then be one of accountability. Mass movements such as the Ice Bucket Challenge and Marriage Equality Profile Picture did not necessarily have leaders either – but the consequences expected were largely positive and not targeted at a small group of people in particular. When the purpose is condemnation, however, it might be wise to have someone in charge to make sure that things don’t go too far.

Note: An overview of what happened can be found here.