Throughout the course of history, there have been so many things that has separated humankind. Whether it was race or language, these man made classifications have mainly been used to further separate humanity. One aspect of human culture that has managed to transcend this is music. Music is one of the most diverse fields yet musicians are still able to come together and understand one other thanks to hearing each other play. It wasn’t until the 20^th century that people finally thought to use the tremendous power music has to unite people behind a movement. This case study looks to analyze the ways music has been used to inspire others within three events: the Live Aid concerts, the Honk festivals, and the Tibetan Freedom Concerts. From these events, I would like to learn what each of their missions was and just how efficient were their methods. With this information, I want to propose an ideal strategy that utilizes music to advance a certain cause.

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Gladwell proposes a well thought out argument that I, for the most part, agree with. As a child and even now, when I envision an activist, I don’t think of somebody sitting behind a computer voicing their opinion online. I think of someone who is willing to dedicate their time and energy to voice their opinion through physical actions. Digital activism is not effective unless there are people who are willing to put in the effort to make a concrete difference.

One movement that shows the power but also the limitations of social media as a form of activism is Occupy Wall Street. The Occupy Wall Street Movement didn’t just come from nowhere. The sentiment and anger behind had accumulated from years of domination by the upper classes in the world. Even though this resentment was evident, minimal change was occurring. Social media, a powerful tool for galvanizing people, could not get people to challenge this status quo. Social media, as Gladwell said, is limited by the thing that makes it useful- the power to connect people from all over. Social media was able to inform people from all over about the issue. Most people, though, did not do anything. They were not willing to spend their time and energy to fight this issue. From here, the old version of activism took over. People actually put themselves at risk to fight for a cause. Social media helped facilitate the fight by broadcasting the events occurring within Occupy Wall Street; people then either stayed back and did nothing again or they decided to actually join the fight. The Occupy Wall Street movement, albeit it did not really change the route the economy was heading, spotlighted the issue. Social media can’t achieve the change that activism of the past can.

Another instance that further solidifies Gladwell’s argument was the Ethiopian Famine of 1984. Even though this period was prior to the Internet boom, the general takeaway is the same. In 1985, musicians and others organized two concert known as Live Aid to help raise funds to help combat the famine. The event was a huge success as hundreds of thousands of people from all the world helped the cause by donating. Even though I commend these people for playing a role in this cause, I don’t consider them activists. Through the Live Aid concerts, which acted like how social media does in that it connected people from all over the world, these people donated money to help combat the famine. After this donation and the concerts, I doubt that the majority of these people did anything else to continue fighting the famine. They were content with giving money and going back to their daily lives. There’s nothing wrong with this; its very unlikely for someone to change their entire life to help people who they have no strong connection to. But that’s what makes activists who they are. They are willing to give up a part of themselves to achieve a goal that they feel strongly about. The Live Aid Concerts and social media are useful tools but the goal cannot be accomplished unless people are willing to dedicate themselves to the cause. Social media helps expand the outreach and influence that activists have; it is not a strong form of activism by itself.

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 example of monitorial citizenship that I want to discuss in this blog post is Textizen. Capitalizing on the reality that the majority of the American population has a phone, Textizen sends text messages to help its users spread their message. Through these text messages, users can inform a greater audience about a topic or event as well as collect data regarding the topic. This feature of the website allows users to establish a loop where they can ask users for their input on certain topics through surveys and then ask for them to engage in events pertaining to those topics. If the receiver of the text wants to continue to stay informed on the topic, they could be set up to receive texts regularly. Textizen helps citizens or groups impact more people by spreading their idea/event to a greater amount of people.

Even though Textizen has a general procedure for how its supposed to be used, different citizens might focus on or eliminate certain aspects of the system. For example, the different types of citizens discussed in last week’s class would use Textizen in different ways. A participatory citizen would see Textizen as another route to spread information and get people involved whereas a justice-oriented citizen would rely on the discussion and data collection side of Textizen. As usual, this Textizen user would set up their account, register what issue or topic they want to be discussed and decide what is their target audience. From there, Textizen would send out texts to get the people who the user desired to join their discussion.

At this point, the participatory citizen and the justice-oriented citizen would begin to employ the different tools of Textizen. A participatory citizen would still use surveys to gather information regarding their topic but that would not be their primary concern. If anything, a participatory citizen might use surveys to decide whether or not someone would be willing to physically be a part of an event. When a participatory citizen uses Textizen, they want to get more people to join their cause and to get more people to physically participate in events. For a participatory citizen, the final aspect of Textizen, sustaining engagement, is the most important feature.

The same cannot be said for citizens operating with a justice-oriented mindset. When a justice-oriented citizen uses Textizen, the surveys and other methods of data collection as well as discussions are whats very important. These type of citizens examine the problem and look for a solution to it. In order to discover this solution, the opinions of people and their own proposed solutions as well as data that represents the impact the issue has had on society are going to have to be assessed. This doesn’t mean that a justice-oriented person wouldn’t propose events to try to combat an issue. These events would probably just be stepping stones towards the solution or ways to resolve the issue for a limited time.

Even though these users would probably use Textizen in a different way, this does not mean one is less effective than the other. Both are looking to get other people involved in addressing an issue. As long as Textizen is being used to improve society, both of these examples of citizen are using it correctly.

In my opinion, civic technology can be split up into two sections. The first of these categories would essentially be a partnership between the government and the people. To begin, the government would put up issues that they would like for citizens to offer their input on. With the government overseeing the discussion, people can offer their ideas and show their support or their disapproval for a certain idea. In order to prevent a frenzy of ideas, the government should offer separate sections for coming up with ideas and another for showing support or disapproval. With the help of the people, the government could take the best course of action for solving a certain issue.

The second category involves monitorial citizenship. Even though the people wouldn’t offer their opinion, citizens could still help their government by monitoring it. Throughout the course of a campaign, a government official may make promises or seek to elected on a certain platform. Once they are elected, civic technology can ask citizens to analyze the official’s actions and whether or not they are in accordance with the platform taken during their campaign. Civic technology, when partnered with monitorial citizenship, can also get citizens to monitor the current state of their neighborhoods and suggest ways the government can improve them.

One website that I found that did a tremendous job of implementing the second example of civic technology was http://morsimeter.com/en. On this website, people were able to evaluate the actions taken by Egypt’s president in 2012, Mohamed Morsi. Prior to his election, Morsi made promises that he would change Egyptian policies regarding security, fuel, cleanliness, bread and traffic. With the help of http://zabatak.com/, a website that looks to inform Egyptian people about nearby crimes through having Egyptians create crime reports, Morsimeter was able to analyze Morsi’s action. By asking other Egyptians about their opinion on Morsi’s action, Morsimeter was able to determine whether or not Morsi fulfilled his promises by the end of his first 100 days in office. At the conclusion of his first 100 days, Morsimeter published their results. Their results showed that Morsi did not even complete a quarter of the promises he had made. To be fair, some of these promises were still in the process of being accomplished. Still, the majority of the Egyptian population that helped Morsimeter did not recognize any significant changes.

I consider Morsimeter to be an ideal example of what civic technology can do not only because of the goals it had but also by the way they achieved. They managed to get the Egyptian people to offer their opinion and they also used social media to expand the arguments that were being brought up on the website. Civic technology is a great tool that the people and government can use to improve society. Nevertheless, civic technology is still a tool and a tool is only as good as the people use it. Analysis means nothing unless some change can follow it.

When I was coming up with an idea for a case study, I did not have an idea as to what I wanted to analyze. I began to play some of my favorite songs and started to perform research on some issues I believed interested me. Then it hit me; why not research the very thing that I am using to inspire me, music. Whenever I am looking for an idea or need something just to get my mind flowing, I always turn to music. If music was this powerful, why not use it as a platform to inspire change? Of course, I am not the first person to think about this; in fact, various groups look at music as the main tool for change. The purpose of this case study would be to analyze these groups and examine just how much of an impact they have all over the world.

While performing this study, I do not intend to analyze famous musicians’ charity organizations or social change groups. Even though these are part of activism through music, I want to focus specifically more on the music side. I want to analyze the songs created by various artists, the messages of the songs and how much of an influence these songs had on society. For instance, the anti-war songs made by musicians of the 1960s helped motivate a generation to fight against war around the world. Even today, bands like Pussy Riot create songs that look to bring about change by having people listen to them.

      http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-19303187

Even though popular artists may make up the bulk of activism through music, I especially want to look at the influence of music at a civilian level. For my case study, the impact civilians have by using music can be broken down into two levels. The first way is the exact same way that I mentioned for popular artists. Thanks to websites like YouTube, the average person can become an overnight sensation by creating a song that has a strong message. The second way is to analyze the ways music gets people to galvanize while supporting a common cause. For example, an event called HONK! uses music at the civilian level to inspire change. Located here right in Massachusetts, this event gets street bands and other musicians to perform in a fashion similar to parades. In the process, HONK! protests violence and oppression. Their message has even expanded to other places within the US. PRONK!, a similar event held near Brown University in Providence, was created on the same premise as HONK!. More can be found about HONK! at http://honkfest.org/.

     http://www.boston.com/thingstodo/gotoit/2012/10/honk_festival_o.html

The last part of my case study looks to see just how reliable music is for inspiring social change or any other message for that matter. I want to see just how much music influences people. Through the use of past data and surveys, I want to see whether or not a powerful song can inspire someone to take action, and if so, whether certain topics would be more likely to garner civilian support.