In Here Comes Everybody Clay Shirky examines the ways in which social media have influenced political activism. He tells the stories of people who have gone far beyond clicking the “Like” button on a political candidates’ Facebook page or even submitting a petition by email to their local representatives.
Shirky tells the story of one of the first flash mobs with political purpose which happened in September 2003 on behalf of presidential hopeful Howard Dean. (See the September 8, 2003 invitation in the online archive of “Doonesbury” by Garry Trudeau.)
Another story he tells is from May 2006 when protesters in Minsk in Belarus organized themselves to appear in Oktyabrskaya Square and showed up eating ice cream. (Read more about “turning information into action”.) By the way here’s a disappointing update from the Christian Science Monitor on the political situation in Belarus now, five years later.
But political protest persists, and just yesterday student protesters in Chile demonstrated against their government over their failed education system.
Social media is not only changing how we communicate but how we organize and use information to inspire action.
Social media is not only changing how we communicate but how we organize and use information to inspire action.
2 comments:
It's amazing to me how things that used to take days, weeks, or months to organize can now be organized in a matter of minutes. This can be a great thing, but it can also make it difficult for participants to keep up. One of the issues I have with technology is how quickly it becomes obsolete. For instance, I don't have a Smartphone, so I am not in constant contact with my e-mail or Fb. For me this was an economic choice--I can't afford a phone that costs several hundred dollars, nor can I afford the accompanying data package necessary to maintain that level of connectivity. This necessarily limits how I can connect with people and issues of importance to me. Does it also follow that people like me are quickly disenfranchised from technologically-driven activism? I've never given that much thought before, but I will need to do so now.
The power of this type of political activism hit me with Shirky's example of the post to Wikipedia of the Thai military coup in 2006 by a then "fashion-obsessed college student...who posted the coup photos to her weblog." Her post was...oh, by the way...really proving the point of the power of "incidental" political activism visible to millions of people around the world in a matter of seconds. Will justice be better served by the power of this activism, whether "incidental" or not? Found this young woman through a Google search that brought up her LinkedIn profile - she has amazing photos posted on Flickr of her homeland.
http://gnarlykitty.org/
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