Online Activism - 14 views
started by Kate Namestnik on 26 Mar 12
started by Kate Namestnik on 26 Mar 12
Start a New Topic » « Back to the Net 308/508 Internet Collaboration and Organisation S1 2012 group
started by Kate Namestnik on 26 Mar 12
Online Activism by Guobin Yang
This article discusses online activism that occurs on the internet in China; the power of the Chinese people and how they have used online activism as a force of social change. Yang isolates the elements that allow for specific conditions in which organised activism occurs and identifies the four key types of online activism.
Cultural, social, political, and nationalistic activisms are all types of active sub-crowds found on the platforms that operate from within the "great firewall of China". He states that while all four forms of activism can be classified under 'political' he singles it out because it's focus on "human rights, political reform, and other issues that touch directly on how China is governed, by whom, and on what basis" (Yang, 2009, pp. 33).
In a country where so much is controlled and censored by the government, it is encouraging to know that active crowds are alive and thriving within private forums, anonymous chartrooms, and using complex Chinese characters to beat the filtering systems in open discussion boards. Through such outlets social activists can discuss and organise meeting points and ultimately plan the next step in their plans for challenging the government.
What makes this particular article interesting is how the power of the crowds affects the Chinese government. As a force for social change, the power of the crowds has changed the behaviour of the state by "undermining information control and creating social pressure for more government transparency"; the result has led to online policy changes (Yang, 2009, pp. 36). Although this organised online activism isn't enough to overthrow the government, it is an essential step towards changing it.
The Kony 2012 campaign can be applied to the situation of active audiences in China. What was once a localised issue is now a global issue because of one organisation, a single video, and the harnessed power of the audience. The viral video's mass-consumption across platforms has allowed it to surpass international censorship and in doing so has undermined the Ugandan government and the International Criminal Court. This video has created global wide social pressure on the Ugandan government, the United States Government, and the International Criminal Court to take action in regards to Joseph Kony and Rebel army.
Although it is too soon to tell the long term effect of the Kony 2012 campaign, audience actions online are starting to force changes in countries around the world. People now know the name Joseph Kony.
Online political activism is defined as separate and distinct to the other forms of activities as it "focuses on human rights, political reform, and other issues that touch directly on how China is governed, by whom, and on what basis" (Yang, 2009, p.33-34). The article indicates that people have become creative in the ways that they can legally harness the Internet as a tool for collaboration and organization, through provoking controversy (resulting in raised awareness), bypassing filters, and anonymous participation (Yang, 2009, p.34-35). This clearly relates to the plight of protestors in Arab nations, like Egypt and Tunisia, as they engaged in similar methods to demand political change.
It appears that like the Africans in "Encouraging Political Participation in Africa: The Potential of Social Media Platforms", China is slowly gathering momentum and has the potential to threaten the power of the government in the future, similar to the Arab Revolutions.
The article "The Revolutions Were Tweeted: Information Flow during the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions" highlighted the significance and power of the "other", ordinary individuals, who were the largest number of contributors to the movement (Lotan, Graeff, Ananny, Gaffney, Pearce, and boyd, 2011, p.1398). The "other" is also gathering momentum in China and is clearly the driving force behind the circulation of the KONY 2012 campaign.
This article is relevant to the topic, as it links to majority of my own articles, and covers previously undiscussed areas of political activism. It appears to be a reliable source and is of great value to the project.
Reference:
Chatora, A. (2012). Encouraging Political Participation in Africa: The Potential of Social Media Platforms. Institute for Security Studies. Retrieved April 8, 2012 from http://www.iss.co.za/uploads/15Mar2012SocialMedia.pdf
Lotan, G., Graeff, E., Ananny, M., Gaffney, D., Pearce, I., & boyd, d. (2011). The Revolutions Were Tweeted: Information Flows during the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions. International Journal of Communications, 5, 1375-1405. Retrieved April 9, 2012, from http://ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/view/1246/643
The article is published in a peer reviewed journal making this quite a reliable source if not exactly comprehensive, being only around 3 pages long. The relevance of the article to the specific topic of 'KONY 2012' is very good, with both the article and topic having significant links to online activism. The links Kate suggests between the 'KONY 2012' topic and Yang's article about creating social pressure to promote change are most excellent.
I found this article reasonably useful, as it discusses online activism, which is quite similar to my chosen topic. I foresee it being an asset in the upcoming essay. The value of the resource to the overall collaborative resource development project is excellent. It has a reliable source, it's reasonably recent and it deals with a relevant topic of online activism, which requires a considerable amount of online collaboration and organisation to accomplish.