Internet activism facts for kids

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.

Types

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.

Development processes

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.

Examples of early activism

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.

Another well-known example of early Internet activism took place in 1998, when the Mexican rebel group EZLN used decentralized communications, such as cell phones, to network with developed world activists and help create the anti-globalization group Peoples Global Action (PGA) to protest the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva. The PGA continued to call for "global days of action" and rally support of other anti-globalization groups in this way.

Uses

Internet activism has had the effect of causing increased collective action among people, as found by Postmes and Brunsting (2002), who discovered a tendency among internet users to rely on internalized group memberships and social identities in order to achieve social involvement online. The Internet is "tailor-made for a populist, insurgent movement," says Joe Trippi, who managed the Howard Dean campaign. In his campaign memoir, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, Trippi notes that:

[The Internet's] roots in the open-source ARPAnet, its hacker culture, and its decentralized, scattered architecture make it difficult for big, establishment candidates, companies and media to gain control of it. And the establishment loathes what it can't control. This independence is by design, and the Internet community values above almost anything the distance it has from the slow, homogeneous stream of American commerce and culture. Progressive candidates and companies with forward-looking vision have an advantage on the Internet, too. Television is, by its nature, a nostalgic medium. Look at Ronald Reagan's campaign ads in the 1980s – they were masterpieces of nostalgia promising a return to America's past glory and prosperity. The Internet, on the other hand, is a forward-thinking and forward-moving medium, embracing change and pushing the envelope of technology and communication.

Spreading information

The Internet is a key resource for independent activists, particularly those whose message may run counter to the mainstream. Listservs like Freedom News Group or BurmaNet assist in spreading news that would otherwise be inaccessible in these countries. Internet activists also organize petitions to be sent to the government as well as interest groups and organizations to protest or argue for change. Many non-profits and charities use these methods, emailing petitions to those on their email list and asking people to pass them on. The Internet also enables organizations such as NGOs to communicate with individuals in an inexpensive and timely manner. Indeed, many non-profit and advocacy organizations rely on the internet to launch campaigns with socially conscious messages to maintain a constant stream of revenue.

Hashtag activism

Hashtag activism is the use of hashtags for fighting or supporting a cause through the usage of social media outlets. The term "hashtag activism" first started circulating within journalism in 2011. Since then, its use has been associated with movements such #BlackLivesMatter and many more.

TikTok

TikTok's platform has been increasingly used for raising up social issues through creative short videos.

In July 2020, the TikTok platform played a major role in the #FreeBritney movement surrounding Britney Spears and her conservatorship dispute. Though such activism led to a significant increase in public awareness of the case, it was criticized for spreading misinformation regarding the conservatorship alongside a number of conspiracy theories of varying accuracy.

Non-traditional activism

The Internet has become the catalyst for protests such as Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring as those involved have increasingly relied on social media to organize and stay connected. In Myanmar, online news paper Freedom News Group has leaked some government corruption and fuel to protests.

Corporate activism

Corporations are also using Internet activist techniques to increase support for their causes. According to Christopher Palmeri with BusinessWeek Online, companies launch sites with the intent to positively influence their own public image, to provide negative pressure on competitors, to influence opinion within select groups, and to push for policy changes.

The clothing manufacturer, American Apparel is an example: The company hosts a website called Legalize LA that advocates immigration reform via blog, online advertising, links to news stories and educational materials. Protest groups have responded by posting YouTube videos and establishing a boycott website.

Corporate methods of information dissemination is labelled "astroturfing", as opposed to "grassroots activism", due to the funding for such movements being largely private. More recent examples include the right-wing FreedomWorks.org which organized the "Taxpayer March on Washington" on September 12, 2009, and the Coalition to Protect Patients' Rights, which opposes universal health care in the U.S.

Religious activism

Cybersectarianism is a new organizational form which involves: "highly dispersed small groups of practitioners that may remain largely anonymous within the larger social context and operate in relative secrecy, while still linked remotely to a larger network of believers who share a set of practices and texts, and often a common devotion to a particular leader. Overseas supporters provide funding and support; domestic practitioners distribute tracts, participate in acts of resistance, and share information on the internal situation with outsiders. Collectively, members and practitioners of such sects construct viable virtual communities of faith, exchanging personal testimonies and engaging in collective study via email, on-line chat rooms and web-based message boards."

Political activism

Environmental activism

One of the earliest books on activism was Don Rittner's Ecolinking: Everyone's Guide to Online Environmental Information, published by Peachpit Press in 1992. Rittner, an environmental activist from upstate New York, spent more than 20 years researching and saving the Albany Pine Barrens. He was a beta tester for America Online and ran their Environmental Forum for the company from 1988 to when it launched in 1990. He took his early environmental knowledge and computer savvy and wrote what was called the bible of the online environmental community. It showed new Net users how to get online, find environmental information, connect to environmentalists around the world, and how to use those resources to save the planet.

In August 2018, a movement of environmental activism was initiated in Sweden, by now widely known climate activist Greta Thunberg. It all started with Greta, 15 years of age at the time and influenced by the creation of #MarchForOurLives, giving her opinion on the ongoing climate change, by displaying a large sign in front of the Swedish Riksdag (parliament) in protest. This act would start the "School Strike for Climate" (SSC) (Swedish: Skolstrejk för klimatet), a movement that would eventually spread, largely through attention in media, across the globe and develop into something that came to be internationally named "Fridays for Future" (FFF). Through having children miss classes on Fridays to participate in the strike, it has from the moment it started until today, reached and affected leading governments of the world by raising environmental awareness.

In 2020 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the National Trust began the #BlossomWatch campaign, which encouraged people to share the first signs of Spring with one another, in particular images of blossom.

Hacktivism

Denial-of-Service attacks, the taking over and vandalizing of a website, uploading Trojan horses, and sending out e-mail bombs (mass e-mailings) are also examples of Internet activism. While the concept is difficult to exactly pinpoint, the phrase "hacktivism" summarizes the act of somehow utilizing hacking capabilities as a means to achieve some type of political goal, and the expression is occasionally also referred to as a variation of "cyberterrorism". The varieties of different routes groups of hacktivists choose to approach the organization, website or forum that they are taking on, can be categorized into different tactics. Some examples of those tactics or strategies are "DDoS attacks", "Doxing", and "Webdefacement", all of which are slightly different ways of reaching an often similar end goal. For additional understanding and explanation, as well as for more specific examples of these types of subversive actions, see hacktivism.

Impact on everyday political discussions

According to some observers, the Internet may have considerable potential to reach and engage opinion leaders who influence the thinking and behavior of others. According to the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet, what they call "Online Political Citizens" (OPCs) are "seven times more likely than average citizens to serve as opinion leaders among their friends, relatives and colleagues… Normally, 10% of Americans qualify as Influentials. Our study found that 69% of Online Political Citizens are Influentials."

Information communication technologies

Information communication technologies (ICTs) make communication and information readily available and efficient. There are millions of Facebook accounts, Twitter users and websites, and one can educate oneself on nearly any subject. While this is for the most part a positive thing, it can also be dangerous. For example, people can read up on the latest news events relatively easily and quickly; however, there is danger in the fact that apathy or fatigue can quickly arise when people are inundated with so many messages, or that the loudest voice on a subject can often be the most extreme one, distorting public perception on the issue.

These social networks which occupy ICTs are simply modern forms of political instruments which pre-date the technological era. People can now go to online forums or Twitter instead of town hall meetings. People can essentially mobilize worldwide through the Internet. Women can create transnational alliances and lobby for rights within their respective countries; they can give each other tips and share up-to-date information. This information becomes "hyper textual", available in downloadable formats with easy access for all. The UN organizations also use "hyper textual" formats. They can post information about upcoming summits, they can post newsletters on what occurred at these meetings, and links to videos can be shared; all of this information can be downloaded at the click of a button. The UN and many other actors are presenting this information in an attempt to get a certain message out in the cyber sphere and consequently steer public perception on an issue.

With all this information so readily available, there is a rising trend of "slacktivism" or "clicktivism". While it is positive that information can be distributed so quickly and efficiently all around the world, there is negativity in the fact that people often take this information for granted, or quickly forget about it once they have seen it flash across our computer screens. Viral campaigns are great for sparking initial interest and conversation, but they are not as effective in the long term—people begin to think that clicking "like" on something is enough of a contribution, or that posting information about a current hot topic on their Facebook page or Twitter feed means that they have made a difference.

Fundraising capability

The Internet has also made it easier for small donors to play a meaningful role in financing political campaigns. Previously, small-donor fundraising was prohibitively expensive, as costs of printing and postage ate up most of the money raised. Groups like MoveOn, however, have found that they can raise large amounts of money from small donors at minimal cost, with credit card transaction fees constituting their biggest expense. "For the first time, you have a door into the political process that isn't marked 'big money,' " says Darr. "That changes everything."

The Internet also allows ordinary people to contribute materially to Humanitarian relief projects designed to intervene in situations of global disaster or tragedy, as in the case of the "Hope for Haiti Now" telethon event, which was launched three days after the 2010 Haiti Earthquake. The telethon and its broadcast became an effective vehicle to present a plea for support and to collect contributions quickly, facilitating a relationship between entertainment and humanitarian fundraising that has developed in response to historical and economic market conditions.

Ethics

With internet technology vastly changing existing and introducing new mechanisms by which to attain, share and employ information, internet activism raises ethical issues for consideration. Proponents contend internet activism serves as an outlet for social progress but only if personal and professional ethics are employed. Supporters of online activism claim new information and communications technologies help increase the political power of activist groups that would otherwise have less resources. Proponents along this line of thinking claim the most effective use of online activism is its use in conjunction with more traditional or historical activism activities. Conversely, critics worry about facts and beliefs becoming indistinct in online campaigns and about "sectors of online activism [being] more self-interested than socially interested." These critics warn against the manipulation commonplace to online activism for private or personal interests such as exploiting charities for monetary gain, influencing voters in the political arena and inflating self-importance or effectiveness. In this sense, the ethical implication is that activism becomes descriptive rather than transformative of society. One of these reviewers suggests seven pitfalls to beware of in internet activism: "self-promotion at the expense of the movement... unsolicited bulk email... Hacktivism... violating copyright... nagging... violating privacy... and being scary." Many of the ethical criticisms against the prevalence of online activism are further discussed in the criticisms section of this article.

See also

• Internet vigilantism
• Online social movement
• User revolt