Volunteerism-FINAL.pdf. Social Activism. Careers in Social Activism--An Introduction Social activism is an intentional action with the goal of bringing about social change. If you feel strongly about a cause and are working towards a change, you could be considered an activist. An activist is anyone who is fighting for change in society. An activist can be a student attending a rally against tuition increase, a politician fighting against international human rights abuses or a mother of a child killed by a drunk driver talking to students about drinking and driving. Social activists consider the larger picture – how can they find ways to end injustice and to create strong communities which encourage economic, social and psychological health. While social services work addresses the needs of individuals, social action looks more at the root causes of those needs and tries to find ways to eliminate them.
Career Options in Social Activism There are very few careers that can be specifically defined as “activist” careers. Social Media Made Tunisian Uprising Possible. New America Media, News Analysis, Jalal Ghazi, Posted: Jan 14, 2011 Editor’s Note: In the last month, Tunisia, known by Amnesty International as having one of the Arab world’s most repressive governments, has seen a surge of public outcry and protest – the worst political crisis in Tunisia since the current president, Zine el Abedine Ben Ali, began his now 24-year-long presidency in a 1987 bloodless coup. The demonstrations began on December 17, after a 26-year-old impoverished college graduate, publicly self-immolated in front of a government building in protest against authorities' confiscation of his only means of income: an illegal vegetable vending cart.
When Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook, he was not necessarily thinking of providing a platform for Arab protestors to express their frustration with hunger, unemployment and corruption. Nor was he planning for his website to become the battlefield between Tunisian authorities and web activists. And it’s not just Facebook. Twitter Revolution: How the Arab Spring Was Helped By Social Media. As a result of the many technological advancements and innovations that have revolutionized how individuals communicate, an abundance of information has become available to everyone. Depending on where the information is found, however, it’s reliability can be questioned. With the growing number of international, self-described (both non-for-profit and for-profit) organizations such as Facebook, Wikipedia, Wikileaks and more, much of the information provided is now often opinionated and biased, nonetheless, truthful. Ultimately, public information supplied by social networking websites has played an important role during modern-day activism, specifically as it pertains to the Arab Spring.
In Arab countries, many activists who played crucial roles in the Arab Spring used social networking as a key tool in expressing their thoughts concerning unjust acts committed by the government. Twitter, Facebook, and social activism. At four-thirty in the afternoon on Monday, February 1, 1960, four college students sat down at the lunch counter at the Woolworth’s in downtown Greensboro, North Carolina. They were freshmen at North Carolina A. & T., a black college a mile or so away. “I’d like a cup of coffee, please,” one of the four, Ezell Blair, said to the waitress. “We don’t serve Negroes here,” she replied. The Woolworth’s lunch counter was a long L-shaped bar that could seat sixty-six people, with a standup snack bar at one end. The seats were for whites. The snack bar was for blacks. By next morning, the protest had grown to twenty-seven men and four women, most from the same dormitory as the original four.
By the following Monday, sit-ins had spread to Winston-Salem, twenty-five miles away, and Durham, fifty miles away. The world, we are told, is in the midst of a revolution. These are strong, and puzzling, claims. Some of this grandiosity is to be expected. What makes people capable of this kind of activism? The_Role_of_Social_Media_in_Political_Mobilisation_-_Madeline_Storck.pdf.