Note. Social Media Activism. Social activists. The only constant thing is change. The physical, biological and human environments are in a continual state of flux. Individuals react to change in patterns laid down by their society and culture. These patterns change through time. In the following two papers we look first at the general concept of social agency to suggest that the paradigm may be shifting.; we then look briefly at two examples of the new paradigm in practice and draw some preliminary conclusions. Social Activist: Heroic Parent or Thoughtful Adult? For more than 8000 years there have been individuals who, through education, religion, the media and/or brute force have managed, more or less consciously, to condition others into feeling inferior. This is the family analogy: the leaders, or elite, represent the all-knowing and dependable parents who are often stern and aloof. Social activists are individuals who, for a variety of reasons, have seen through the analogy.
The social activist has two major challenges: Why Social Media Is Reinventing Activism. The argument that social media fosters feel-good clicking rather than actual change began long before Malcolm Gladwell brought it up in the New Yorker — long enough to generate its own derogatory term. “Slacktivism,” as defined by Urban Dictionary, is “the act of participating in obviously pointless activities as an expedient alternative to actually expending effort to fix a problem.” If you only measure donations, social media is no champion. The national chapter of the Red Cross, for instance, has 208,500 “likes” on Facebook, more than 200,000 followers on Twitter, and a thriving blog. But according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, online donations accounted for just 3.6% of private donations made to the organization in 2009. But social good is a movement still in its infancy. Facebook launched in 2004, YouTube in 2005 and Twitter in 2006.
All of that virtual liking, following, joining, signing, forwarding, and, yes, clicking, has a lot of potential to grow into big change. How our activists view social media | Power to the People | DW.DE | 27.05. Opposition politician Amr Badr from Egypt Modern communication strategy platforms such as twitter and facebook had a great influence on protest movements as they facilitated reaching a larger number of protesters and eased organizing protests in addition to media coverage. However, it is hard to reach older demographics, the poor and illiterate people who cannot or do not have access to such communication platforms.
Greek lawyer Lila Bellou Social media and the internet (blogs etc.) help the dissemination of information and contribute to the pluralism of ideas and opinions, which the traditional mass media (TV, newspapers) can’t offer. On the other hand, this abundance of information creates sometimes confusion to those, who don't have enough critical ability and face problems prioritizing important issues. Ukrainian journalist Tetiana Chornovol Every medium is important for the development of a protest movement, and there is no doubt that twitter and facebook have a contributing role. 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? Media. Social. Turkey protests: how activists stay one step ahead with social media. She will receive links to maps only visible to fellow activists that show the location of makeshift clinics in houses and even in restaurants' basements, and can watch live streams of protests on the Ustream service if she is at home. She told the Telegraph: "It has had a massive impact, and if it wasn't for social media we wouldn't have the right information on anything.
It's been our saviour. " Damla said the use of private group messaging meant activists could "react quickly to check whether we're all safe", and added that if access to Facebook and Twitter was temporarily disrupted, as it has been on each day of the protests, they would merely start communicating through the blogging site Tumblr instead. Protesters became more careful about communicating information privately after they realised police knew where they were, tracking public posts on social media. "We were giving out information to police without realising," Damla said. An Anonymous tweet regarding police tactics in Turkey. Photo.