Is Online Activism an Effective Form of Protest in Politics and Why - Coursework Example

ONLINE ACTIVISM AS AN EFFECTIVE TOOL OF PROTESTS IN POLITICS: This paper explores the use of internet by organizations or individual citizens to spread a social message wide and far. It looks into the application of electronic communication technology or digital tools to facilitate coordination and communication among advocates, activists, their supporters and media (Sunstein 2001). Online activism protests are always centered on issues involving the politics of the country and citizens use them to disseminate news about events concerning certain political parties or the government in general (Butler,2011). Independent activists globally are using internet to build their community, communicate with people of similar minds outside their physical surrounding and involved in the organization of events. The tools usually used for online activism for political protest may include social media network, World Wide Web, digital videos, email, texting, blogs, and podcasts among others (Sunstein 2001). NGOs, international human rights groups, non-traditional media organizations, citizen movements and environmental groups normally incorporate at least one online activism form in their operations (Sunstein 2001). Two case studies that involved the use of online activism to organize their activities and protests include the Spanish Anti-Austerity Movement and the Podemos in UK. Anti-Austerity Movement; this movement is full of demonstrations that occurred severally throughout the country (Butler,2011). These demonstrations were enhanced by aim to reduce the spending of the public and increase taxes as austerity measures in exchange of a bail-out worth €110 billion to provide solutions to debt crisis of the Greek government. This ends the life of about three people in one of the huge demonstrations in Greece. Another demonstration along the streets of Greece was organized by the anti-austerity activists on the 25th of May, 2011. These demonstrations were organized by the use of social networking sites (Rüdig & Karyotis, 2014). Podemos; this was a political party founded by Pablo Iglesias, a political science lecture at University of Madrid and a European parliament member. This movement was formed later on after the protests by the Spanish over inequality and corruption. It addresses problems of unemployment and economic depression that followed the beginning of European debt crisis. This party was involved in the use of online-communication discussions to come up with decisions like the coming up of a candidate that presented them in the local elections. The assembly of the citizens was carried out majorly by online (Butler,2011). Most of this was carried out by the use of Reddit, a social networking site, which given the major stage for giving in, debating and choosing of resolutions and drafts. There had been information flow on plaza Podemos, Reddit site of Podemos which also provided room for asking questions and answering sessions with the party leaders (Negron, 2014) . Many events have taken place in the past in various countries on political protests. Internet activist have been involved in sending e-petitions to the government or political parties to protest against and enhance positive change in policy in areas from legislations and party organizations (Butler,2011). The internet was responsible for the emergence of protests such as the Arab Spring as the individuals involved have majorly depended on social media to organize and remain connected. In Myanmar, Freedom News Group Online news paper leaks some instances of corruption in the government and fuel protests. Others maintain a somewhat optimistic outlook on the probability of slacktivism while still providing acknowledgments of the pitfalls that arise with digital kind of protest (Morozov, 2011). Zeynep Tufekci, once analyzed the level of slacktivism to have influence on collective group achievement in various social movements in Berkman Luncheon Series segments (Butler,2011). She acknowledges digital activism as a wide enabler for rising political and social movements. She also describes it as a useful way for allowing differential capacity construction for protest. She however argues that the strengthen ability to protest in a rally is accompanied by ability that has been weakened to really make an impact, as slacktivism cannot succeed to reach the protest level expected in order to produce change (Rüdig & Karyotis, 2014). Another example that is well- known early internet activism involves that of 1998, when the rebel group of Mexican EZLN, applied decentralized communications like the cell phone use to network with developed world activists and assist in the creation of anti-globalization group, PGA to protests against WTO in Geneva (Tufekci, 2012) The PGA maintained calling for global days of action and support rally of various anti-globalization support group in the same way. Later on, internet activists’ site global network, in control of the Indymedia umbrella was developed for the WTO Protests grassroots coverage provision in Seattle in 1999. Sheri Herdon, a rights activist recognized the role played by the internet, in accelerating the protests against the WTO. Sheri Herdon, is quoted by Kidd as saying “The timing to these protests was right, and the space that enabled these protests was there. Furthermore, it was easy to access the internet, therefore making it possible to evade the corporate media (Kidd, 2003)”. The earliest mass emailing example as a elementary DDos form occurred during Guy Fawkes Day in 1994, when the UK intervesion started email-bombing cabinet of John Major and parliamentary servers of UK in Criminal Justice Bill protest which banned rave festivals on outdoors repetitive beat music ( Cambre, 2014). Clicktivism was also a way of bringing people together to organize a protest in politics. It allows activist organizations to monitor the clicked in the call for action which enabled them to quantify their success. A good example is the UK Uncut which makes use of Twitter and some websites to organize direct actions and protests against political party members that were accused of evading tax. This act is different from slacktivism in that it simply replaces past ways of protest existence communication, and does really involve actual life, physical protest. However, Clicktivism is also at times used in the description of kinds of Slacktivism based on internet like petition signing online or sending of letter emails to politicians (Butler,2011). Despite of the dramatically difference between local issues and contexts in politics all the uprisings were characterized by physical occupations locally and protest activities in which main protestors were linked by digital medias within themselves to extra marginal participants and spectator publics (Rüdig & Karyotis, 2014). The websites, images, videos and various media artifacts also gave models for consecutive protests to proper, allowing variety mobilizations to share practices, learn and repertoires actions however the level of time differences, place, culture and issues. In addition to this, events news led to global integration of various methods and types media (Butler,2011). They include mass and individual, national and global, as the wide social networks activation composed of iconic videos and other contents of the protesters from laptops, cell phones into the mass media (Sunstein 2001). As the citizens reports and images rotated in between and beyond borders of the nation, they involved in large publics who had chances to become protesters by use of many affordable ways offered by the interactive media. The new media ecology had also made it simple for the establishment of the partisan patterns of access to media by the creation of extra span for selectivity and more opportunities for crowd herding and estimation polarization (Sunstein 2001; Mutz 2006; Feldman and Price 2008). The lack of online equivalent to the service broadcasting for the citizens led to the profound democracy risks (Gurevitch, Coleman & Blumler, 2009). In looking at the effectiveness of protests in politics, there is the need to view more accurately the protesters within the extremes of stalwarts and no vices for some reasons. First, the transitional between the extremes theater a critical task in protest sustenance. “Competition thesis” (Cress, McPherson & Rotolo, 1997) states that intensive protests involvement leads to tiredness among the activists, and accordingly to falling activisms over a period. The vice versa also applies; that those who go into contest repetitively but less commonly are more likely to become persistence in protest over time. Therefore, the participation in protest for individuals who are intermediary between stalwarts and novices may substantiate claims about protest politics persistence. Secondly, protesters who do not fit in as stalwarts or novices are the understood but indefinite orientation group that suggests that devoted or constant activists are more notable as compared to others. Hence, the dynamics of differential protest participation is not understood (Saunders, Grasso, Olcese, Rainsford& Rootes, 2012). From the case studies above and the events that have experienced the use of online activism, it has shown to be effective in the protests in politics. Considering the above case studies, online protesters tend to follow a non-violent protesting approach. The Anti-austerity Movement protestors protesting begin peacefully with the violent demonstrations caused by the police who tried to use tear gas and carcinogenic expired chemicals to evacuate the peaceful demonstrators (Fominaya & Cox, 2013). Considering what draws Podemos to the use of internet, is the promise that it will drive the new recruits. The internet attractive to the Podemos had multi-advantages support. The internet provided them with low cost and presentation and set-up of high quality and distribution. The cost of establishing an existence on WWW is low; start-up cost can easily be catered for by individuals putting aside an organization. This is beneficial to a group that is marginalized and always operates on highly limited resources. The web provided room for propaganda to be passed by way of a format of high quality however the homepage complications fluctuate. Furthermore with the publicity that is downloadable, the propaganda distribution cost can be kept as low as possible. There were variety of audience and capacity to pass messages to the large number of audience. There is the capability of coming up with an efficient sense of community. They were capable of bypassing national laws and government boundaries (Ward, Gibson & Nixon, 2003). Online mobilization are characterized by the sequence of connective action where protestants involved with issues concerning individuals terms by looking for major ground in easy to make action frames private that creates room for wide understandings of main problems to be joint by way of digital media networks ( Bennet & Segerberg, 2013). Connective movements allowed for mobilization speed, the elasticity of mediated group to move among action tactics and issue foci, and the ability to achieve wide scale publics both indirectly and directly by way of straight mass media and digital media respectively. The end results of these mobilizations are always positive. The Iceland uprisings led to new elections and bankers and corrupt politicians arrest and banks nationalization and developments of citizen assemblies to make laws ( Bennet & Segerberg, 2013). Common challenges of the government’s democratic legitimacy arose in Spain and other parts of Europe. This lead to the initiation of a long ignored discussion of the public on political influence and inequality by the US Wall Street protests ( Bennet 2012; Castells, 2012). Besides the positive outcomes, there were also evidence of the mediated crowd limits, as struggles to come up with parties and other technical forms of political organization always combine with unwanted results, as shown by the after the events of the uprising in Egypt. Furthermore, efforts of transition in politics always meet resistance in between as conflicts come up among protestors who come into the actions with understandings, aim and promise that conflict (Bennett & Segerberg, 2013). Online activism has developed to a wide extent in the recent years, in bigger parts because of the simplicity in which the activists were able to reach a very huge number of individuals involved quickly without being track down by the authorities. According to some reports, other important mechanism of victorious online movement is involving the target of particular government policy and people are capable of linking up internationally asking for support from various organizations ( Bennet & Segerberg, 2013). Online activism involved the easiest way of raising the awareness for something in the government that people not truly know about. It provided an important way of getting the information out involving problems and abuses that don’t find wide media coverage building an important stage for getting people to work on a problem. The online media provided a better way of fund raising as it was easy to get thousands of people to consider donating and fund more motivated activism faster. It makes it easy for coordination of real-life protests and events as it was easy to come up with an online easy editable calendar ( Bennet & Segerberg, 2013). The online activism involved the documentation of protests and provision of information to protesters incase of change in events. The Podemos party once used twitter as an information source in the 2008 RNC convection protests. People like the legal defense given good information about what was going on and what people expected on participation or intervened by the police (McCaughey & Ayers, 2013). Internet was involved in the mobilization and organization of the events of the protests by the Podemos party. The delegate’s registrations and workshops planning were achieved by way of web. Email bulleting placed the participants on other updates and the internal communication and liaison externally had been done through internet and mobile phones. Online activism is also unrestricted (Rüdig & Karyotis, 2014). With many regimes of dictator, media is under the state control. This limited misuse and miscarriages of human rights of justice from being brought to the knowledge of the majority. In specific, gathering the support from the international level and pressure is always required to remove a government full of injustices which is always difficult if they are not aware of such injustices. Text may not have the instinctive constituent of getting information face-to-face, but getting information away from individual’s subsequent circle is impossible by way of offline activism alone. With the push in the pocket of the government discharging nothing but misinformation, citizens must use social media whether though videos, images, texts to bring awareness to their troubles. There are also some clear advantages in form of speed, communication costs and geographic reach (Micó & Casero-Ripollés, 2014). Despite of the effectiveness of online activism, some researchers have criticized the use of online activism in political protests. There are some reports showing that online activism is weakly correlated with more intensive types of movement participation. There are evidences that online activism may put off more traditional types of movement participation. The other limitation involves limited access to internet by a large percentage of the world population, about 70% and millions have inadequate access. This gives about 5 billion people who have no access to internet hence cannot reach digital communication means ( Bennet & Segerberg, 2013). However, despite of this case, various digital ways are applied to reach the offline world including posters, banners, newspapers and digital radio broadcasts. Organization of these online protests also needs deep interaction, which is not easy through digital media alone, and is not easily achieved without continuous face-to-face interaction overtime. In conclusion, after considering the history of online activism application in the past protests, I agree with its effectiveness in the recent political protests. Podemos party and Anti-austerity movement have applied it and succeeded. However, there are some drawbacks of online activism but the benefits still outweigh the disadvantages. In the recent world, government has had control over the media in many nations but it will never have the control over the internet which is a global tool and not a country tool. I therefore agree in the success of online activism in protests in politics. BIBLIOGRAPHY BENNETT, W. L., SEGERBERG, A., & WALKER, S. (2014). Organization in the crowd: peer production in large-scale networked protests. Information, Communication & Society, 17(2), 232-260. BENNETT, W. L., & SEGERBERG, A. (2013). The logic of connective action: Digital media and the personalization of contentious politics. New York: Cambridge University Press. BENNETT, W. L. (2012). The personalization of politics: Political identity, social media, and changing patterns of participation. The Annals, 644, 20–38. BUTLER, M. (2011). Clicktivism, Slacktivism, Or‗ Real ‘Activism Cultural Codes Of American Activism In The Internet Era (Doctoral dissertation, University of Colorado). CAMBRE, M. C. (2014). Becoming Anonymous: A Politics of Masking. Educational, Psychological, and Behavioral Considerations in Niche Online Communities, 297. CASTELLS, M. (2012). Networks of outrage and hope: Social movements in the internet age. Cambridge, UK: Polity. CRESS, D. M., MCPHERSON, J. M., & ROTOLO, T. (1997). Competition and commitment in voluntary memberships: The paradox of persistence and participation. Sociological Perspectives, 40(1), 61-79. FELDMAN, L. AND PRICE, V. 2008. Confusion or Enlightenment? How Exposure to Disagreement Moderates the Effects of Political Discussion and Media Use on Candidate Knowledge. Communication Research 35 (1):61-87 FOMINAYA, C. F., & COX, L. (Eds.). (2013). Understanding European movements: new social movements, global justice struggles, anti-austerity protest. Routledge. GUREVITCH, M., COLEMAN, S., & BLUMLER, J. G. (2009). Political communication—Old and new media relationships. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 625(1), 164-181. KIDD, D. (2003). Indymedia. org. Cyberactivism: Online activism in theory and practice, 47-70. MCCAUGHEY, M., & AYERS, M. D. (Eds.). (2013). Cyberactivism: Online Activism in Theory and Practice: Online Activism in Theory and Practice. Routledge. MERCEA, D. (2014). Towards a Conceptualization of Casual Protest Participation Parsing a Case from the Save Roşia Montană Campaign. East European Politics & Societies, 28(2), 386-410. MICÓ, J. L., & CASERO-RIPOLLÉS, A. (2014). Political activism online: organization and media relations in the case of 15M in Spain. Information, Communication & Society, 17(7), 858-871. MOROZOV, E. (2011). The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom New York: Public Affairs. MUTZ, D.C. 2006.Hearing the other side: Deliberative versus participatory democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press. NEGRON, W. (2014). Politics as Usual or Transformation? Mobile & Internet-Enabled Political Participation in Emerging East Asia and South America Democracies. Mobile & Internet-Enabled Political Participation in Emerging East Asia and South America Democracies. RÜDIG, W., & KARYOTIS, G. (2014). Who protests in Greece? Mass opposition to austerity. British Journal of Political Science, 44(03), 487-513. SUNSTEIN, C. 2001. Republic.com. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. TUFEKCI, Z. (2012). # Kony2012, Understanding Networked Symbolic Action & Why Slacktivism Is Conceptually Misleading. Technosociology. Technosociology, 10. Read More