Online Activism For Women's Rights

With the enhancement in technology, it is now accessible to communicate and connect with people across the world. It is effortless to share information like pictures, advertisements, videos and text messages all over the world, to whomever you desire. To many people, it is perceived as a form of entertainment. However, many people do not realize it can also be used as a form of social activism. Summer Harlow author of "Social media and social movements: Facebook and an online Guatemalan justice movement that moved offline" argues that social media is very effective to create social (online) and physical (offline) activism. While Malcolm Gladwell author of "Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted" identifies that internet activism is an instant frenzy that creates a brief impact but is not adequate enough to remain on its own. When media is used as an intellectual resource for activism it can expose people 's conscious about diverse predicaments or movements occurring around the globe. In today 's contemporary society people had the power to create a significant change in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) community by having same sex marriage legalized in all 50 states. The hashtag #LoveWins became possible in the United States by social and physical activism which included engagement with social networks.

In his article “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted”, published in the New York Times on October 2010, Malcolm Gladwell looks closely into the notion of social change and the different means to achieve it. He makes a clear distinction between traditional activism, which implies sacrifices and physical devotion, and current activism, based on social networks. The writer considers that “social media can’t provide what social change has always required” (Gladwell, paragraph 1).

The women’s liberation movement (or feminism as it is now known) of the 1960s and 1970s touched every home, business, and school (WA, 705). The movement even touched the sports and entertainment industries, in fact, “There are few areas of contemporary life untouched by feminism” (WA, 717). The word feminism in the early 1960’s wasn’t often used and when it was it was used with condescension or hatred. However, in the late sixties that changed thanks to a new group of women. This new diverse group of women included the: young, old, heterosexual, lesbians, working class, and even the privileged. This diverse group came together and collectively created the second wave of feminism.

In his article “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted”, New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell complains that the casual, low-stakes activism that takes place on social media will never make a difference in the real world, and that sharing political posts online does not have nearly as powerful an effect as physical, real-life activism. He claims that the Internet allows us to feel disconnected from the issue at hand, and unless people feel true, personal outrage about something, and are willing to make concrete sacrifices, big-picture change is a hopeless pursuit. While I find myself primarily agreeing with Gladwell, I believe he doesn’t give social media enough credit for all that it can do for the world of activism when used effectively.

In his essay, “Changing the Face(book) of Social Activism”, Mark Pfeifle writes about the role social media has played socially and politically in our world. In his time, Mark Pfeife has served as a top national security advisor, communicator and deputy assistant for George W. Bush. Pfeife has come to the conclusion that social media has redefined social activism - in place, calling it “social slacktivism”. The word “slacktivism” is a conjuring of his views and biases. Pfeife believes this describes the populace as taking action over the internet without doing anything physically to change things. An example that Pfeife brings up is during the presidential election of 2008, Barack Obama’s campaign was promoted all over online, sources like

The documentary #chicagoGirl shows the integral role the internet, particularly social networking sites, have played in mobilizing activists in the middle east. The film follows Alaa Basatneh and her role in coordinating protests and supporting the revolution from across the world via social media. Basatneh was born in Syria but her family moved to Chicago to escape the oppressive regime. She and her family got out far before many others could. She began living a normal teenage life; frequenting the mall, hanging out with friends, and casual social media usage. As news trickled out of Syria Basatneh new she needed to do something but felt too far away to make an impact. She soon realized her role in fighting the horrific conditions created in by President Assad was through social media.

The emergence of the Internet in the 21st century has dramatically changed how we communicate. It has opened a new avenue for facilitating human interaction. Information that would otherwise take hours or even days to be made public, now take seconds with a click of a button. Is this good or bad? What are the consequences of rapid-fire quick communication style that we have adopted? In articles “How Black Lives Matter Uses Social Media to Fight The Power,” and “The Attorney Fighting Revenge Porn,” authors Bijan Stephen and Margaret Talbot, discuss the pros and cons. Stephen discusses new mass mobilization structures social media has provided for social activists, while Talbot reflects on a new type of sexual harassment as a consequence of the

In this age, the traditional method of news delivery is dead. Gone are the days when newspapers and television news anchors were the primary source of information. In today fast paced society, no person has the time to read a newspaper or watch a news segment. Most individuals receive their news from social media. Social media provides a stage on which any one person could inform others on what occurs around them that they might be blind to. According to Ethan Zuckerman, author of Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection, “Social media’s significance is that it is recognising different incidents that might have gone unnoticed and sewing them together as a coherent whole”(qtd, in Day). A single trending topic on Twitter can convey the ideas of a movement and create a global conversation about the topic within a matter of minutes. Such conversation would have not occurred without the help of social media. Ideas flow freely through countries and now reach more and more people. Social media has been able to aide movements such as the Black Lives Matter to broadcast the injustices being committed to a global audience. The Black Lives Matter movement has been able to show to the world the inhumane and unjust treatments of African-Americans in present day America by posting videos of unarmed African-American men being killed by police officers. Due to its overwhelming online

Gladwell wrote that “Facebook activism success … by motivating them to do the things that people do when they are not motivated enough to make real sacrifice” (408-409). Gladwell is contrasting how during the civil rights movement protesters were motivated and deeply rooted in their social injustices to the point that they physically protested. In contrast to the civil rights protesters, today, people are using social media to perform and or start a movement. Even though Gladwell believes that social media has transformed protesting into a lazy practice, today people have used social media as a tool to make real sacrifices. For instance, the “Justice or Else” 20th Million Man March Anniversary protest was organized and promoted via social media. People from all over the country came to Washington, D.C. to protest against all of the recent police brutality on Blacks. Gladwell continued his argument by stating that “it (social media) makes it easier for activists to express themselves, and harder for that expression to have any impact” (p. 414). In contrast to this premise, activists have used large platforms such as newspapers to reach a huge audience just as activists of today use social media to reach their audience. This revolutionary mass source has enabled activists of today to reach larger audiences than their past counterparts have

A prominent example of social movements’ activities expanding through technology is the movement Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter is active in its role on social media, a tool social movements employ to gain followers. In fact, the whole social movement began through a message on Facebook after the Zimmerman case. After that, the movement has experienced the snowball effect, where it has only seen growth, especially during times in which the movement believes injustice has occurred, as Elizabeth Day stated. Technology has greatly influenced this social movement as well as many others, especially because this one was started through social media. Social movements unite communities that have a common goal of eradicating different forms of injustices, which would be difficult without technology because followers of these movements exist all around the world, and technology is the method in which a follower of Black Lives Matter that lives in Britain is able to communicate with another follower that lives in Kansas. Technology is a crucial facet of social movements, which tend to unite communities. For this reason technology has expanded our sense of

Much of the incentive to become an activist is to be a part of a movement; an integral cog in the changing of history. One indisputable benefit of social media is its ability to effectively inform millions of people at once; this is infinitely powerful. The interactive format of social networking invites individuals to educate themselves on an issue and then to contribute to it, all in under ten minutes. Despite its efficiency, the detriment of this system is that it perpetuates the idea that the signing of a change.org petition is all it takes to make a difference. Grassroots activism and petitioning, while absolutely fundamental parts of the pursuit of social justice are often only the inciting steps in the lengthy and usually complicated process of creating lasting change. In 2014, in the wake of the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice, to name just a few, an international movement protesting police brutality began with the hashtag #blacklivesmatter. The issue of racially induced police brutality became a relevant topic of debate in the presidential election that followed, and protests took place worldwide. This movement is winning a major battle in the war against racism and much of this success was owed to its sensational presence on social media. The Black Lives Matter movement is an example of social networking being an invaluable tool in spreading

While feminists were fighting against sexism in the 19th and 20th centuries, they were also battling other forms of oppression, as the Sojourner Truth and The Combahee River Collective point out in the readings. As early as the mid-1850s, Truth was discussing intersectionality, the crossroads of different forms of oppression. In Truth’s speech, she discussed being both African-American and a woman, a double disadvantage. More than 100 years later, The Combahee River Collective was created for the same reason—their membership in “two oppressed racial and sexual castes” that are “experienced simultaneously” (346, 349). Their membership puts them in a unique position within feminist activism—a position both Truth and Collective called to public

Content from the pages were organised into six groups; confrontational posts, posts representing elite support for the movement, informal polling of movement members, personal narratives, media inaccuracies and solidarity, and five styles of posts; pictures, announcements in the form of status updates, videos, informal polls and news stories. The results revealed a correlation between the use of images and regular status updates and new recruits as well as increase in user participation Furthermore, it found that confrontational messages and messages of solidarity were listed in the top posts providing a higher level of exposure on Facebook (Gaby & Caren 2012, p. 372). As a result of their research, the authors state that social media such as Facebook are effective tools for the rapid distribution of information to broad audiences (Gaby & Caren 2012, p. 367). Turners (2013) literature review on the topic of online social and political movements corresponds with Gaby and Caren’s (2012) findings on the use of Facebook as an effective tool for social movements. In Additionally, Turner (2013, p. 378) highlights the key role of online tools for developing offline

As the feminist movement has progressed through several generations it has shifted quite a bit in its general approach and theory. Contemporary writers such as Baumgardner and Richards, and Henry have illustrated a generational shift away from structurally aimed actions, and towards individual acts of subversion and small political actions (Baumgardner and Richards 126-202). This current course is very similar to the direction of other highly organic movements such as sustained dialogue. Feminism though, is particularly well documented, justified, and understood. Thus by comparing the feminist movement’s present tack to that of sustained dialogue, it will be possible to gain insight into the direction

Digital activism incorporates numerous sorts of new media, for example, online journals, Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube. These online networking sites have assumed a real part in different questionable political scenes. These sorts of new media have given important devices to activists looking to have a voice and to support flexibility and majority rule in government. Each instance of digital activism is its own particular story, and from nation to nation there are key elements that give the vital setting to why some social developments triumph and others fail. Digital activism has an exhibited, positive effect, particularly when the global community gathers and uses digital mediums that concentrate on the objective of changing government strategy. Digital activism, in general, is a peaceful undertaking. There are just a few situations when digital mediums have been used to empower roughness against their rivals but in general digital activism is centered on urban engagement, not hurting individuals or property.