At the CivilMedia 2008: Cultures – Participation – Dialogue
in Salzburg from December 04 to 06 2008 Christina Neumayer and I presented:
Social Software for Networked Political Activism?
Social Software has the potential to foster grassroots activism, political inclusion and community building that decrease exclusive, oppressive or elitist forms of political decision-making. The easy-to-use architecture of many applications and tools enable ad-hoc activities to emerge, information can spread globally in real time. At the same time an exclusive character of Social Software can be observed, especially (but not only) in developing countries where an enormous social gap is predominant. By analysing the role of Social Software for political protest we show new possibilities but also limits of this kind of grassroots activism.Image Source: www.digiactive.org
In our presentation we identified four concepts that we state as characteristics of information and communication technologies in general, and of cyberactivism in particular: [1] Social Software provides new opportunities for community building independent of geographical or national boundaries. [2] Political activism can take place in both the real and the virtual space. These spheres are not distinct but closely related to each other. [3] Knowledge gaps, limited access to the technical infrastructure, imbalanced power structures and social inequalities can raise the walls of exclusion and hence limit online grassroots activism to emerge. [4] Social Software has the potential to bring national or local political issues on a global scale since online political activism – dependent on the topic – often trespasses national and cultural boundaries.
In our presentation we discussed three examples of online political activism, which have their roots in the social networking site Facebook:
:: Support the Monks' Protest: Burma/Myanmar [2007]
:: April 6 Youth Movement: Egypt [2008]
:: A Million Voices Against FARC: Columbia [2008]
Presentation Slides:
Social Software for Networked Political Activism
