Actitivism in the Age of New Media

 In the 21^st century, social media has exploded, everyone uses it all the time. Facebook has over 80 million active users, there are over 340 million tweets every day, and 60 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute. The question is no longer if social media is here to stay but how best to utilize it? Many people spend all their time posting new Lolcats or updating their Facebook status, rather than using their cognitive surplus to create change. Though with the important role social media played in the Arab spring and websites like Ushahidi, which allows users to crowd source violence in Kenya, it is clear that social justice is one area that can best take advantage of all that social media has to offer. It is this use of social media platforms that offer activists in the 21^st century the best opportunity to quickly and efficiently build strong social movements, while building these movements activists must avoid the pitfalls that compete for their attention in what can easily become a wasteland of internet distractedness.
  

Free time is a relatively new concept, not really existing until after World War II when people began to live longer, work less and spread out with the growing popularity of suburbia.(Shirky, 4) With this new found free time, something was needed to fill it, enter the television. Presently, Americans watch almost 200 billion hours of television a year.(Shirky, 10) Though television has helped to passively fill the void of free time for over fifty years, it doesn’t have the hold on the current generation that it has had on past generations. Rather than sitting alone watching a box, this current generation would rather participate, and the internet and social media offer the perfect medium for them to do that. The internet and especially Web 2.0 offers them the chance to use their free time participating and collaborating on projects with people all over the world, rather than simply sitting in a recliner staring at the television, wiping potato chip crumbs off of their shirt.

Web 2.0 and social media offers anyone the opportunity to create positive change across the globe. Social justice movements stand to gain the most from the Web 2.0 as its ability to easily organize people across the globe around a worthy cause no longer force social movements to rely on singular charismatic leaders to unite people. Facebook, Twitter and Youtube continue to be the most common outlets used by activists to create this change. The idea of crowd sourcing information is one of the most popular ways to harness the mass participation that Web 2.0 encourages so far. This could also become a danger to social movements, as sometimes just because everybody believes something doesn’t make it a good idea. The key to using these outlets to create social change is to make sure activists use them to create movements of civic value rather than create something that only offers communal value. Creations of civic value are develop ideas that benefit more than just the people involved in making them, whereas communal value would involve an idea that only benefited the people involved in making it. (Shirky, 28)

While surfing through the vast online world known as the internet, there are distractions calling out for our attention left and right. These distractions come in all forms, from links in articles trying to draw ones attention away from what they were reading only moments ago, to Lolcats distracting people with cute cat pictures that have funny misspelled captions. There is nothing inherently wrong with Lolcats, they entertain, and they are fun and easy to create, but with all the power that this new media age offers, is Lolcats really the best humanity can do to harness it? With all these constant distractions screaming for out attention while online, our brains are also being affected, finding it harder and harder to focus on one thing or think critically for long periods of time. (Carr, 136) These distractions are the main problems facing social activists as they continue on their path of redefining successful social movements in the 21^st century.  

     Ushahidi is an example of one of the best uses of the collective cognitive surplus that has occurred using Web 2.0 and social media tools in the 21^st century. Ushahidi was created in the wake of disputed presidential elections in Kenya in 2007, allowing Kenyans to anonymously report acts of violence across the country. The information is collected through text message or e-mail and placed on Google maps creating a real time map of violence taking place in Kenya. Critics might argue that this is information that any news organization would be able to receive and report, meaning that what Web 2.0 offers is nothing unique. However, according to analysis by the Kennedy School of Government, the data collected by Ushahidi was superior to that reported by the mainstream media in Kenya at the time, it was also better at reporting non-fatal violence as well as collecting information from rural areas. (Shirky, 16) Since then, the creators of the Ushahidi software has made it open-source which allows anyone to use and improve it, since then is has been used across the world from Haiti in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake to the Middle East to report on pro-democracy demonstrations across the area. Ushahidi is definitely a program that was created with civic value in mind by its designers. Through its use of all forms of new media, and the fact requires only a small amount of time to contribute, this program represents the upside that grassroots activism has in this digital media age. Ushahidi is only possible through the online collaboration offered in this new media age.

One would think any video that received over one hundred million views within a week and argued for why Joseph Kony, an African warlord who uses child soldiers, should be arrested would be categorized as wildly successful social movement. However, Kony 2012, a video produced by Invisible Children, failed to take advantage of all that Web 2.0 has to offer. Whereas most engaged activists use the internet to try and coordinate with other activists in hopes of creating on the ground movements, Kony 2012 was nothing more than a video, urging viewers to join its publicity campaign by putting up posters and helping out in their communities. Aside from that it contained inaccuracies in the information it was presenting about Joseph Kony. After watching the 30 minute video, most viewers who were inclined to do more research on the topic, did so because of questions they had about the organization not because they were inspired to spread its message. Kony 2012 seems to lack civic value, and seems to have more in common with viral videos rather than any good use of the cognitive surplus. Kony 2012 represents all that can go wrong when trying to create a strong social movement in the digital media age.

Rather than the extremes presented by Ushahidi (good) and Kony 2012 (bad), the reality of social movement building using Web 2.0 tools is best represented by the Arab spring and the use of Facebook and social media in Egypt. Facebook didn’t overthrow Hosni Mubarak, people protesting out in the streets did, but without Wael Ghonim using Facebook to organize the youth, the revolution might never have occurred.(Ghonim 51) In a country where political oppression was part of life, people joked about it rather than fought against, Facebook offered a place to practice opposition. (Ghonim 293) Egyptians initially used Facebook as a place to gauge how much interest there actually was in revolution, as Facebook was used to organize small protests to see if people would actually show up and to see how state authorities would respond. (Ghonim 73) Ghonim smartly used Facebook to slowly get people out into the streets protesting, allowing the movement to develop and grow online. The key is that Ghonim did not forgot that to create the real change the Egyptian people wanted to see, they had to get out into the street to overthrow Mubarak. Online social movements don’t replace direct action but should be used ideally to enhance and streamline those actions.

Activists have done a good job of avoiding what can be a wasteland of distractions on the internet, while taking advantage of the tools that the Web 2.0 offers to be able to successfully organize social movements. There is still work to be done, as the three examples in this essay demonstrate there is still great variation in the success of online social movement building. There are still many challenges facing social movements that rely on social media to build the movement. As long as activists remember to use the cognitive surplus to create something of civic value than the promise of grassroots activism in the 21st century digital media age will be realized.

Vermont Fresh Network: Creating a Local Food Community

The Vermont Fresh Network is a non-profit organization whose goal is to advance relationships between farmers, chefs, and consumers to help grow markets and to encourage people to eat more locally grown food. Through this relationship building, the Vermont Fresh Network hopes to strengthen local communities and their economies, eventually solidifying a strong and healthy food and farm economy within the state.

The Vermont Fresh Network website serves as a launching point to learn all the basic information about the organization, from their mission statement to upcoming events. I feel the strength of the website is found in its member search, allowing anyone to find where Vermont Fresh Network members are located and also where those members send their product. The VFN utilizes its Facebook page to inform the public of upcoming events and also posts menus from member restaurants allowing people to find locally sourced restaurants. VFN also has twitter, though it is hardly used and they don’t have a youtube page, though there are some videos posted about the VFN.

Between the website and Facebook there is a lot of information available about the VFN, though the organization is not utilizing social media as well as it could. I believe there are two main reasons for this. First, VFN emphasis farmer to restaurant relationships which often times require face to face interactions rather than social-media interactions. Secondly, the Vermont Fresh Network is run by just two volunteer staff members, so they have a limited amount of time to dedicate to VFN. A criticism of VFN for some is that through its emphasis on farmer to restaurant relationships it de-emphasizes the person to person food community. If that is the type of food community you are looking for, it would worth checking out Slow Food Vermont.

Though VFN doesn’t utilize social media as well as it could to spread it message to the public, it does a great job networking, allowing local farmers to find places they can sell their products. Many of the best known restaurants in Vermont are members of the Vermont Fresh Network including, Ariels, in Brookfield, Hen of the Wood in Waterbury and the Farmhouse Tap and Grill downtown.