Project 3 Proposal: Social Media for Social Change

For project 3 I plan to research how social media is being used to redefine traditional ideas about activism for social and political justice.  I am especially interested in how social networking sites such as facebook and twitter are being used to raise awareness around issues and how (or if) they motivate people to take action.  Due to the relevance that these sites have come to have in our lives and as someone who is interested in social justice activism I think it is important to explore the connections between the two. 

While I think that these sites probably have a strong ability to organize people and bring them together for the purposes of physical activism I am skeptical as to whether or not this is the way they are being dominantly used.  Sometimes I look down my own facebook feed and it seems that people think clicking a mouse is activism in and of itself as if changing your profile picture to a logo or "liking" an organization is actually helping anybody.  I worry that, instead of inspiring people to work for social change, social networking sites are holding people to a lower standard as to what constitutes activism. 

Therefore, I am questioning how social networking sites can be used to create actual change.  What implications does this have for the future of activism?  Does it change the definition of activism?  Is there any way that activism can be centrally focused online (without physical action) and still be effective?  While there seemed to be plenty of news articles and popular discussion on this topic, I had trouble finding academic articles that specifically addressed the connections between activism and social networking sites when searching through the databases listed on our course guide.  I found several that addressed online activism and organization but not in the specific context I was looking for.

Aaker, Jennifer. The Dragonfly Effect.  San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2010. Print.

Aaker's book is advertised as a handbook for social change through social media.  She highlights how different corporate, political, and social organizations utilize social media in order to create a community that works for the social good.  I plan to use this source as a way of looking specifically at how online resources can be used most effectively as activism toward a socially just end. 


Berkman Center for Internet and Society.  "The New Change-Makers: An Introduction to Digital Activism." youtube.com. youtube. 23 June 2008. Web Video. 14 March 2011.

Published by the Berkman Center at Harvard University, this video interviews several different people currently involved in different types of online activism through social media.  They highlight why it is an effective strategy and give advice for how to use it.  The video is formatted and cut in an easily understandable way that highlights the role of the internet in modern activism.  I think it would be a useful piece of media to embed within the project.

 Calabrese, Andrew. "Virtual Nonviolence?" Policy, Regulation and Strategy for Telecommunications, Information and Media. 6.5 (2004): 326-338. Communication and Mass Media Complete. Web. 14 March 2011.

Calabrese questions whether or not the traditional idea of civil disobedience can be translated into the online realm.  The article looks at how things such as hacking could be used to protest within the online realm.  Instead of using the internet simply as an organizing tool for physical activism, this article looks at how activism could be turning into something entirely electronic.  I think this is important for a discussion of if and how activism could fundamentally be redefined by the internet.

Eaton, Marc. "Manufacturing Community in an Online Activist Organization." Information, Communication and Society. 13.2 (2010): 174-192. Communication and Mass Media Complete. Web. 14 March 2011.

Eaton's case study of moveon.org, which focuses in on political activism, allows him to see how organizations create online communities and then motivate the members of those communities into action.  He also looks at how the internet lets activists make things happen faster and on a wider level than ever before.  This article could be useful in discussions of both how the internet is effective in activism and how it has changed our sense of activism.

"Guide: Introduction to Facebook Activism." digiactive.org. digiactive, 28 June 2008. Web. 14 March 2011.

This guide published on digiactive.org is a simple layout of social networking as a means of organizing.  It lists pros and cons of online activism, gives advice and steps and looks at current social media campaigns.  I like this guide because it is accessible to everyone.  I may take some points from this guide for my project but if not I will probably still provide a link for it because it is useful in understanding basic points.
 
Hesse, Monica. "Facebook's Easy Virtue." Washington Post, 2 July 2009. Web. 14 March 2011.

This Washington Post article examines my question of how the majority of people actually engage with online activism.  Are they doing anything in the real world or simply clicking?  It takes examples of several popular facebook campaigns and asks users how they participated in these campaigns and what they thought about it.  This article will be useful in a discussion of whether or not the internet is being used for activism in the best way possible or if the standards are too low.