Online Activism general

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What are online activist movements and how are they are contributing to political change in today’s World?

Hi! In this blog post I will inform you about what I found out while researching online activism.

Firstly Online activism is defined as the use of new information-communication technologies to support social and citizen movements in the internet. It made its first appearance in the early 1990s in the USA. Initially it mainly consisted of  mass emails and E-bulletin board campaigns. But the development to the use of different tools as well as the  spreading to all developed countries didn’t take long.Over several years different organisations developed.  Afew of them are ones such as Avaaz, Change.org, MoveOn.org and 38 Degrees. They brought civic engagement to a new level. Meaning they brought  online activism to the centre of political, social and business decisions.

Nowadays online activism via petitions and campaigns is wide spread and really effective. It is able to raises immediate awareness about important political, economic, cultural or social problems and challenges the society it is facing. But there is more to it than just raising awareness. There is also an advocacy purposes. It is possible to use online activism to collect donations for specific causes. For Example to coordinate  and mobilize activists and supporters of a cause. Most online activism movements start online but at some point the go over to real physical demonstrations as that really reaches everyone and not just people online. And to organise that they will need the financing. Also it serves as a tool for expression of collective unrest and protest.

Online activism is not only something citizens can do . There are  also some governments and parliaments  that have created online petition sites to allow a more direct way to influence policy-making.

Well known websites and organisations like  Wikileaks and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists also count as online activism types . They are revealing thousands of classified documents and are so  contributing to transparency and shaping public opinion and governance. People might classify them otherwise but in the core it is still online activism and investigative Journalism.

 In recent years online petitions and campaigns managed to raise awareness, collected funds and pushed governments to introduce new regulations for example regarding climate change and gun control. There are many such movements but the all have one flaw. Online activism has only been partly successful in the last years but yet  most cant fulfil the exact expectations of the activists that created them. It can produce mixed results. They will reach some of they’re goals but not all or not like they wanted to. It is still extremely complicated to influence political change or best start the change in peoples thinking.

An good example for that is the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) ice bucket challenge. It has gone viral in the summer of 2014 and start of 2015. But besides that various celebrity’s took part many participants lacked any awareness of the condition of ALS. Or knew what exactly the challenge meant besides dumping a bucket of ice water over your head. And it also didn’t displayed the expected  empathy with those suffering from ALS. Although it managed to fund important breakthrough in ALS research, it didn’t reach the  awareness for it that was desired .

That doesn’t mean that online activism isn’t successful. It’s really effective but you have to keep in mind that it might not always reach all desired goals.

Thank you for reading this!

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