Digital Activism

“CC by Tactical Technology Collective”

I think it’s fair to say that the majority of people who are active on social media have encountered some form of digital activism. Recently there was a Facebook event created for a meeting in support of the LGBT community within my community. This event was open to the public, and the organizers used Facebook as a way to inform the community. There method cost them nothing and used a platform that would be seen by many.  According to the article “The 6 Activist Functions of Tecnology” this would be refered to as sharing a call to action.

One of the major questions I came across through my research of the topic was “is digital activism effective?” If I were to answer this question I would say yes.  We cannot deny the impact that technology and social media has had on our society, as well as the impact that digital activism has had on technology and social media. It has offered a new purpose and a new way to make a difference. In the article “The New Face of Teen Activism” Victoria sums up the impact very nicely; “A lot of impact can be made online, and older generations don’t always get that,” she says. “They see us on our phones or laptops and think who knows what. But we’re organizing, we’re creating, we’re signal-boosting, we’re creating awareness. We’re changing the world.”

“CC by Linda Flores”

 

After exploring some of the teen activism shorty award winners and finalists I felt very inspired to see such young people making such large differences. It is truly wonderful to not only see young people taking a stand in something they believe in, but also taking steps to help their peers.

“CC by mkhmarketing”

 

I absolutely believe that digital activism should be incorporated into lessons in schools. The younger generation is the future of our country, it’s important that we teach them their can be more to social media then selfies and candy crush, that they can make a difference. I love the example of how Bill Ferriter uses digital activism in his classroom in the article “My kids, a cause and our classroom blog”. I also believe that it’s important that we teach students to research the cause before taking action. There are a lot of organizations and individuals online and they may not all be who or what they say. It’s also important that they have the ability to form their own opinions about a cause and not just jump on the bandwagon with their friends. This can be easy to do especially on social media with a large range of people.

While exploring digital activism I came across an interesting tool that could be used in the classroom, for teaching digital activism or for anyone that would like to become a digital activist themselves. It’s called “The DigiActive Guide to twitter for Actvism”