#mda20009 week6

According to Lafi Youmans, W. & York, J. (2012, p.315) demonstrated that social media platforms are utilized extensively by activists in a variety of political systems. Their role in the evolution of events during the ‘‘Arab Spring’’ has been widely discussed, but it is also important to recognize that social media are used to serve the political goals of reformers, revolutionaries, and authoritarian regimes alike. Social media is becoming as a medium to producing the information for activism.

During COVID-19 every countries lockdown, and in the beginning, China was exposed to have Covid-19, many western countries start Asian hate. At that time, I was in Melbourne Australia alone, I was suffered from strong racial discrimination. The following are my personal experience when I was in Melbourne.

Before Melbourne lockdown, I just want to protect myself then wearing a mask to Queen Victoria Market, the salesman stared at me, did not talk to me and also did not collect my money, I was thinking that they do not have the sense of self-protection. Days after this situation is getting more and more intense, a white guy was following me in a verbal racist attack till I went really far away. My friend told me that one of her friend cannot get in the tram when her friend was wearing mask, the driver kick her friend out because of it, the other white wearing mask was sitting in the tram act like nothing happened. According to Lee-An, J. & Chen, X (2021, the model minority myth hides the racist and sexist violence experienced by Asian woman, viewed in April 8 2021)Six women of Asian descent were among eight people tragically killed in a targeted shooting on March 16 in Atlanta. The initial denial by the Atlanta police that this was a hate crime, along with some news reports highlighting the offender’s version of the incident, evoked a swift reaction by communities all over North America. Many spoke of the invisibility of anti-Asian racism.

There are more and more Asian being attacked, also, through my personal experience, I am willing to join the stop Asian hate, and help this situation better through social media.

Why is digital citizenship important then? Why more and more people want to use this for activism?

According to Sigal, I, and Biddle, E. (2015, p.287)in the Philippines and Korea at the beginning of the century, as well as more recent uprisings in Burma, Moldova and Iran. In each case, it is clear that social media platforms have played a vital role in expanding the reach of communications and in helping like-minded activists to meet. It is equally clear that without the networks of activists who have worked together for years, laying the foundation for this groundswell, together with the convergences of many other social and political forces, each of these uprisings would either not have occurred or not have been sustained.

Without social media, the problems are hard to get attention, the history of it might lose of it, digital citizenship is really important.

Reference:

Sigal, I, and Biddle, E. (2015, viewd April 8) 'Our Enduring Confusion About the Power of Digital Tools in Protest

Lafi Youmans, W. & York, J. (2012, viewed April 8) ‘Social Media and Activists Toolkit  download’, Journal of Communication, pp 315-329.  

Digital media or social media is interactive and incorporates two-way communication and involves some form of computing. A difference between new media and old media which is newspaper or radio, new media is highly interactive while old media is not (What is new media? 2016).

Digital technology also known as new media has been in use for political activism quite extensively in the recent years. Especially during the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street movement and Yellow jacket movement. Think about the defining image of the uprising in the Middle East and North Africa, the very concept that united the citizens within the country. It was not the fall of the dictators nor the battles which were fought which caused the domino effect rather it was a young person taking pictures using their smart devices. The image might not be even be a clear one, it might be picture of someone with head injury from missiles thrown or of a lady who was there to provide aid being shot these were the images that caused the spark that was missing to start the uprising. As more and more people saw the images of the events that transpired they came together for the cause. In addition, how precisely information is regulated in moments of historic crisis, the quick nature of social media helps in communicating information faster without the barriers of publication deadline, broadcast news slots this explains why mass revolts have taken place at such a quick speed (Beaumont 2011).

Similarly, it does not have to be a social media platform in particular which helps in a mass movement it can be the device itself which was the case in the London riots. The riots began due to a police shooting and to organise the protest the protesters were using BlackBerry Messenger due to the fact that BlackBerry devices were cheaper at the time and more widespread than other devices such as iOS and Android smartphone. Furthermore, the instant service of BlackBerry is free for the BlackBerry users coupled with the fact that the users have to exchange pins numbers to send messages to one another made it hard for the authorities to track down the protestors (Taylor 2011).

Additionally, if you were to take case that took place two years ago where a passenger was forcibly removed from a United Airlines were just one video of the incident went viral created a PR nightmare for the company which caused the company stock price to fall and in turn caused its CEO to apologize few time and refund the fares of everyone on board on that particular flight. As can be seen from all this cases that digital media has provided with an unprecedented opportunities for expression and interaction it allows to build and sustain communities without geographical restrictions, a platform to raise your views (Ketchell 2017).

Reference:

Beaumont, P 2011, The truth about Twitter, Facebook and the uprisings in the Arab world, viewed 31 May, 2019, <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/feb/25/twitter-facebook-uprisings-arab-libya>.

Ketchell, M 2017, How social media turned United's PR flub into a firestorm, viewed 31 May, 2019, <https://theconversation.com/how-social-media-turned-uniteds-pr-flub-into-a-firestorm-76210>.

Taylor, C 2011, London Riots: BlackBerry Messenger Used More than Facebook or Twitter, viewed 31 May, 2019, <https://mashable.com/2011/08/08/london-riots-blackberry-messenger/#Pi31o3sdRSqJ>.

People have been fighting for their rights or what they believe in their own way may it be joining rallies or protesting with signs but now that we have arrived in the modern age, the way people have done so has changed as well.

Ever since the dawn of the internet, people have been finding new ways to express themselves or to show their support in many many ways, and today we will be talking about one of those ways and it is called digital activism.

Digital Activism

What is digital activism? Well digital activism also known as cyberactivism is a form of activism that uses the internet as well as digital media as a platform for mass mobilization as well as political actions. Such early uses of digital activism can be found as early as the 1980’s. Some examples of such activities are like hacking into websites to leave messages but at the same time not do anything harmful as it would to be served as a message and not a major threat unless provoked (Fuentes 2014).

Now that we have that out of the way, I will talk about something that I find interesting as it will be about The Sunflower Movement.

The Sunflower Movement

Now a brief explanation of what The Sunflower Movement is, it refers to the social movement which broke out in Taiwan with the storming of the Taiwanese legislature, the Legislative Yuan, on March 18th, 2014. This was the first time in history that the Taiwanese legislature had become occupied and the subsequent occupation of the Legislative Yuan would last 23 days. The movement involved a number of civic groups and regular members of society but was largely youth-led. As a result, the movement is frequently remembered as a student movement. What started the occupiers of the Legislative Yuan and other participants in the movement to occupy the Legislative Yuan in protest was the Cross-Strait Services Trade Agreement (CSSTA), a free trade agreement with China which was feared to be damaging of Taiwan’s ability to preserve its de facto independence from China. China claims Taiwan as part of its integral territory, even though Taiwan has its own independent, democratic government. However, at the time of the 2014 Sunflower Movement, the ruling party in Taiwan was the pro-China KMT, which sought to facilitate the eventual unification of Taiwan and China through economic means, as led by the presidential administration of Ma Ying-Jeou (馬英九) (Daybreak Editor 2017).

Well what does this has to do with digital activism? Well I will now be talking about how digital activism made an impact on The Sunflower Movement.

During the 23-day occupation, in fear that the government would block internet access in the area or because there were just so many people in the protest areas, making cell network slow, they began using a newly-released app called FireChat, which can send messages from one phone to another even without an Internet connection. Using a so-called mesh network, the app works by sending a message from phone to phone until it reaches its destination, meaning that the more people use it, the better it functions. In three days it became the No.1 app in Taiwan (Lewontin 2016).

In conclusion the lengths and the ways on how people can show their love or their passion to fight for something and the ways has improved drastically, no longer is it just mere people holding signs and rallying on the streets. It has become something that can truly make a difference.

References

Daybreak Editor, ‘An Introduction to the Sunflower Movement’, DayBreak, viewed 13th October 2018, <https://daybreak.newbloommag.net/2017/07/22/what-was-the-sunflower-movement/>

Fuentes, M, A, ‘Digital Activism’, Encyclopaedia Britannica, viewed 13th October 2018, <https://www.britannica.com/topic/digital-activism>