COLLECTIVE ACTION
From the sites of Cairo, Barcelona and Madrid- the year 2011 saw the rise of multiple social movements where activists utilised social media to bring about collective action.
According to author Paolo Gerbaudo, social media allows for the process of symbolic construction of public space, which revolves around an emotional ‘scene-setting’ and ‘scripting ‘ (Alexander et.al, 2006: 36) of participants physical assembling. This practice is seen “in directing people towards specific protest events, in providing participants with suggestions and instructions about how to act, and in the construction of an emotional narration to sustain their coming together in a public space” (Gerbaudo 2012 p. 13).
So, although social media platforms may not be a force in them selves for revolution, which terms such as the ‘Facebook Revolution’ suggest, social media is a highly effective tool in bringing people together and organising collective action. It has a huge influence in the ability to disseminate information on a mass level, much like traditional media such as posters and flyers once used in the past.
In my own experience of digital activism, I can most relate to the theory denounced by Belarusian scholar Evgenyi Morozov known as ‘slacktivism’, or activism for slackers. I, like many others have clicked ‘like’ on a Facebook site or been part of a group that has used social media to unite members, plan actions or develop petitions, but on an active social and political level? have contributed minimally. I can therefore understand why negative connotations of ‘clicktivism’ are evident. However, social media shouldn’t be seen as a way to replace real-life interaction in a revolution, but as a way of enhancing interaction and/or organising action.
Although cultural jamming can be a problematic process because much of the content is covered by copyright, “cultural jammers”, vandals or activists can negotiate copyright material as part of the Creative Commons project. A project launched in 2004 which “aims to build a distributed information commons by encouraging copyright owners, where appropriate, to licence use of their material through open content licencing protocols” (Creative Commons Australia).