#cyberactivism

[kikapott]

Source:: https://www.deviantart.com/sakimichan/art/STOP-SOPA-Bill-276510440 Author is Sakimichan on DeviantArt. Title is "STOP SOPA Bill" on December 29, 2011

[betterbemeta]

A million anti-Net Neutrality comments reportedly fake

Over on Hackernoon, data scientist and "language nerd," Jeff Kao, has posted the results of a data analysis he did on Net Neutrality comments submitted to the FCC between April-October 2017. Using natural language processing techniques, he was able to look for suspicious patterns in the language used. What he found was alarming.

This article is short so you should definitely go read the whole thing. The gist: bots can be automated to artificially inflate the importance of one ‘side’ of an issue by making it look like many more people are against net neutrality than there really are. Because it’s a bipartisan consensus that a majority of the US population don’t want ISPs to impede activism, entrepreneurship, more than they already do.

[derricksdiariesblog]

Blog Post #8 - Week 11 due 11/7

Digital Activism: Enacting Ethical and Transformative Frameworks

In what ways do “neutral” digital games and platforms perpetuate real-world systems related to labor, ownership, and social identity?

In Animal Crossing, players often call the game “cute escapism” as many of the Americans were settling into quarantine, yet Ian Bogost argues that the seemingly harmless ideas of debt, property, and constant work are deeply political and economical, reflecting the structures of capitalism that we experience in the real world (Bogost, 2020, pp. 2-3). When customizing an island that personalizes your preference of the landscape, there are times that game mechanics can quietly undermine the creative liberation by enforcing a real-world cycle of grinding, accumulating wealth, and socio-economic inequality. This underscores the fact that digital play promotes the domination of real-world systems that models capitalism. These power dynamics are entirely immune to our personal experiences, even in digital spaces. 2. Explain the role of Black Twitter transforming a digital playground towards its creation of a space for Black resistance and cultural production?

Latoya A. Lee characterizes Black Twitter as a “digital homespace” for Black users to actively “(re)construct their bodies and identities” against dominant narratives (Lee, 2017, p. 1). It is not just memes that exist everywhere—it is about social action and community resilience to spread the resistance in response to addressing discrimination issues like #APHeadlines (p. 2). When scrolling down Black Twitter through some of the posts, Black users transform casual interactions into acts of empowerment as its creation of space for cultural production. Therefore, humor serves as a tool for Black resistance for political commentary, expressions of joy, and hashtags forge community solidarity. 3. Can online activism represent a sufficient condition of being materially disruptive to social change beyond symbolic hashtag culture?

Sandor Vegh argues that online activism can range from advocating public awareness “relevant to the cause” to the “media-investigated” forms of direct digital action—like online attacks, mobilization, and other proactive efforts to bring more about change (Vegh, 2003, pp. 2-5). The humorous, viral spread of digital content acts as the importance of its initial phase of the internet memes, fueling people towards an actual, organized political action. This disproves that digital protests are not merely “slacktivism” as there are pathways to represent a deeper, real-world organization for being material disruptive to social change beyond symbolic hashtag culture. Thinking about the #ArabSpring memes from street protests to government responses displays that online activism is not linear, but rather humor and information are the catalysts for driving action. 4. In what ways do indigenous activists use social media platforms to challenge dominant colonial narratives and the pursuit of land reclamation both digitally and physically?

Nicholet A. Deschine Parkhurst displays that #NoDAPL uses Facebook livestreams and hashtags to assert community sovereignty beyond simple awareness (Parkhurst, 2021, pp. 33-35). Water protectors repurposed “fun” digital spaces so it can utilize platforms for serious activism, effectively transforming online timelines for its cultural practice, education, and resistance efforts for the public movement. This reminds me how the digital world persists online oppression parallel to the efforts of the indigenous resistance or revitalization. Therefore, the contemporary world of indigenous activists requires digital belonging and physical land defense as the modern foundation of political power so communities connect and operate themselves both digitally and physically.

Word Count: 538

References:

Bogost, I. (2020, April 15). Animal Crossing isn’t escapist; It’s political. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/04/animal-crossing-isnt-escapist-its-political/610012/

Lee, L. A. (2017). Black Twitter: A response to bias in mainstream media. Social Sciences, 6(1), 1–17.

Parkhurst, N. T. A. D. (2021). From #Mniwiconi to #StandwithStandingRock. In Indigenous Peoples Rise Up (pp. 32–37). Rutgers University Press.

Vegh, S. (2003). Classifying forms of online activism. In Cyberactivism. Routledge.

[artbookdap]

Get smart with 'Cyberfeminism Index,' Mindy Seu's galvanizing (to say the least) 608-page compendium of radical techno-critical activism by hackers, scholars, artists and activists of all races, religions and sexual orientations, published by the big-picture-thinkers at @inventorypress⁠ ⁠ @mindyseu⁠ writes, “As of this printing, the 'Cyberfeminism Index' traces three decades of global cyberfeminism. But, like cyberfeminism itself—permeable, malleable, and anti-canonical—the index is still in progress. More than a historical overview, this publication was initiated by and is being released into a specific context, one in which platform oligopolies reign supreme, surveillance capitalism commodifies us, and techno-dystopia looms. Its existence reflects that reality. The book is also imperfect: the version printed here is messy, with blindspots and selected truths. Despite my collaborators’ and my attempted thoroughness in gathering the entries herein, many voices are left unaccounted for. Still, as a compilation of a wide sample of techno-critical works, the 'Cyberfeminism Index' might reveal potential for acts we can take to reclaim cyberspace not as a utopia, but as a space for skepticism, growth and entanglement. Here, multiple histories diverge, juxtaposing and complementing their varying ideologies and motivations, and they will continue to beyond these pages. This is not the index of cyberfeminism, but a document of—and another moment of—its mutation.”⁠ ⁠ Contributors include: @skawennati Charlotte Web, Melanie Hoff, Constanza Pina, Melissa Aguilar, Cornelia Sollfrank, Paola Ricaurte Quijano, @marymaggic Neema Githere, Helen Hester, Annie Goh, @vns_matrix Klau Chinche / Klau Kinky and Irina Aristarkhova.⁠ ⁠ ⁠Read more via linkinbio.⁠ ⁠ #mindyseu #cyberfeminismindex #cyberfeminism #technoactivism #cyberactivism⁠ https://www.instagram.com/p/CpnUoF6uYn9/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[goncharmariia]

Cyberactivism in architectural communication.

https://futurearchitectureplatform.org/projects/951b6a9a-6166-4bc1-b904-0f82aabb24bc/

[feministesvscyberh]

Le Festival « les Aliennes » a été l’occasion pour notre membre et cofondatrice Laure Salmona d’intervenir à une table ronde sur le militantisme en ligne, les raids de cyberviolences subies par les personnalités médiatiques ou exposées dans leur militantisme, les stratégies de soutien collectif

[witchs-burrow]

Eat Veggies.

Not Animals.

[womenportrayedinmedia]

#AskHerMore Calls Out The Questions We Wish Reporters Would Ask Women at the Emmys

Because "Will you stick your hand in the mani-cam?" isn't quite doing it.