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"A Day Without Technology" by Alexandra Haro Song: Last Stand by Jime Cide. https://soundcloud.com/jimecide/last-stand-only-one-2friendz. Licensed CC BY 3.0 ...
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Activism or Slacktivism?
In this day of age, activism is getting rarer. Although campaigns, ideologies and problems can come to the attention of the world much quicker than it has in the past, people tend to believe that raising awareness is taking an active part in the solution of said problems. While liking and sharing content can in fact raise awareness, it does not constitute as activism, it is instead known as "Slacktivism". This essay will focus on the infamous Kony 2012 and the more recent ALS Ice bucket challenge, and how, although they can raise global awareness, this form of "activism" rarely results in the solution to the problem, with most campaigns fading out of the public eye over time.
"Activism: The doctrine or practice of vigorous action or involvement as a means ofachieving political or other goals, sometimes by demonstrations, protests, etc." (Dictionary.com, 2014). This is the definition of activism, note the use of the words vigorous action or involvement. Being an activist involves being passionately engaged with the subject matter, going out of the way to raise awareness and do whatever it takes to fix the problem or obtain the legal rights, for example there are many gay rights activists in taking a risk by going out into the streets to join rallies and protests so that governments around the world introduce the right for citizens of the same gender to marry. Slacktivism: Actions performed via the Internet in support of a political or social cause but regarded as requiring little time or involvement. "Slacktivism is not activism. While slacktivism may raise the awareness of a topic to the public, it doesn't do much else." (Oxforddictionaries.com, 2014). Slacktivism is defined by how little effort it takes from the "slacktivist" in question. Liking, commenting, and sharing videos or statuses on social networking sites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr without donating to the cause and/or physically attending a protest or rally, cannot be called effective activism.
The most notable online campaign is the notorious Kony 2012, a perfect example of slacktivism. Kony 2012's video campaign is the most viral video ever (Gregory, 2012). The video was made by "Invisible Children Inc." and outlined the "secret war" that was happening in east and central Africa by "The Lord's Resistance Army" a.k.a LRA (Invisible Children, 2014). The video outlines what the LRA has been doing for the past 30 years and uses the story of a young boy named Jacob. Kony 2012 tugs at the heartstrings and begs for the support of the American people to help spread the word, which it eventually did, seemingly overnight the video became some more than a phenomenon, as of this day, the video has just under one billion views, sitting at around 99,705,903 views. While this campaign raised a staggering amount of awareness of the LRA and its warlord leader; Joseph Kony, it didn't hold up. By the end of 2012 almost everybody had forgotten about the campaign, leading many to believe that those who shared the campaign did it because so many others did, to a large majority the campaign lost most of its meaning just as fast as it gained it. Did we ever catch Kony?
More recent examples of online campaigns haven't quite had the same success as Kony 2012 did, however they did raise awareness for the causes they stood for. The most recent viral awareness raiser is the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, where a person pours a bucket of ice cold water over themselves. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord (Alsa.org, 2014). This means that eventually the motor neurons, that give the brain the ability to control muscle movement, die leaving long term sufferers ultimately paralyzed. The Ice Bucket Challenge (IBC) was introduced sometime during 2014 and has become a popular way of raising awareness, even celebrities have recorded their IBC and pledged large quantities of money to ALS research. While this may seem like activism as these people are doing something for this cause, it's still not quite legitimate activism. While celebrities are doing the "challenge", nominating other celebrities and donating money, most people doing this are opting to pour the freezing cold water over themselves rather than pledging money to the cause. This choice makes the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge nothing more than next level slacktivism, where instead of being active towards the cause and donating towards research. Some people nominate who they want to do the ICB and give them a timeframe to complete the challenge, and if this requirement is not met, they must donate, effectively making this a race against time to avoid having to donate. While pouring a bucket of ice over oneself can be taken as a course of action, it does not help ALS researchers in finding a cure for the rare disease.
In conclusion, online activism can fairly effectively increase the awareness of campaigns and causes, however, whether or not action is taken is up to the individual, linking, commenting on and sharing ALS Ice Bucket challenge videos, using the Hashtag Bringbackourgirls, taking "selfies" with no makeup on or changing your Facebook profile picture to a pink equal sign cannot be activism. Activism requires the "Vigorous action" of an individual towards a particular cause. These examples showcase the definition of slacktivism, little effort put into the actions of these "Slacktivist". In short, if the people of today feel as though sharing a status about a rare or deadly illness, pouring ice over themselves or liking a video about a "secret war" in another country, then everyone has become a Slacktivist...
Task 8
This survey was such a useful tool to get to know what people really think about social media. We all know that society can’t live without having a public life, that’s why we understand the main purpose of social media. It’s not all about entertainment, as we could have thought, it’s more about finding a way of communicating. 80% of people seem to find it as useful communication tool when they are using their social networks while 20% of the people answered that entertainment was the main use of social networks. None of them answered that social media was for self-development as my target was quite limited.
The favourite social network in my survey was Facebook with 100%, while Twitter and Instagram did not receive any credits.
Talking about how effective social media is as a communication tool, it is shown that 70% of my public use social media between 3 to 7 hours per day. While just 20% of them use internet from 0 to 2 hours and from 8 to more hours a day.
To take in charge, it seems to be close enough what social media means to the society. Communication is a big factor in our lives and it is even better when we can find different ways of communicating.
Task 6: Cyberpunk and Cyberspace
This week’s lecture was about the cyberpunk culture and the cyberspace. In nowadays world electronic devices, the development of the internet and some new creations such as robots and androids brought us so many opportunities to explore how broad and incredible the artificial intelligence is.
The cyberpunk culture is pretty much considered as part of the science fiction genre and it can be focused on the dark side of the high technology mixing humans with robots. It is also related to the hacking culture which as we all know it gives us the chance to control technology letting us do what we have to and it let us have a sensation of control over machines and more.
Hacking is a very popular term when we refer to computers, but it is changing meaning by the time. Nowadays it is easier to hack and to have the control than before and it is not that bad as it was in the past.
Cyberpunk culture also refers to the world as a material place. A place governed by rich people and where they don’t care about the rest because it is a construction made for power purposes only. It is all made up by criminal activity, murder, seduction and more.
Retrieved from: http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2013/114/3/4/underwater_cyberpunk_city_by_nkabuto-d62tigc.jpg
Everybody Blogs#5 (Task 10)
Sign an e-petition. Share a link to the petition and write a brief explanation as to why you have chosen to support this particular petition.
Petition:Ovarian Cancer Awareness
I've decided to sign this petition due to the fact that I have lost a friend to Ovarian cancer, and while she was not a very close friend, her passing had a tremendous impact on my life. One of my closest friends was driven into a deep depression over this event. Cancer and I have never had a good relation ship, my mother has undergone cancer treatment in the past and it's terrifying. If there is anyway I can fight against Cancer I try my best.
Everybody Blogs#4 (Task 8)
Write about the responses you had to your survey. Were you surprised by the answers you received? How could you improve your results? How could you use this tool in the future?
The responses I received from my survey were not that surprising, in such a digitally oriented world, social networking is a way for people to connect using new and convenient technologies. With these apps and sites it's possible for a person to socialize while never actually going outside, although this is a pessimistic outlook on social media. There are two sides to every coin, and social networking can allow for people to form special bonds with others when there's a state or country standing between them. I can speak from experience, and while it can be very dangerous meeting people from the internet, I personally have formed very close bonds with people who live down state and even overseas. Results from the survey could be improved with the inclusion of more questions. This survey tool could be useful in the collection of anonymous data/information for future assignments/projects.
Everybody Blogs#4 (Task 7)
Think of three questions that relate to social media use. Using these three questions create a survey using Survey Monkey.
If anyone who's following this blog could take time out of their day to do this survey I've made, that'd be great.
