When Bob Dylan wrote The Times They Are a-Changin’ in 1963, I doubt he had any idea that his anthem to political activism would serve as a prerequisite to a digital world where mobilization is at your fingertips.
The sense of immediacy and accessibility created by social media enables these types of rallies and events to take place at a larger and more frequent scale. What once would have taken days and intricate levels of planning are now easy and can reach a wider audience in a shorter span of time.
Consider the story of UK Uncut, a group that is currently organizing protests throughout the United Kingdom. Their following will have jumped by 400 people in the amount of time it’ll take me to finish writing this article.
UK Uncut is a political action group against budget cuts that allow wealthy individuals and corporations skip out on their taxes. Now, I won’t get into the politics of it all, but this “citizen army” has taken to the digital battlefield with zeal, using Twitter and the hashtag #ukuncuts to organize flash mobs that have caused major UK chain stores like Vodafone, a telecommunications company that owns 45 percent of Verizon Wireless, to shut up shop for a day after protestors claimed the group skipped out on paying taxes. The campaign caught like wildfire and the Twitter account now boasts 10,000+ followers. Their website lists the organizations targets and protest schedule, and it’s a pretty impressive list.
And UK Uncut isn’t the first to do this kind of political activism. Far from it. One of the first flash mobs for political purposes was orchestrated before the term social media had taken root, in 2003, by Doonesbury cartoonist Gary Trudeau. More than 100 people showed up under the Space Needle in Seattle, linked arms, jumped up and down, and chanted “The doctor is in” to support presidential candidate Howard Dean. The flash mob didn’t even last a minute before dispersing.
Protesters in Belarus organize through social media and eat ice cream.
A more compelling example is the ice cream flash mob that happened in Belarus in 2006. LiveJournal was used to gather protestors at Oktyabrskaya Square to eat ice cream in protest of one of the most repressive government in Europe. Police were waiting for the protestors and arrested some of the ice cream eaters. The kids got their point across: “What type of government would arrest people for eating ice cream in the street?”
It was a small act that had a big message.
This ability to congregate on a massive scale quickly is forcing the political sphere to alter the way it interprets and reacts to constituents. We no longer live in a world where people learn news the next day – it is right here and now that chants for action take place. The question is: Will politicians heed the call?
-Brittney (@bntrim)
26
The Future? Transparency.
by FeedbackEvery day, millions of web users censor themselves in order to maintain control over the online image they portray to the world. This censorship takes place on multiple levels, given that we all have multiple audiences we seek to interact with and be accepted by.
Censorship may be the physical act of filtering what we say and removing pictures we deem unacceptable. We may post photos that don’t completely convey what we look like in reality. Or, some people choose not to filter anything at all. Consider the constant need, for those who were recently in college and are trying to find jobs, to remove incriminating photos with alcohol. They aren’t abiding by government censorship, rather, just that of society.
Yet, even the choice to not filter yourself is a form of censorship – you censor the socially acceptable parts of yourself and unleash the ones you think most Internet users will relish.
Outgoing Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently stated that no anonymity and transparency is the future of the web:
We begin searching for our identity when we are adolescents. The online world is greatly contributing to how we as human beings go about doing that. Social media tools in particular are accelerating that process, and it all begins with a name. I’m sure you’ll remember when AIM was a big part of our lives.
Unbeknownst to most of us, our screen name became a part of our identity whether it was “hotchick12,” “animalhousecrazy,” or “susie_johnson.” Each of these accounts says something different about the user and for friends and strangers this affects the conversation topics they enter in to. This transcends to any other username/handle we use for a myriad of accounts we may have. These multiple identities allow people to explore and discover themselves, thus shaping and creating his or her identity of self.
This sense of self and the portion of it we choose to convey affects the content we produce on certain social media platforms. Let me use a personal example.
When my real name is used in my username or handle I have to ensure that that self adheres (somewhat) to the “me” that people see at work, at home and in the general public eye. I filter what I say/post in the hopes that there is no disparity between the person people “know” and think they know. With accounts using an alternate (or anonymous) identity it’s a free for all. Here boundaries are crossed and rules broken, testing the waters of How Far Is Too Far?
Last year, Reporters Without Borders posted an article about the crackdown on anonymous postings in Belarus stating that, “By subjecting online access to an identity check or to prior online authorisation that depends on the content and the applicant, this decree will force people to censor themselves. This is obviously the intention, regardless of the government’s insincerely reassuring comments about online free expression.”
The elusive Anonymous that overruns 4chan, wreaking havoc on all who make the mistake of crossing its path, is one such example. These are the guys that sent innocent little children to porn sites when they tried to watch a Justin Bieber video on YouTube. Anonymity allows for individuals choosing to operate under its guise to abandon the rules of the Internet and post whatever they please, like the uncensored versions of R-rated movies, without suffering the consequences (for the most part).
If Anonymous allows this form of chaos that people seem to want to peddle in, then why do so many people feel the need to censor the content they publish? I think it comes back to the desire for order: Chaos can be fun in moderation for most of us, but we still have a need to fit into a variety of social circles. In order to do so, we censor our image in order to be deemed acceptable. Even when we operate under an anonymous account you adhere to the rules of anonymity, or the rule of that rules don’t exist. Censorship is always happening whether you want to admit it or not. Take a look at your accounts and gauge how you censor yourself. I bet it’ll surprise you.
-Brittney (@bntrim)