The promises and perils of grassroots activism in the new/digital 21st century media age are multifaceted, complex, and interconnected. Among the promised is the tapping of “cognitive surplus” of America’s legions of screen-shackled slackers to employ and implement their creative and technical energies for a new brand of cyber activism and communication. Connecting individuals, data, and context; the great yawning gateway of convergent and participatory web offers tantalizingly simple and innovative solutions such as data-mapping, web crawling, and nearly limitless connectivity between users and content generators. In regard to nearly everything, the great towering question of “how the hell do I/we do this?” is suddenly less opaque and only a fraction as formidable. As Clay Shirky attempts to update Margaret Mead-- “A handful of people working with cheap tools and little time or money to spare, managed to carve out enough collective goodwill from the community to create a resource that no one could have imagined even five years ago” (Shirky 17).
For activists this is a tantalizing prospect. Why, now we can reach more people than ever before! In just a few minutes one organizer can connect with as many citizens as it would’ve taken an entire army of canvassers several weeks to accomplish. All that is required is a few Facebook posts, a tweat or two here and there, and (with a little more work) a quick iPhone video to upload directly to Youtube. Bang. Instant revolution and organizing and it’s all at our convergence blistered fingertips. The LOLcat driven energies of interactive web transcend the communal sphere and enter the civic sphere, where they cross-pollinate with one another for the betterment of their community. Simple right? The revolution is just around the corner right?
Not quite. As he summons up the words of Marshall McLuhan’s “the medium is the message”, Nicholas Carr writes of the sticky-seductive power of the internet and the way it is rapidly affect our brains. Even my brain as I write this (soon to be posted to a blog, for a class to view upon a screen) is being affected by that feeling of being “scattered” and flinging from one side of the ether to another. “Info snacking,” as it’s termed within media and journalism fields is not just limited to how we move from webpage to webpage, but how we move from one thought to the next, no matter the text. Not unlike the sticky black alien in the latest Spider-Man movie, this way of digesting and gathering information quickly wraps its tentacles around us… indeed once bonded, it can be very difficult to un-bond. “The computer [and the web it facilitates] bulldozes our doubts with its bounties and conveniences. It is so much our servant that it would seem churlish to notice that it is also our master” (Carr 4). Ultimately, it is a grave mistake to make a blanket judgement about the internet and the effect it is having upon us. The interactive web is profoundly “mind-altering” in the way it changes the way we think, but its effects on the real increasingly connected world are beginning to emerge. As demonstrated in Egypt and set down in old-fashioned ink (and Kindle) by Wael Ghonim, social networking and the participatory web are now indispensable tools for grassroots activism and community organizing. Rather than traditional organizing where everyone is briefed, de-briefed, and instructed what to do and how to do it; the era of the participatory web changed all the rules. Facebook was had been radicalized as had Twitter and a variety of other social networking platforms. Ghonim writes “The rapid pace of events drove home one of the key strategies I learned from the revolution: to achieve your vision, you need friends and communication channels more than you need plans.”
The take-home lesson, ultimately, is that the internet is fundamentally changing the way we think and look at the world around us. Through the participatory web and convergent media the reality of existence and the reality of the web are drifting closer and closer with each passing day. With every Facebook login those two worlds overlap a little more. In terms of activism, this convergence means greater connectivity between individuals and movements. Something happens, an iPhones is there, the world knows in just the few seconds it takes for the video to upload and buffer. Lightening fast and easy to use, this remarkable new avenue of connectivity is still no substitute for all the strategies of traditional organizing. What’s the number one purpose for e-activism? Many would argue that it’s all about getting people to show up when something happens. People must know what’s happening and why it’s happening. Yet, when they all congregate in Tahrir Square, Zuccotti Park, or Oscar Grant Plaza; they are not there for the sole purpose of re-tweeting or updating their status. They are they for each other. The revolution not only continued in Cairo when the internet was shut down, it grew.
What do we learn from this? What is the great lesson to post as a link on your newsfeed? Something new is happening, share the link, write the post, like the page.. and get into the fucking streets already.
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