Examples of Digital Activism

In 2011 demonstrations and revolution struck Egypt. Digital media was credited for the success of the demonstrations and many considered sites such as Facebook and twitter the way of the future. One Egyptian activist even stated"We us Facebook to schedule the protest, Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world".This with the addition of Google executive Wael Ghonim's statement:

left everyone in awe of the power of the internet for situations like this. However, this was far from the truth. In the months after the movement it became apparent the popularity of Facebook and twitter in the revolution was a fabrication of the west as it was the primary medium through which they received information from Egypt. Arguments against the theory that the internet played a major role include facts like; very few people in the middle east use social networking sites, these sites are too public to evade authorities, and few people trust these sites for dependable news. More news can be found on the matter here.


If you clicked on the link above you may have noticed that it directed you to Wikipedia. This site has also played a role in internet activism. Late in 2011 when the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) (read more about SOPA )came out Wikipedia, Google, and a couple other sites decided to black out for a day. Anyone used the internet that day probably saw a blank page for Google, or this:

for Wikipedia. As expected this outraged many users and brought about action. As a result the stopping of the SOPA bill was extremely successful, and the internet played a large role in activism. The success of this can be traced back to the audience of the movement. People that used the internet were reached through the internet and therefore got the message and were motivated to cause a disturbance. This is ties back to Egypt, and why it couldn't have been Facebook and Twitter that caused the revolution.


Another example of internet activism is that of KONY 2012. This movement took the world by surprise and in two days everyone you knew had either seen or hear of the video.

With the excellent camera work and the clever editing, the video got very popular over the course of a week. Eventually people began to realize that the motives of the video weren't exactly what was expected and the Ugandan government even clarified that Kony wasn't even the biggest issue that the country faced. Within a couple of days the movement lost pretty much all popularity and fell off the radar in a very pathetic manner. In this instance the internet and digital media failed at activism. The biggest flaw was the amount of bias that could be placed on a subject through the internet and the lack of credibility that any piece of digital media ends up having.


The recurring problem for the movements that failed was the audience. They were trying to reach the wrong people on the internet and as a result failed. The only one that succeeded did so because it managed to reach its target audience. The other flaw was the complacency of "supporters" of the movements. In most instances people felt they had done enough for the movements when they shared the Kony video or like the protesting in Egypt page. The internet may be great for telling people what kind of activist movements are going on, but it is terrible in effectively attaining followers.