Cyberactivism

From P2P Foundation
Jump to navigation Jump to search


Definition

David de Ugarte:

“We could define “cyberactivism” as any strategy that seeks to change the public agenda and include a new topic for social debate by spreading a certain message. This message is spread through a “word of mouth” process which is multiplied by electronic communication and personal publishing media.


Cyberactivism is not a technique but a strategy. We engage in cyberactivism when we publish on the web – in a blog or a forum – in the hope that those who read our post will tell others about it, linking to our post in their own blogs or recommending it by other means. We also engage in cyberactivism when we send an email or text message to other people in the hope that it will be forwarded to other people in their address books.


That’s why we are driven to cyberactivism. And really, we all are: the writer who wants to promote his book, the social activist who wants an invisible problem to turn into a social debate, the small company selling an innovative product which doesn't reach its potential clients, and the political activist who wants to defend her ideas.” (http://deugarte.com/gomi/the-power-of-networks.pdf)

Typology

David de Ugarte:

“there are two basic models, two forms of strategy. The first one is the logic of campaigns: building a centre, proposing actions to be taken, and spreading the main idea. The second one is to start a swarming, a distributed social debate the consequences of which will be, from the start, unpredictable.


As the “housing sitins” that took place in Spain in May 2006 proved, there is no middle way to success. Both strategies require very different forms of communication. In the logic of campaigns, as in traditional activism, a topic, an antagonist, a set of measures to demand, and a form of mobilisation are put forward. People are invited to join in, but not to plan the campaign.


In the logic of swarmings a topic is set in motion until it becomes sufficiently “heated up” in the deliberative process for it to spontaneously develop into a cyberthrong or a new social consensus. From the start, control over what forms the process will take at each stage and even the possibility of aborting it are given up. For if we try to centralise a distributed process, if we try to bring the debate process we have started under our tutelage, we will only inhibit it, and in the end will have no clear proposals people can adhere to.” (http://deugarte.com/gomi/the-power-of-networks.pdf)

Characteristics

David de Ugarte:

“Cyberactivism is nowadays based on the development of three modes linked by a mantra which has been repeated to satiety in recent movements: empowering people.


1. Discourse:

successful cyberactivism is much like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Once we reach a number of people who not only want to but believe that they can change things, change becomes inevitable. That's why new discourses are based on empowering people, on the stories told by individuals or small groups supporting a cause, who transform reality by using their will, imagination, and inventiveness. That is, new discourses define activism as a new form of “social hacking”.


These are the new myths in an absolutely postmodern sense: unlike utopian Socialists or Ayn Rand followers, they impose no strict hierarchy of value, no set of values or beliefs. On the contrary, they put forward “ranks” that exemplify a certain outlook on the world, a certain lifestyle that is the real glue binding the network together. That's why this whole discursive lyricism entails a strong identity component which in turn enables communication, without the mediation of a “centre”, between two members who have never encountered each other before. That is, it ensures the distributed nature of the network, and thus its overall robustness.


2. Tools:

the development of tools that will make individuals aware of the possibility of social hacking is far more important than any demonstration. Cyberactivism, as a product of the hacker culture, is based on the DIY myth of the individual's capacity to generate consensus and transmit ideas in a distributed network.


The gist of it is: tools must be developed and made publicly available. Someone will know what to do with them. Tools are no longer neutral. From downloadable template files for printing flyers and tshirts to free software for the writing and syndication of blogs, through manuals for nonviolent civil resistance which can be propagated through many daily small gestures. All this has been seen in Serbia first and the Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan later. It works.


3. Visibility:

tools must be developed so that people, through small gestures, can find likeminded equals. The visibility of dissent, the break with passivity is the culmination of the empowering people strategy.


Visibility is something that must be permanently fought for. First online (to wit, the aforementioned examples of aggregators), then offline. Visibility, and therefore the selfconfidence granted by numbers, is key for reaching tipping points, those moments in time when a threshold of rebelliousness is reached and ideas and information spread through an exponentially growing number of people. Hence the symbolic and real importance of cyberthrongs, the spontaneous manifestations organised and spread from blog to blog, by word of mouth, from text message to text message.


A cyberactivist is somebody who uses the Internet, and specially the blogosphere, to spread a discourse and make public a number of tools that will give the power and visibility that are nowadays monopolised by institutionsback to the people. A cyberactivist is an enzyme within the process by which society goes from being organised in decentralised hierarchical networks to self-organising into basically egalitarian distributed networks.” (http://deugarte.com/gomi/the-power-of-networks.pdf)