This week’s topic is about digital activism and social justice and we have articles and ted talks that went along with that theme. The article called “the cute cat theory of Digital Activism, another article called ” The Digital Culture Shift: From scale to power,” ” twitter hashtags that changed the way we talk about social issues,” and lastly a Ted talk called ” Digital Activism Ted Talk.” In Digital Activism Ted talks, It talks about technology and social movements and how it may be weakening them. She asks the question about what makes success possible and turns to twitter and twitter is the key. Turkey got used to the power of twitter and the Turkish media would censor things from the public. So in result of that, a man took the censored pictures and posted it on twitter and it went viral. The news covered penguins  instead of the protests that were taking place . They used the internet to show protest and things like this go back a long way according to the ted talk. She talked about how twitter and the internet equals global attention so it is globalized. Then she goes on to say that the hopes the people rightfully raise are not really matched by what they were able to have at the end and so she asks the question.. As digital technology makes things easier for movements, why haven’t successful outcomes become more likely as well? She states that easier to mobilize does not mean easier to achieve goals. Are we overlooking slow and sustained? The ending finalizes that taking the fast route, aka social media, and not replacing the benefits of slower work does not give you that long term success. Figuring out collective thinking, having a strategic plan and strategy and goal and structure is the way to achieve such goals. 

After viewing this, I came to realize that she made excellent points as to why these protests and things with such massive attention and hype end up phasing out in a way and why we don’t see long term changes or things being productive afterwards. There is no organizational collective thinking and planning and are constantly being done. They don’t necessarily have the next step in place in order to make efficient moves from what they have done. All of this being done is for short term, unfortunately, instead of longer term. I didn’t realize that all of the protests and things like that consisted of internally until I listened to the ted talk. It is very eye opening to me and how technology plays a role as well.

We also were assigned articles such as ” twitter hashtags that changed the way we talk about social issues,” and ” The Digital Culture Shift: From scale to power.’ With the first article, it talks about hashtags that are directed towards social issues and things of that nature. For example, #prayforJapan, #bringbackourgirls, and #ice bucket challenge to name a few. All of this to spread awareness and to spark the discussion of things going on today and possibly make a change. With the second article, it talks about the Digital culture shift and from scale to power. It is a good read and it touches on blm and other movements as well as the notion of voices being heard. 

News Article: Here is link that discusses technology and social justice