For this week’s class, we read three articles and listened to two podcasts. Our topic was about digital activism and social justice. In our article, “The Cute Cat Theory Talk at ETech” reads, “Cute cats are collateral damage when governments block sites. And even those who could care less about presidential shenanigans are made aware that their government fears online speech so much that they’re willing to censor the millions of banal videos on DailyMotion to block a few political ones.” The Tunisian government blocking an entire website for a couple of political ones is ridiculous, they are so afraid of what their own citizens think about them they block the few who are speaking about it. In turn, this creates even more hatred for their government as those who just use the site for funny videos or cat videos as the government is blocking what they enjoy. Technology censorship is everywhere, even in our country, we just don’t think about it. In one of our podcasts, Digital Activism Ted Talk, the woman speaking asks what makes success possible. She then starts talking about Twitter, how Twitter is the key. In Turkey, they censor twitter and use that to their advantage, in 2013 the Turkish government bombed and killed thirty-four Kurdish smugglers near the border. The government censored all media relating to this until a journalist bought a plane ticket and flew to where this occurred. There he saw lines of coffins with relatives holding them, he was overwhelmed and didn’t know what to do; so he took a photo of this and it went viral. The government couldn’t censor the mass amount of people now posting about it. Move forward a year later when Turkey’s Gezi protests happen, it started as a protest about a park being razed but became an anti-authoritarian protest. The government also censored this, by instead showing what was happening which most media outlets were covering they broadcasted a documentary of penguins. She goes on to talk about how people are becoming more aware of this and instead now posting photos about what is going on. The internet has good and bad sides to it and people are learning how to use the good side more, by using digital technologies to help them organize protests, rallies, and just to help others out. Today we see many uses for technology and among those is the power to speak out, we must engage it more and let our voices be heard. 

We see social media influence us and among those Twitter has done a lot. We go on Twitter to rant or to see whatever our President is ranting about this time. On Twitter, we have popular hashtags which can either be people being sarcastic or talking about a social cause we need to pay more attention to. In “These 10 Twitter Hashtags Changed the Way We Talk About Social Issues” we read, “The latter usage has been instrumental in the transition of movements from online to the real world.” This can not be more true, by drawing out attention to issues we learn more about them and our feelings about them. The hashtag #PrayforJapan drew our attention to an 8.9-magnitude earthquake and tsunami in Japan in 2011. This killed nearly 2,000 citizens of Japan, people around the globe came together and talked about this tragedy. This hashtag was used 2,000,000 times, I honestly don’t know if anyone didn’t hear about this. This is just one example of people using their voice. The devastation that occurred during this time was horrific and hurt so many people, but at the same time, it got everyone together and talking about it. By using our voice for good reasons people will take notice and more people can see your point of view.

Do you have something you’re scared to speak about? Did you hear about Japan, what were your thoughts?

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