The topic we are given this week to talk about is circulating around the phenomenon of Digital Activism and Social Justice. The three of the articles and the Ted talks all are about the Digital activism and Social Justice and how technology have changed the behavior of humans on social media.

Starting from the articles i.e. “The Cute Cat Theory of Digital Activism”, “The Digital Cultural Shift: From Scale to Power” and “10 twitter Hashtag that changed the way we talk about social issues”. These articles enlighten that how digital activism is spreading rapidly because of the technology.

The cute cat theory of digital activism is a theory concerning Internet activism, Web censorship and “Cute cats” which is developed by Ethan Zuckerman in 2008. This theory stated that most people who use the internet are not really interested in the campaigns of activism rather they are browsing the internet for their own personal pleasures (searching for pornography and lolcats). This totally reflects the behaviors of people and their intentions for using the internet.

Coming towards the second article, “The Digital Cultural Shift: From Scale to Power”, it has been stated that many of the social justice movements in the 21^st century are running with the help of the internet in order to achieve greater scales and wider audience. The strategies and the approaches in the in the Digital Cultural shift report provide a path forward for addressing the way social movements integrate new approaches or remain stuck in a cycle that limits our effectiveness.

At this point a question raised in my mind that:

Are these strategies building power for long run or is it just for the present time amusement purposes?

Coming towards the last article i.e. “10 twitter Hashtag that changed the way we talk about social issues”, a list of 10 hashtag campaigns that has been run online for their specific purposes. Like some of the examples are #GivingTuesday, #YesAllWomen, #PrayForJapan.

After reading all of these articles the only thinking that came in my mind is about the use of technology and internet. The sole purpose of the internet once was to provide the general public with the information that is not available at the local levels and mainly for the study purposes. But now with the passage of time the trend of using internet has been changed a lot that I wonder what is going to come new in the next coming decades. The questions like

Are these technologies overcoming the purposes they are meant to fulfil at first place?

Are we people using the internet or the social activism right of ours in a right way?

Coming towards the Digital Activism Ted Talk, I heard Zeynep Tufekci on the topic “Online Social Change: Easy to Organize, Hard to Win” and she has raised the same questions that no doubt today a single email has the power to bring a worldwide change, online social activism are easy to go thing but these does not last for long. As I raised the question at first place that either these strategies are going to make long run changes or covering just the present?

Keeping in mind this week’s topic, I have chosen this article to share with you all which shares the information on the topic that How summer of 2020 has become a year of digital activism both online and offline. Link: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/summer-digital-protest-how-2020-became-summer-activism-both-online-n1241001