Re: Activism is at our fingertips
In an excellent editorial, entitled “Activism is at our fingertips,” the Charlatan trained a spotlight on the remarkable transformative power of social media. While there can be no doubt about the importance of social media, there is now a danger that this new easiness in effecting change can undermine the difficult work required of greater ends.
There is tremendous promise in the kind of targeted campaigns the editorial mentions. The moment, however, seems to argue a more urgent need: to seize upon this new avenue of organization as a means for farther reaching political action.
The Arab Spring, in its use of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, better illustrates the application of technology. There, social media became a vehicle for a political action that has already remade an entire region. The Occupy Wall Street movement, which in a month travelled from Zuccotti Park to countries across the globe, perfectly demonstrates the reach of an ambitious political agenda when matched with the transcending reach of the Internet.
The smaller, more immediate changes that social media can instantly effect will continue and grow organically. People are charitable, and this is to be commended. But the true promise of this new technology is to call charitable people to a united front, to bring them together behind the kind of goal, like the Arab Spring and Occupy movements, that can change not only lives, but the life of society.
And yet, the power of social media lies only in organizing. The people of Egypt do not overturn decades of tyrannical rule without demonstrations in Tahrir Square. Occupy does not dramatically alter the course of the 2012 presidential election, and indeed the broader global discourse, without the physical occupation of spaces across America.
Technology has already rendered economics a singular, global process. The small and easy successes social media regularly achieves must promote its unique ability to now make politics a singular, global process.
Capitalism, security, and the environment have all been globalized by the high-tech revolution. With social media, the political sphere too can be globalized, but by extending the reach of the difficult work required of its greater ends.
— David Jones,
Master’s Student, international affairs
