MAC 325 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Slacktivism, Arab Spring, Information Overload
26 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Week 5-1 Tufekci: Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest /
Meraz & Papacharissi: The International Journal of Press/Politics Class 2/27/18
- Discussion: Is the internet public or private?
- Private: Closed conversations with friends and family
- Public: ongoing conversations that are broad with many people
- WHEN is the internet public/ private?
- The internet blurs this public/ private boundary
Social Movements
- An organization of people (formal or informal) seeking to enact (or counteract) social or
political change
- People calling for revolution
- Strong ties/ weak ties
- Strong: people closest to you (bonding capital)
- Weak: people we don’t know well
- Networks enable weak ties
- Much less direct effort
- Connected through social media
- Ties can change over time
- Activism vs Slacktivism
- Activism
- Particular form of politics that affect social change with a specific agenda
- Slacktivism (Morozov)
- Political activities that only serve to increase feel- good value of
participants… no impact on real life outcomes
- Information overload
- Social pressure to engage
- “Cute Cat Theory” (a rebuttal to ‘slacktivism’)
- Digital platform where users engage in “feel good” stuff have the
potential to interact with other users for further entertainment
- The values of weak ties
- Weak ties are especially important for movements of political
change
- Information uses weak ties to travel between groups of people to
casually keep up
The Arab Spring and the Egyptian Revolution (2011)
What is the role of social media in the role of social movement?
What else besides social media did this movement get to work
Meraz and Papacharissi
- Social media and social movements
- Alternative narratives
- May not be covered in mass media. View from bystanders.
- Value of getting a plurality of storytelling
- “Always on” news environment
Document Summary
Week 5-1 tufekci: twitter and tear gas: the power and fragility of networked protest / Meraz & papacharissi: the international journal of press/politics class 2/27/18. Private: closed conversations with friends and family. Public: ongoing conversations that are broad with many people. An organization of people (formal or informal) seeking to enact (or counteract) social or political change. Strong: people closest to you (bonding capital) Particular form of politics that affect social change with a specific agenda. Political activities that only serve to increase feel- good value of participants no impact on real life outcomes. Digital platform where users engage in feel good stuff have the potential to interact with other users for further entertainment. Weak ties are especially important for movements of political change. Information uses weak ties to travel between groups of people to casually keep up. The arab spring and the egyptian revolution (2011) What else besides social media did this movement get to work.
