One of the signs of a progress in a field of study is when you can take events and evaluate them against competing theories of the social universe. In current studies of digital activism, we are theorizing from cases, often without  bothering to check the historical record to see whether digital media can be credited [...]

by Mary Joyce A decade ago, academics began to study a crucially important type of extra-institutional political behavior: terrorism.  As always, government response did not wait on rigorous analysis.  A  week after the September 11th attacks, President Bush announced the cause of terrorism: the fundamental inconsistency of values (“they hate our freedom”), and a policy [...]

A quick follow up to my post of last week about digital activism as a new form of activism….. my napkin drawings were unfortunately not as legible as I would have liked (some tell me there’s a nifty napkin drawing tool online that I can use….).  I made new copies, hopefully they’re a little better: [...]

by Mary Joyce On Thursday, President Obama gave a speech to a group of bank executives who collectively make up one of the world’s most powerful economic groups. He was there to scold them for the “failure of responsibility” that precipitated the financial crisis. That day was also Earth Day. Though scarcely recognized, it is [...]

by Mary Joyce Probably due to pressure to be more profitable, Wired is fast becoming just another guy culture mag: articles from the current issue include a gadget profile of an electronic lock pick (“who uses it: locksmiths, detectives, military personnel”), a toned abdomen illustrating a new insulin monitor, and tips for geek dads. So [...]

In a post a few weeks ago, Mary started us down the path of “Ok, all this chatter about digital this and activism that.  What constitutes digital activism anyway?”  Obviously we’ve got to start thinking about this, or else MAP has no reason to exist, so let’s keep at it.  Mary said, very rightly so: [...]

by Mary Joyce In a few days the Meta-Activism Project will launch a splash page for Digital Activism Decoded – the first book about digital activism – which will be available for free download on this site on June 1st. According to the back cover, the book aims to decode “the underlying mechanics of… digital [...]

by Mary Joyce I’d like to call attention to the disturbing mistreatment of two of the most important intellectuals in the field of digital activism: Clay Shirky and Evgeny Morozov.  I know Evgeny better than I know Clay, but both seem like nice guys who are honestly trying to quantify the effects of  the Internet [...]

by Mary Joyce “Before engineers could build airplanes, physicists first had to understand the principals of flight.” The above quote is from a 2003 book entitled Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age, by Duncan Watts, who currently works as principal research scientist at Yahoo!. Though this book may at first appear to be [...]

by Mary Joyce Why More Information is Less The more information we gain about digital activism, the less we seem to know.   We have an ever-increasing volume of case studies from the Philippines to  Spain and from  Moldova and Ukraine and Iran.   Every day blogs offer cogent advice how to use YouTube, Facebook, or the [...]