The field of digital activism is too often the victim of tunnel vision.  People start with case studies and news stories and try to understand outward, but the explanatory light cast by one digital activism case on another is fairly dim: If we really understand what happened in post-election Tehran in 2009, that doesn’t mean [...]

Note: This post is a response to Book Review: “Digitally Enabled Social Change: Activism in the Internet Age” by Jennifer Earl (Professor of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara) I appreciate the chance that Mary has given us to reply to her critical review of our book, Digitally Enabled Social Change (2011, MIT Press). Given [...]

Note: This post is followed by a response from the authors. Broad-based empirical studies are sorely needed to understand the effect of digital technology on contentious politics, a field where battling anecdotes predominate.  Jennifer Earl and Katrina Kimport’s new book, Digitally Enabled Social Change: Activism in the Internet Age attempts to fill this need.  However, [...]

Purist arguments of cyber-optimism and cyber-pessimism are becoming increasingly irrelevant as evidence of digital technology’s ability to both empower and repress accumulates.  However, what is the basis of this argument beyond anecdotalism of a slightly broader scope? I would argue that in the past five year we have witnessed a pendulum swing from activist advantage [...]

The effect of digital technology on political contention is neither good nor bad, it is both.  Yes, the Internet can help activists mobilize and re-frame public issues.  It can also distract citizens and feed apathy.  It can also help repressive governments watch and censor their citizens.  The sooner we accept digital technology’s complex and contradictory [...]

Note: This post by David Karpf,  Assistant Professor in the Rutgers University School of Communication and Information, was originally published on shouting loudly. – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Sigh… Micah White just came out with another “assault on clicktivism” article.  This [...]

Note: This post by David Karpf,  Assistant Professor in the Rutgers University School of Communication and Information, was originally published on shouting loudly. – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Allow me to be cranky for a minute. Jeff Jarvis had some fun [...]

Last week I had the privilege to interview Abdullah Al-Fakharany, a Cairo-based citizen journalist who helps run something called Rassd News Network (RNN). Rassd is an Egyptian Arabic acronym for Raqib (observe), Sower (photograph), Dowin (write). RNN, as it is known in Egypt and across the Arab world, began as a joint voluntary effort in [...]

Shakespeare wrote that “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” but if it were also called a “fragrant blush petalation,” “pink prickler,” or “Valentine’s blossom,” that would certainly cause confusion.  When we talk about the effect of digitally networked technologies on contentious politics, we are met with an equally thorny problem: we [...]

How can digital technology help activists? Often, the options seem limitless. Ranging from public crowdsourcing in the wake of disasters to grassroots human rights campaigns with global scope, activism is evolving as is the landscape against which it is set. Is this just the time for new tools and new methods to achieve the same [...]