Net-Activism. How digital technologies have been changing individual and collective actions

Net-Activism. How digital technologies have been changing individual and collective actions
Author: Francesco Antonelli
Publisher: Roma TrE-Press
Total Pages: 142
Release: 2017-04-01
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 8894885151

Recently, the digital architectures of interaction have also become, more than a new information architecture, a new ecology of dialogue and participation. In addition to the new forms of debate and interaction which are expressed far beyond the dynamics of modern public opinion, the digital networks have opened spaces of experimentation for new decision-making collaborative practices. In several areas, the creation of platforms and architectures of debate and deliberations is putting new questions about the technological possibility of overcoming the representative democracy. Finally, this new digital ecology has been changing social actions in everyday life. The book analyzes these phenomena both through a theoretical reflection (first part) and by some case studies (second part), as the result of the activities promoted by the Net-Activism International Research Network based on Atopos Lab in Universidade de São Paulo. At the Network join: Università degli Studi “Roma Tre”, Universidade Lusófona do Porto, Université de Lille 2, Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris. Francesco Antonelli is Research Fellow in Sociology at the Department of Political Sciences, Università degli Studi “Roma Tre”. Recent publications: “European Politics of Numbers: Sociological Perspectives on Official Statistics. General Trends”, International Review of Sociology, 26,3, 2016; L’Europa del dissenso. Teorie e analisi sociopolitiche, Milano, Franco Angeli 2016.

Digitally Enabled Social Change

Digitally Enabled Social Change
Author: Jennifer Earl
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2011
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0262015102

Where we have been and where we are headed -- The look and feel of e-tactics and their Web sites -- Tacking action on the cheap: costs and participation -- Making action on the cheap: costs and organizing -- Being together versus working together : copresence in participation -- From power in numbers to power laws: copresence in organizing -- A new digital repertoire of contention?

The Rise of Digital Repression

The Rise of Digital Repression
Author: Steven Feldstein
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2021-04-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0190057513

The world is undergoing a profound set of digital disruptions that are changing the nature of how governments counter dissent and assert control over their countries. While increasing numbers of people rely primarily or exclusively on online platforms, authoritarian regimes have concurrently developed a formidable array of technological capabilities to constrain and repress their citizens. In The Rise of Digital Repression, Steven Feldstein documents how the emergence of advanced digital tools bring new dimensions to political repression. Presenting new field research from Thailand, the Philippines, and Ethiopia, he investigates the goals, motivations, and drivers of these digital tactics. Feldstein further highlights how governments pursue digital strategies based on a range of factors: ongoing levels of repression, political leadership, state capacity, and technological development. The international community, he argues, is already seeing glimpses of what the frontiers of repression look like. For instance, Chinese authorities have brought together mass surveillance, censorship, DNA collection, and artificial intelligence to enforce their directives in Xinjiang. As many of these trends go global, Feldstein shows how this has major implications for democracies and civil society activists around the world. A compelling synthesis of how anti-democratic leaders harness powerful technology to advance their political objectives, The Rise of Digital Repression concludes by laying out innovative ideas and strategies for civil society and opposition movements to respond to the digital autocratic wave.

The Logic of Connective Action

The Logic of Connective Action
Author: W. Lance Bennett
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2013-08-26
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1107025745

The Logic of Connective Action shows how political action is coordinated and power is organized in communication-based networks, and what political outcomes may result.

Collective Action in Organizations

Collective Action in Organizations
Author: Bruce Bimber
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2012-02-29
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0521191726

Explores how people participate in public life through organizations. The authors examine three organizations and show surprising similarities across them.

Digital Activism Decoded

Digital Activism Decoded
Author: Mary C. Joyce
Publisher: IDEA
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2010
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9781932716603

"The media has recently been abuzz with cases of citizens around the world using digital technologies to push for social and political change: from the use of Twitter to amplify protests in Iran and Moldova to the thousands of American non-profits creating Facebook accounts in the hopes of luring supporters. These stories have been published, discussed, extolled, and derided, but have not yet been viewed holistically as a new field of human endeavor. We call this field "digital activism" and its dynamics, practices, misconceptions, and possible futures are presented together for the first time in this book."--Pub. desc.

Political Turbulence

Political Turbulence
Author: Helen Margetts
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2017-09-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0691177929

How social media is giving rise to a chaotic new form of politics As people spend increasing proportions of their daily lives using social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, they are being invited to support myriad political causes by sharing, liking, endorsing, or downloading. Chain reactions caused by these tiny acts of participation form a growing part of collective action today, from neighborhood campaigns to global political movements. Political Turbulence reveals that, in fact, most attempts at collective action online do not succeed, but some give rise to huge mobilizations—even revolutions. Drawing on large-scale data generated from the Internet and real-world events, this book shows how mobilizations that succeed are unpredictable, unstable, and often unsustainable. To better understand this unruly new force in the political world, the authors use experiments that test how social media influence citizens deciding whether or not to participate. They show how different personality types react to social influences and identify which types of people are willing to participate at an early stage in a mobilization when there are few supporters or signals of viability. The authors argue that pluralism is the model of democracy that is emerging in the social media age—not the ordered, organized vision of early pluralists, but a chaotic, turbulent form of politics. This book demonstrates how data science and experimentation with social data can provide a methodological toolkit for understanding, shaping, and perhaps even predicting the outcomes of this democratic turbulence.

Activism on the Web

Activism on the Web
Author: Veronica Barassi
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2015-05-22
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317974352

Activism on the Web examines the everyday tensions that political activists face as they come to terms with the increasingly commercialized nature of web technologies and sheds light on an important, yet under-investigated, dimension of the relationship between contemporary forms of social protest and internet technologies. Drawing on anthropological and ethnographic research amongst three very different political groups in the UK, Italy and Spain, the book argues that activists’ everyday internet uses are largely defined by processes of negotiation with digital capitalism. These processes of negotiation are giving rise to a series of collective experiences, which are defined by the tension between activists’ democratic needs on one side and the cultural processes reinforced by digital capitalism on the other. In looking at the encounter between activist cultures and digital capitalism, the book focuses in particular on the tension created by self-centered communication processes and networked-individualism, by corporate surveillance and data-mining, and by fast-capitalism and the temporality of immediacy. Activism on the Web suggests that if we want to understand how new technologies are affecting political participation and democratic processes, we should not focus on disruption and novelty, but we should instead explore the complex dialectics between digital discourses and digital practices; between the technical and the social; between the political economy of the web and its lived critique.

The Good Drone

The Good Drone
Author: Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2020-07-28
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0262358468

How small-scale drones, satellites, kites, and balloons are used by social movements for the greater good. Drones are famous for doing bad things: weaponized, they implement remote-control war; used for surveillance, they threaten civil liberties and violate privacy. In The Good Drone, Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick examines a different range of uses: the deployment of drones for the greater good. Choi-Fitzpatrick analyzes the way small-scale drones--as well as satellites, kites, and balloons--are used for a great many things, including documenting human rights abuses, estimating demonstration crowd size, supporting anti-poaching advocacy, and advancing climate change research. In fact, he finds, small drones are used disproportionately for good; nonviolent prosocial uses predominate.

Collective Action 2.0

Collective Action 2.0
Author: Shaked Spier
Publisher: Chandos Publishing
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2017-02-28
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0081005792

Collective Action 2.0 explores the issues related to information and communication technologies (ICTs) in detail, providing a balanced insight into how ICTs leverage and interact with collective action, which will have an impact on the current discourse. Recent events in different authoritarian regimes, such as Iran and Egypt, have drawn global attention to a developing phenomenon in collective action: People tend to organize through different social media platforms for political protest and resistance. This phenomenon describes a change in social structure and behavior tied to ICT. Social media platforms have been used to leverage collective action, which has in some cases arguably lead, to political revolution. The phenomenon also indicates that the way information is organized affects the organization of social structures with which it interoperates. The phenomenon also has another side, which is the use of social media for activist suppression, state and corporate surveillance, commodifi cation of social processes, demobilization, or for the mobilization of collective action toward undesirable ends. - Analyzes social media and collective action in an in-depth and balanced manner - Presents an account of avoiding technological determinism, utopianism, and fundamentalism - Considers the underlying theory behind quick-paced social media - Takes an interdisciplinary approach that will resonate with all those interested in social media and collective action, regardless of fi eld specialism