Noprianto Timbayo

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DIGITAL ACTIVISM
Digital Activism, also known as Cyberactivism, from of activism that uses the internet and
digital media as key platforms for mass mobilization and political action. According to Mary
Joyce in her book entitled Digital Activism Decoded: The New Mechanics of Change, Digital
activism is a series of activities or campaigns that use technology and digital networks on an
ongoing basis. Or simply, we can say that the internet is a medium that can make it easier
for people to carry out a campaigns movement.

Initially, online activists used the internet as a medium for information distribution, given its
Capacity to reach massive audience across borders instantaneously. Some forms of digital
activism is Social Media, it was a websites and applications that enable users to create or
share content and network. There’s also a several websites or application on social media
that are most often used by online activists. Which is, facebook, Twitter, Youtube, ect.
Social Media activists use these tools to disseminate information and rally support quicker
or under the radar of mainstream media.

In Digital Activism, Social Media has a very important role where it provides a space for the
community to build an image and fight negative stigma regarding the issues brought up. If it
used wisely, Social Media can be also support people outside the community to support
their movement. For example, on May 25th, 2020, there was a murder case in Minneapolis,
United States. Where the murder victim was George Floyd. An African-American man who
died on May 25th, 2020, after a white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin stomped his
knee on Floyd's neck for at least seven minutes, while he was lying face down on the street.
George Floyd himself was a black Minneapolis demonstrator who took part in the Black
Lives Matter demonstration some time ago.

Due the murder that happened to George Floyd, there are hundreds or even thousands of
people in the world who carry out a protest movement against the repressive actions of a
policeman who took George Floyd's life. Thousands of people protested trough Social Media
by rising the hashtag #blacklivesmatter. Black Lives Matter by itself is an international
activist movement, starting on 2013 with the African-American community who are active
against systemic violence and racism against black people.

Based on the George Floyd above, we can see that Social Media has a very important role in
Digital activisms. Digital activism has proved to be a powerful means of grassroots political
mobilization and provides new ways to engage protesters. Additionally, online actions can
be important in countries where public spaces are highly regulated or are under military
control. In such cases, online actions are a better option than possibly physically dangerous
“live” actions. Online protest also can be used against transnational institutions. Although
much digital activism falls into the category of electronic civil disobedience, some activists
ask that such online political gestures always represent a communal interest and not an
individual agenda and that their motifs and agents be public knowledge so as to dissociate
them from acts of cyberterrorism or criminal hacking.

Different digital tactics entail diverse uses of electronic networks. Text-based practices

More-performative actions, such as virtual sit-ins and e-mail bombs, provoke a concrete
disruption of the servers’ functionality through the concerted action of participants around
the world. Virtual sit-ins are a form of online demonstration in which a
networked community gathers on one or several sites to carry out an act of digital dissent.
The action is undertaken through a Web-based program that sends repetitive requests to
the targeted Web pages. The protesters’ automated “clickings,” simultaneously enacted
from multiple computers around the world, provoke such an excess of traffic that the
targeted site’s server is unable to handle it. By clogging the bandwidth, the action slows
down the site and eventually causes it to shut down.

One of the biggest benefits of using digital tools for positive change is the ability to connect
with a large community and, if applicable, globalise a campaign’s goals. The interconnected
nature of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter lend themselves easily to
information sharing, meaning an activist can post a slogan, picture or details about an issue,
share it with friends, plug into like-minded online communities and distribute info through
their networks in a much less time and energy-consuming way than more traditional
methods of going door-to-door or standing on street corners and asking passers-by to sign
petitions. Some of the most successful movements make use of social media and online
activity to rally support and then combine this with ‘‘leg work’’ on the ground, not just
talking the talk, but also walking the walk.  The 2019 climate strike movement is an
incredibly successful example of this combination of online and offline activism. Rallying
behind Greta Thunberg and Fridays for Future, millions of citizens all over the world have
mobilise to address the climate crisis and support environmental activism.

Beyond getting the message out there, digital activism allows anyone with access to the
digital world a platform to make their case and call for change and it can be particularly
beneficial to those who are often silenced or have no vehicle for their message.  By allowing
ordinary citizens to share their stories, it also helps create a better perspective of what is
going on – and can pressure governments to take action on issues that are not normally
reported on within conventional media.

Where digital activism often enjoys the biggest success however, is when it is used as a
complementary tool to offline action or is used as the introductory method to encourage
people to engage in offline action. One of the other key attributes of digital activism is that it
is, for the large part, a non-violent form of protest. Acts of cyber crime are certainly
committed under the guise of ‘digital activism’ (for example, cases of cyberterrorism,
malicious hacking and extreme cyber bullying of a company or organisation) however,
according to a study by the University of Washington, these make up around two to three
percent of total digital activism cases.