THEORY

Digital activism

Digital activism is a form of activism that uses the Internet and digital media as important platforms for mass mobilization and political action. The effects of digital media on society are neither universal nor unambiguous. For this, the goal of activism is to bring about social change. Research on explicit forms of bottom-up digital activism, in form from protests, petitions or uprisings, has demonstrated quite convincingly that digital tools can under circumstances be used successfully to challenge, provoke, and even overthrow prevailing power structures. Furthermore, research on digital media has revealed that the internet and social media have some sort of capacity to create networks of resistance, to counter dominant power structures (see Lindgren, p. 218). But in a world dominated by the Internet and information technology, new channels for activism have opened. In recent decades, digital activism has received more attention. Digital activism refers to political activism on the internet or political movements relying on it (see Özkula, p.1). “Examples include politically motivated actions comprising of both digital or online versions of traditional activism practices and the use of internet-enabled digital technologies in support or preparation of offline activism”, Özkula. This development has received broad scholarly, journalistic, and public attention, for enabling two-way or “many-to-many” mass communication. In the last two decades that change has shown to enable high degrees of interaction and networking, for example through tweeting, posting, chatting, and sharing - particularly of user-generated 3 content and through personalized action frames across national and regional boundaries. These attributes change movement dynamics through new connective action frames that include self-organizing and organizationally enabled networks (see Özkula, p. 61). Digital activism remains a contested topic and is somewhat untransparent in terms of its scope and social impact, as well as issues that inform its conceptualization. Yet, in many ways, the notion of being digital reinforces that the "digital" is different, "a thing in itself," leading to a "digital dualism"-a distinction between physicality and digitality (see Özkula, p. 61). Therefore online, and offline activities cannot be separated clearly and are at best blurred (see Özkula, p. 62). One explanatory approach to digital activism is presented by Joss Hands’ (2011) tripartite approach to activism as dissent, resistance, and rebellion, and the definition of digital activism as "political participation, activities, and protests organized in digital networks beyond representative politics" and by non-state actors (see Özkula, p. 63). Originally, online activists used the Internet as a medium for disseminating information because of its ability to reach large audiences across borders instantly. An evolved form of digital activism uses the World Wide Web as a site of protest that mirrors and amplifies offline demonstrations which can include forms like email and social media campaigns, virtual sit-ins, and "hacktivism" (disrupting websites).

The influence of social networks on social movements

Power is the most fundamental process in society because society is defined by values and institutions, and what is valued and institutionalized is defined by power relations. Power is exercised through coercion (or the possibility of it) and/or through constructions of meaning based on discourses through which social actors direct their actions. Social media are tools through which the public can be reached and influenced. Social media have two types of influence on social movements. The first is to accelerate recruitment, mobilization, communication, and dissemination of information, and to expand spaces of mobilization that were not available with traditional mobilization techniques. Social movements can reach millions of people inside and outside the country through Facebook and Twitter. The rapid dissemination of information helps to validate and expand information, as well as override the bias of the system in the media. This change has given social movements the opportunity to spread their opinions/stances and be able to quickly find sympathizers. The second impact of social networks is that they have led to significant changes in the processes and tactics that promote participation and organization. This contrasts with the earlier characteristics of social movements, whose activities required a physical presence to be organized and where the transmission of information and instructions was only possible through physical human contact. These characteristics required social movements to spend more time and effort organizing, while their impact was constrained by limited mobility in physical spaces. Social media is not only a tool for disseminating information and coordinating activities, but also an emotional platform for building identities, sharing emotions, and building collective sentiments. These new social media have promoted a new kind of virtual collective identity. Based on identity and ideology building, the interests of most social movements are based on the interests of different social groups. Social media have created platforms for ideologically differentiated organizations and individuals whose demands on issues can be united, effectively forming "event-based coalitions." These coalitions focus on a common goal and coalesce around specific actions or tactics. During the least active phase of the movement, key actors (referred to as "key social movement actors") remain active to disseminate information and attitudes and interact with members of their group to keep the movement going. These leaders start and establish the movements and remain active until their end. 5 Historically, social movements have always depended on the existence of various forms of communication mechanisms. The progressive transformation of communication technology in the digital age has produced new ways of constructing meaning (cf. Lindgren, p. 223 f.). Following Castel's theory (the potentially powerful influence of digitally networked social movements can be explained using Castells' (2009) theory of communication power), the new form of interaction in digital society is "mass self-communication. "Moreover, as Castells points out, digital communication is multimodal-it is embedded in a complex system of networked texts, images, videos, and relationships that allow users to constantly refer to a "global hypertext" of content. Such digitally networked content can be reused and remixed by users according to their needs and objectives. Self-communication provides a technological platform for building autonomous social actors, both individually and collectively (see Lindgren, p. 224). Digitally networked movements often disseminate their ideas in the form of easily personalized and meme-like small pieces of activist raw material. Such personal action frames are inclusive and allow for a wide variety of different individual reasons people may have for manifesting or contesting something. Digital society also offers a variety of personal communication technologies that allow such issues to be shared in the form of texts, images, tweets, status updates, profiles, remixes, or mashups. Collective action frameworks, on the other hand, require individuals to share much broader common identifications to act under the same banner (see Lindgren, p. 226).

CONCLUSION

Digital activism has proven to be an effective means of grassroots political mobilization and offers new opportunities to engage protesters. The Internet increases the visibility of activism and therefore facilitates suppression in repressive contexts (see Power, 2020). Online action is important in countries where public space is highly regulated or under military control (see Fuentes, 2014). Social movements have become dependent on different levels of leadership and activists to communicate their messages and ideas and to show solidarity with these ideas in specific campaigns (Obaid, 2020). Social media facilitates online activism, especially by documenting and compiling individual experiences, building communities, forming norms, and developing shared realities. However, most empirical evidence suggests that online and offline activism are positively related and intertwined (not a digital dualism), as posts on social media can mobilize others for offline protests (see Greijdanus, 2020). In addition, digital movements could combine and tailor their resources to the purpose of the movement (public media applications versus individualized media applications). They would be able to amass more resources and adapt their messages and strategies to changing circumstances, leading to a higher success rate for digital activism (Smelser's value-added principle in social movement theory). Digital movements that use both online and offline strategies are more likely to succeed than digital movements that use only online media. A robust combination of offline movements and the media power of online movements can help activism succeed (Shi, pp. 10-12, 2016).