This article is important to activist culture in terms of climate change because it discuss the new possibilities that have been created by new media. In the article it discusses the subject of tactical media which is as a way of not only reporting events but also participating in them. This is important to look at for activism because it becomes a new way for activist to create more followers and people to help.
An example of this is seen in the Greenpeace Facebook page when they ask for support on their campaigns, it creates a sense of participation that typical news media could not do in the past. The article also raises a good point that is useful in understanding how activist actually use social media and “new media”. It brings up the idea that they use these sources to bring attention to traditional news media. They create an audience concerned about things like climate change and having a large audience then makes it impossible for the news media to avoid the issue.
An article from The Guardian is important as it gives a critical view on online activism and whether or not it actually works. The article explains that building change like Greenpeace for example creates several small actions that must be taken before change can happen. This is an important note because that is what we see Greenpeace doing with their Facebook page, they make regular post that will grab more and more attention each time. This creates a larger support and more people willing to support their campaigns.
In the article it actually makes reference to a 2011 campaign that Greenpeace created that was almost entirely run through the use of their facebook. The campaign was against Facebook and their use of coal to power their data servers. This resulted in such large support which caused Facebook to take action and announce they would change to renewable energy. This is important to know because it shows that the use of social media works for activism as people don’t have to go out and do something grand to be part of change but rather they can do something as simple as like, share, or comment on a post from the comfort of their own home.
This image was taken at the start of a protest, it shows just how many supporters can be drawn in by things like the above images. Thousands of people can be brought together by activism in order to fight for a single cause.
This image unlike the above shows an activist that took the inititive to paint their whole body and dye the hair blue in order to catch the attention of passers by. This does a great job at gaining attention over such things like a banner because people are not even required to read to understand the message or draw them in.
Climate change is looked upon as something terribly worrisome when it comes to activist. In order to see this, you must look at how activist organizations portray themselves within the media. It is important to look at how the activist culture rally support in their use of social media and other media outlets.
This page will demonstrate how environmental activist organizations don’t let the audience control what they put out. Rather they try and use the power of media to control their audience. This is done in order to get their point across and spread their message.
Activist through the use of media using a hypodermic needle model can initiate a social movement. The objective of this page is to show activist culture on the topic of climate change and just how they try and share their views with people.
EXAMPLES OF ACTIVISM
In this Facebook post GreenPeace are telling their audience about Exxon a corporation that Greenpeace say’s have known the negative effects they have been causing in terms of climate change. They use a picture of what appears to be oil or gas burning on water, this is one example of many of their posts on facebook in which they show a shocking image in order to grab the audiences attention.
This then causes even more worry from people because they aren’t just reading some long post but they have a visual that has a greater affect on them. They also ask for support from their audience to share the message to try and cause change by reporting Exxon to the department of justice. In 5 days of this post being up it was able to get over 1,500 likes and has been shared over 1,000 times. This shows just how powerful this post is and the ability of Greenpeace to use the media to spread their views to a large audience.
This is an image of a poster from a protest showing a glimpse at the shocking things activist use to scare people into gaining support for their cause.
New Media and Activism
Activism and Traditional News
Agents of Social Change
In the text Media and Cultural Studies Keyworks a specific section includes a part in which Lievrouw talks about action and agency within activist media. A major thing that is discussed is how the activist are agents that try to create social change through their actions within the media. An interesting thing to look at in this reading is the idea brought up that many new media activist movements are short lived.
They are said to start and end relatively fast meaning they don’t always work because of issues within the structure itself. This is important to look at as Greenpeace has fought for social change with climate change for a long time, but their individual campaigns do not always last long. This is because without support they fail. This is a bigger problem with things like social media since people usually have a short attention span when it comes to these matters. If change doesn’t happen fast enough people will forget about it because a new campaign will have started. This reading creates a breakdown how this works and why it is a problem for activist in “new media".
Videos
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Climate Change Activism
Page Created By: Trey Pryce
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