Activism and Technology Research Paper

Introduction

Activism has become a generational motif within the current society and throughout the human history. Many artisans, writers, and poets have captured the concept of activism and its changes throughout the course of humanity. Rudyard Kipling’s “A Pict Song” offers a first person sociological view into the emotions felt by the oppressed people of the Roman Imperial era. The imagery radiates a grim yet empowering message of defiance that has helped sculpt society’s modern concept of activism.

A Pict Song was written about the turbulent period when the Roman Empire was beginning to impose its rule upon the Pict people. The Picts were a clan of semi-barbaric people existing until the tenth century. Located in what is now modern day Scotland, they were very much associated with Great Brittan through trade. When Rome expanded its empire to great Brittan, the Picts began to experience campaigns of violence and control from the Roman Empire.

The speaker in the poem speaks in a confident, yet a hopeless tone. His efforts seem to reflect more of a temper tantrum than an attempt to fight the oppressive forces. During this period, attempts to protest big government certainly ended with death. This rebellious attitude and willingness to settle as just a mere thorn in the foot of Rome, was an empowering idea to the individual living in a lower class society.

This poem lends a voice to a class of people that previously had never been able to express their point of view. Lack of education and a society that did not embrace the fine arts left them far behind the growing and evolving world powers. Most of the scholarly works done during the Picts’ era were from the Roman point of view. These books poems and plays would depict the Picts in a barbaric, savage manner.

Several centuries ago, the world has given birth to the advancement in technology and a greater appreciation for life, happiness and fulfillment. This mindset created a feeling of empowerment within the individual and a sense of equality throughout the human race. Taking the Pict song as the media to pour the community outcry, we can compare and contrast it with the created technologies in the modern age.

The word space has acquired a new meaning in relationship to modern day living. In an ordinary context, the word will mean a static location, but the new accorded meaning will describe space as sub-sequential event that comes about from interaction of physically existing factors such as a geographical region and virtual aspects that entail ideas and values. The desire to create ample space has been as a result of various causes such as the need to end oppression that exist in the society.

In the modern living, technology has offered a good platform in which the revolution agenda has been conceived, born and raised to a point its real actualizes. Whereas there are great differences between the ancient oppression and the modern one, it is academically factual to argue that the oppression does matter. Instead, what matters is the affected subject and how they seek to end the oppression.

The world has experienced a reduction in the organization that has been utilized as political oppression machinery. This has been facilitated by the development of social capital. This ideology was developed by Pierre Bourdieu and his colleague James Coleman. However, their idea was used by Robert Pitman in his article with a title of making democracies work. He effectively derived the relationship between social capital and the purpose of having civic associations.

Pitman defines social capital as the aspect of utilizing the social nature of human being to connect them together, but for connection to work, trust and reciprocity of the involved people has to be unquestionable. His concept depicts social capital as both structurally and socially oriented.

His argument further suggests that the horizontal network that is established in the structure of the civic associated are beefed up. They are beefed up by embodying values and norm with the view of creating both social and private goods. This means that both the individual and the society benefit. In addition, he argues that civil society plays a critical role in nurturing social capital that is responsible for facilitating political participation by the citizens which in turn result in a good governance.

Recently, the social media has become the most effective tool that has been applied to develop civil society, consolidate the civilian demand force which has facilitated participation in good governance and political responsibility of those in power. It has also helped archive the argued ideologies of Putman.

The social media remains as just one of the media that has been applied in addressing social injustices. In this regard, it means that it operates within a given framework.

This framework is further subdivided into several frames as discussed. Free press frame stipulates that the media has the right to operate without influence from any third party including the government. Media democracy provides for the development of informed public which is capable of self-governance whereas recognizing the role of the media in developing such a society (Livermore, 2012).

The right to communicate is another frame that serves to explain that there is a connection between communication and other established human rights.

Cultural environmental frame seeks to differentiate the media activism from environmental activism through the use of distressful content. Media justice frame is the newest frame to be established, and it advocates for involvement of the minority in the governance of a country. This hopes to eliminate the existence of marginalization since the preceding frames failed to accommodate the role of minority.

The existence of these frames shows how the world has grown to be a dynamic place of living. In addition, this phenomenon suggests that there is no general approach to address all the concerns that face the public. The varieties of the frame also help to avoid fall out in advocating for certain infringement of rights. For instance, the term democracy in today’s world has been associated with the concept of capitalism which is viewed negatively by various part of the world.

This is because the concept of capitalism does not comply with their agenda of fighting oppression. In another view, most people associate the term democratization of the media as the permit for the medial to go unregulated by the law, facilitate private ownership of medial houses and abolishment of regulation that are mean to safeguard the interest of the public especially children and women. This divergence leads to diversification of causes of activism.

Recently, activism has taken a more precise mainstream than in the past. This is because, over the years, the world has realized unprecedented expansion of cause -oriented activism because of oriented politics. In the earlier years, political participation focuses primarily on the obligation of the citizen to a state. For example, the election process is seen as an ambiguous political activity. However, this process becomes a source of pressure for the elected representative (Earl & Katrina, 2011).

The campaign process as a segment of the electro process is an activity of mutual interest and benefit to the community, but this segment requires hard work, resilience and sacrifice from both the electorate and aspirants.

After the conclusion of the election and upon election of a representative, contacting the elected representative will results from an individual effort and consequently individual benefit since it does not require cooperation from other citizens. Community organization will contain donor organizations. This shows how the citizens will contribute to good governance through active participation.

In addition, the earlier literature differentiated protest politics from conventional politics. In the modern day, protest politics will be in the context of the willingness by the citizen to participate both directly and indirectly in either lawful or unlawful activities to express dissatisfaction with the existing regime. However, these activities are no longer seen as civil disobedience. This has happened because these activities cover a wide area and attract a large number of people. Importantly, they have been mainstreamed.

Changed repertoires have facilitated the differentiation of citizen-oriented action and cause oriented action (Chadwick, & Philip, 2009). Citizen oriented action will relate to activities that affect the citizen directly such as elections while the cause oriented will relate to policy concerns.

However, the two categories are different but, at some instances, they are adjoined. In several cases, political parties have organized mass protests. The new activism process has chosen to apply a combination of the two methods of repertoires. This will involve using the mass media and lobbying process. The key difference between the cause oriented, and citizen-oriented activisms are manifested in their purpose since cause oriented focuses in follow-ups on policy and issues.

This policies and issues are outside the election considerations, and they must be affecting a wide range of diverse target. In addition, the cause oriented targets the issues that relate to lifestyle and consumer hence establishing the boundary between social and political aspect of activism. The targeted institution is the government and parliament but it also factors in the other major players such as the private sector, public sector and nonprofit making.

Framing is the modern day strategy that has been applied to generate, distribute and content the literature that is used in the description of the activist movement (Castells, 2000). This is carried out to validate the advanced claims and provide motivation to the people. Technology has, therefore, been used to develop opportunity structure in the activism of modern world.

The structure shall entail stabilizing elite alignment and increasing the social movement activities. This research paper hence shall consider how technology has facilitated the mainstreaming of the modern day activism with the view of building cause-oriented activism. Technology offers the opportunity for activist to present their grievances in all three persons.

Research question

In relations to comparative literature, how has technology influenced the mainstreaming of activism to build on cause-oriented repertoires?

Works Cited

Castells, Manuel. The rise of the network society: rise of the network society. 2. ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. Print.

Chadwick, Andrew, and Philip Howard. Routledge handbook of Internet politics. London: Routledge, 2009. Print.

Earl, Jennifer, and Katrina Kimport. Digitally enabled social change: activism in the Internet age. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2011. Print.

Livermore, Celia. E-politics and organizational implications of the Internet power, influence, and social change. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference, 2012. Print.