Digital Media Activism

This course will offer a critical introduction to the context and impact of digital media activism expanding around the world. In popular discourse, there is immense optimism around digital media as a means for empowering citizens and enabling democratic participation. However, recent episodes of government, market and populist manipulations of digital media have exposed the limits of digital civic activism. This course will offer students the opportunity to analyze the highly contested terrain of digital activism, and recognize that digital activism is not a uniform movement but a plurality of tactics, strategies, and agendas. Rather than celebrating digital technologies as tools for civic activism that is applicable anywhere and anytime, the course will challenge the students to interrogate diverse conditions that shape contention and claims to social justice. Students will also become familiar with higher order social theories that help in interrogating the ways digital media intersect with political actions. The course will combine theoretical readings with analyses of signature episodes such as the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street and also lesser known events of Internet activism in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Pakistan, India, China, Indonesia and other countries. 

The course will have a combination of lectures, discussions, classroom activities and film watching, to simulate, in some measure, the promise and limits of digital activism. At the end of the course, students will apply theoretical insights to develop a social media campaign for social advocacy.

Grading 

Students are encouraged to read the key texts assigned to each class, and prepare responses and questions to participate in classroom discussions. Students will post two guiding questions or summaries for discussion based on the week’s readings on Moodle at least two days before the class meets.  Grading will be based on the final paper (3000 words for undergraduate students, 5000 words for master’s students) which will have four components:

1. Explicate the problem/challenge/organization targeted by the digital campaign. 

2. Provide a critical overview of digital media initiatives already available in addressing the problem or used by the organization, and what new interventions you would make.

3. Compare your campaign with one or more of the digital activism cases discussed in the readings, and delineate the differences in strategies, political context, and potential impact. 

4. Discuss the theoretical problem the campaign gestures towards, and situate the campaign in a broader discussion on digital media, power and politics.