Online social movement

Online communities build off social movements, enabling the connection of persons worldwide to develop a base and gain awareness to the cause.

The impact of online movements

The impact of online movements has been substantial since the introduction of the internet. With the ever-growing medium of social media, internet activism has reached the forefront of the internet. Through the use of social networking sites as Facebook and content-sharing sites as YouTube, the opportunity for wide-scale, online social participation has increased.[1]

Nowadays the importance of giving voice to priorities such as public health, political unrest, disaster relief, and climate change have introduced internet as a source for social change.

Beneficial impacts

The younger generations of the world spend much of their time online, and while this could be seen as detrimental physically, it can be positive when it comes to education and learning. Awareness and education are some of the benefits of online movements.

Detrimental impacts

Some experts believe there are potential weaknesses and long-term repercussions that can be identified with online movements. Some examples are clicktivism and slacktivism, where the use of social media to promote a cause include activities such as:[2]

Examples of online movements

2012 Stop Kony Poster By Invisible Children

Social movements advance their work through the media. It is easier, less costly and time consuming to link collective behaviour as real time communication can occur vastly and simultaneously via social media.[3] Some examples of online movements include:

The future

The future of online movements is hard to predict. However, there are some clear directions where they could certainly lead towards. Vanessa DiMauro believes the biggest trend concerning online communities in the near future is private online communities. While these large networks that we encounter and use on a day-to-day basis have provided us with a productive and collaborative experience they have also increased to unmanageable sizes. To become a learning environment these groups need to be much smaller and manageable. This is where the idea and trend of private online communities could potentially be the future of online communities.[4]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Rotman, D., Preece, J., Vieweg, S., Shneiderman, B., Yardi, S., Pirolli, P., Chi, E.H., Glaisyer, T. (2011). From Slacktivism to Activism: Participatory Culture in the Age of Social Media
  2. ↑ Clicktivist.(2014). What is clicktivism?. Retrieved 16 May 2014 from http://www.clicktivist.org/what-is-clicktivism/
  3. ↑ Thompson, J. B. (2013) Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media
  4. ↑ DiMauro, V. (2011). The Future Of Online Community. Retrieved from http://www.leadernetworks.com/2011/10/future-of-online-community.html
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