Ban the K-Cup

Recycling as a concept is not new, however, the importance and effectiveness of it in relation to the long-term sustainability of the planet has become a more frequent point of discussion in a business environment and on a personal level. While I would not consider myself to be an environmental activist, I do care about doing my part to reduce the environmental footprint produced through lifestyle choices.

Bypassing the trend towards the single-serving coffee system is something I have consciously chosen to do based on the unnecessary waste and cost. This inspired my petition to educate K-Cup users and encourage a choice of sustainability rather than added convenience. The following you tube video also prompted my motivation to head in this direction.

Based on the course readings and newsworthy events, I was aware of the power of online activism. However, I was surprised to learn that change.org has more than 85 million members and realized I did not understand the extent to which digital media has accelerated this uptake. 

While the sheer volume of members is impressive, this could support the theory of clictavism as outlined by Cadwalladr (2013). 

With the rise of online protest in the networked age, it is so easy to be part of a movement and the commitment can be so negligible that you might not even remember doing it. This is true both from the people signing the petitions and, to some extent, those who are creating then. The impermanent nature of the online format certainly lessens commitment. Unless we commit more than the ability to "click" and "share", we will struggle to gain ground in building and maintaining communities of people with real world desire for that extends beyond a computer screen.

In order to create my online petition in an impactful way I included facts and data to expose the truth behind the concept. In this case, the tactic of “exploring the truth” was used in order to take an evidence-based approach and demand accountability. Simply narrating the ideologies behind why recycling is important would not have had the same impact as the startling data that was used to support the case. 

Keep the K-Cup out of the landfill - Change.org

The creation of the video above and the petition, are examples of a more intensive form of media-making. The act of signing the petition or posting to a social media site like the twitter feed below, are examples where a less intensive form of media-making sees a higher rate of engagement as identified by Costanza-Chock (2012, Figure 3). A combination of mediums creates momentum by which to share messages, however, it seems to have the most robust result when paired with face-to-face engagement and real-world activities. 

#killthekcup Tweets

References

Cadwalladr, C. (2013). Inside Avaaz – Can Online Activism Really Change the World? Retrieved March 13 http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/17/avaaz-online-activism-can-it-change -the-world

Can action on the web lead change in the world? [digital image]. (2012). Retrieved from http://kalw.org/post/technology-and-social-causes-activism-or-clicktivism

Costanza-Chock, S. (2013). Mic Check! Media Practices in the Occupy Movement: Social Movement Studies. Retrieved March 13 http://web.mit.edu/schock/www//docs/pubs/mic-check-2012-costanza-chock.pdf. 

Kill the K-Cup. (2015, January 7). Kill the K-Cup [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRGiGbX9lIo&sns=em

Tactical Tech, (2009, 2014). 10 Tactics for Turning Information into Action. Retrieved March 8 from http://informationactivism.org. 

Assignment 5: #helpMaria

Please watch
Maria Victoria Venancio: Paralyzed Filipino TFW fights to stay in Edmonton | CTV News


Maria Vanancio has been haunting me.  

Not literally, mind you, but certainly costing me some sleep.  You see, I was a Temporary Foreign Worker once, just like her.  With no job prospects for teachers or Arts grads in Alberta in the mid-90s (thank you, Ralph Klein), my husband and I packed away everything we owned and took our sorry selves to Japan to live and to teach.  We were lucky: as university graduates, we had the opportunity to land some lucrative positions - working in Japan changed us, working with its people made us better.

Still, it was difficult at times.  Getting sick was a frequent activity in the first year - all those new viruses and allergens put us in our local hospital a handful of times.  Our doctor was an older man, in his 50s; he would dye his white, Einsteinesque hair purple to make his pediatric patients laugh. He and his nursing staff were something else; we ALWAYS felt safe and cared for.  I couldn't imagine having had to endure illness without being able to rely on them.

As Canadians, Albertans, Edmontonians, we've endured a good deal of tragedy in the last year - Nathan O'Brien and his grandparents, Alvin & Kathy Liknes in Calgary; W/O Patrice Vincent and Cpl. Nathan Cirillo's in Quebec and Ottawa; Cindy Duong, Thuy Tien Truong and seven others in Edmonton just after Christmas. We've rallied around their families, helping, searching, raising funds. It's who we are. So helping out Maria should be a no-brainer.

It takes a good deal of courage to step up and take a stand; technology has made it easier to

via https://twitter.com/HumanRtsV/status/576851643167219712/photo/1

do so. I've learned this throughout this course and have taken plenty of opportunities to participate.  Christiensen took the time to explore for any truth to the slactivist condescension; he found what I did - that, through the dissemination of technology (everyone's got a smartphone in his/her hands these days), the shocking, happy truth: SO MANY are willing to participate. And the traditional institutes of politicians and journalists are sitting up and taking notice. Slactivisim is alive, well, and more effective than its contemporary. 

I do hope this petition goes somewhere - to help this out, I've taken a lesson from Kreiss and acted as intermediary to facilitate this message's dissemination: #helpMaria will be this petition's hashtag, I will tweet a link to the petition to Edmonton-Clarieview MLA Thomas Lukaszuk and Edmonton-St. Albert MP Brent Rathgerber, both of whom have already taken up Maria's cause, as well as all of the media personalities who've done stories on her.  Moreover, everyone I know will be receiving a link and will be asked to pass it on. 

Something has to be done to #helpMaria. She deserves it. Please click on the link below and add your voice to make a difference in Maria Vanancio's life.

@jessl #NMN Let's #helpMaria Venancio get the treatment she deserves. https://t.co/oCk0SAa6hx … via @CdnChange
— Lisa Slywka (@LisaSlywkaUA) March 15, 2015

REFERENCES

Christensen, H. (2011, February 7). Political activities on the Internet: Slacktivism or political participation by other means? First Monday 16(2). Retrieved from http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3336/2767 

Kreiss, D. (2012). Acting in the public sphere: The 2008 Obama campaign’s strategic use of new media to shape narratives of the presidential race. Research in Social Movements, Conflict and change. Retrieved from http://danielkreiss.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/kreiss_actinginpublic1.pdf

Pratt, S. (2012, February 23). Injured worker wants to stay: Filipina says she's determined to retrain if she's not deported. Edmonton Journal, p. A5. Retrieved from http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Injured+temporary+foreign+worker+determined+work+again+allowed+stay/10834677/story.html

Weisberg, N (reporter). (2015, February 17). Quadriplegic temporary foreign worker fights to stay in Canada [Evening news report]. In CTV Edmonton (Producer), CTV news at 6 with Daryl McIntyre. Toronto, Canada: CTV. Retrieved from http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/quadriplegic-temporary-foreign-worker-fights-to-remain-in-canada-1.2239700

Module 9: Technobiophilia

Module 9: Technobiophilia

Monday, March 16, 2015 - Sunday, March 22, 2015 March 18: Choose any of the readings from this module and paste it into Wordle.net. Save and embed the Wordle tag cloud in a blog post. Write a few points about what you notice: what has the tag cloud highlighted? Does it align with your interpretation? March 20: Having read the excerpt on Amazon of Sue Thomas’s “An Enormous, Unbounded World,” ask Sue a question about what you’ve read. Send your tweet or tweets to both @suethomas and @JessL

Module 8 - The power of the hashtag

I was super impressed with the strategic thinking that paved the way for the Obama 2008 victory (Kreiss, 2012).  What really was compelling for me was the fact that Obama’s strategists acted as intermediaries between the then-fractious new and traditional media.  It also led to the legitimization of new media, the Huffington Post – taking a cue from new media, traditional media outlets such as The Washington Post, WIRED, and even the good old Edmonton Journal has taken to offering blogs to attract its online readers.  Seems as though what was seen as distortive phenomenon has now been disseminated or mainstreamed, resulting in the evolution of the fifth estate as we know it.  It’s interesting that traditional media has taken on the role of reporting and covering SM activity on top of using SM as the ground-level foray into topical investigation.  How far we have come.

Social Movements: Mass-media versus Social Media

Social media is more than Slacktivism. Social movements, such as The Twitter Revolutions, (see Arab Spring, Tunisia, Moldova) are solid proofs that the capability of everyday people to circulate information and opinion online, in real time, can mobilize public opinion, and even overthrow political regimes. Hence, social media are extremely powerful, especially because they bring something new on the scene of protest : the peer-to-peer communication. This is perhaps the most important aspect about social movements -- choosing to protest on social media, people bypass the doubtful interests of mass-media, owned and controlled by a few people.

Accordingly, I do not agree with Robert Putnam, cited by Christensen (2011) when he argues that “citizens are becoming ‘lonely bowlers’ who no longer interact socially, and as a consequence no longer willing to take part in political matters “ (para. 8). He then argues that “the media — particularly TV but also the Internet — have helped decrease stocks of social capital, and thereby also the willingness among citizens to engage in political activities” (Putnam, cited by Christensen, 2011 para. 8). He is wrong. Twitter Revolutions indicate the contrary. Furthermore, as mentioned, it is a big difference between social media and mass-media due to the peer-to-peer communication brought by the latter; moreover, if before one may have been a ‘lonely bowler’ watching TV, now he can easily find like-minded people on social media, and set up a Twitter Revolution.

By the same token, it is not relevant that studies have found that“[o]n Twitter, political talk is highly partisan, where users’ clusters are characterized by homogeneous views and are linked to information sources” (Wihbey, 2013). It is not relevant because political talk is not supposed to be objective. It never was. It is supposed to bring forward debates based on ideas that will eventually improve the community’s life as a whole.

References

Christensen, H. (2011). Political activities on the Internet: Slacktivism or political participation by other means?. First Monday, 16(2). Retrieved from http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3336/2767

Wihbey, J. (2013). Pew Research: Twitter reaction to events often at odds with overall public opinion. Journalist's Resource. Retrieved 9 March 2015, from http://journalistsresource.org/studies/politics/digital-democracy/pew-research-twitter-reaction-events-odds-overall-public-opinion#sthash.ws7YuaIG.dpuf

Slacktivism revisited

It's been an interesting module so far—reading about online activism while playing out a bit of online activism of my own. My Change.org petition to save McDougall Church is quickly closing in on 1,200 signatories, with hundreds upon hundreds of them leaving passionate, articulate testimonials on the "Reasons I signed" message board.

It was interesting and heartening to read the Christensen article, with its cautiously positive message about so-called slactivism  (“at worst harmless fun and can at best help invigorate citizens”). Had I not taken this course, I may never have even considered launching an online petition. Sure, I had signed a few over the years (usually only to placate friends), but I would have counted myself a cynic. Do these things really accomplish anything other than simply allowing people to feel virtuous? Do they change anything? Do they distract from more traditional (and more effective) forms of activism?

Christensen fails to find any tangible evidence that online petitions achieve their goals, but he quite correctly points out that they don't often actually expect to. He also can find no evidence that online activism in any way diminishes its off-line, IRL counterpart, and finds some evidence that it may actually promote it.

My experience with the McDougall petition—sign it, awreddy!—has shown that an online petition can greatly invigorate interest in a cause, and that it can act as a repository of articulate, tangible support. So far, it has also done nothing to diminish or distract from the actions of Friends of McDougall, the group organizing the off-line strategies to save the building.

Another of this week's readings that particularly piqued my interest was Mitchell & Hitlin's piece on Twitter—specifically their observation that Twitter reactions generally tend to be more liberal than overall public opinion (though, occasionally, the opposite can be true, at least in the U.S.).

This week my biggest Twitter kick has been following the #PrenticeBlamesAlbertans hashtag, the massive outpouring of outraged and/or satirical tweets in reaction to Premier Jim Prentice's unfortunate statement that Albertans should "look in the mirror" to determine the cause of Alberta's current financial woes.

Along with the delicious online torrent of snark, the hashtag generated a few superb memes:

"Look in the mirror", Prentice tells everyone but Prentice. #PrenticeBlamesAlbertans pic.twitter.com/TU19Xx6gi5
— sally poulsen (@SallyPoulsen) March 5, 2015

References:

Christensen, H. (2011). “Political Activities on the Internet: Slacktivism or Political Participation by Other Means?” First Monday. Retrieved March 8, 2015 at http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3336/2767

Mitchell, A & Hitlin, P. (2013). “Twitter Reaction to Events Often at Odds with Overall Public Opinion,” Pew Research Center. Retrieved March 8, 2015 at http://journalistsresource.org/studies/politics/elections/pew-research-twitter-reaction-events-odds-overall-public-opinion

Politics and the Active Sphere

In Kries’s paper he writes about one of Obama’s staffers in the run-up to the election for party leader saying that their communications work, particularly online, was ‘‘all about driving the narrative.’  Barack Obama is the first presidential candidate whose victory has been attributed to his use of the Internet (Carpenter, 2010). 

The people in Obama’s camp during the election knew that control of communications in a presidential campaign had to be maintained in a top down style while employing the social media campaigning strategies that had begun with Howard Dean. The Obama camp developed the my.barackobama.com website that was used to connect users and develop social networking. But they were also savvy enough to realize that they had to maintain a relationship with mainstream media in order to legitimize their work.

What Obama’s communications team were more successful at than his opponents were, was the ability to reach a demographic that had not been somewhat ignored, and that was youth. Lessig argued that in 2008, “The key networking advance in the Obama field operation was really deploying community­-building tools in a smart way from the very beginning.” Youth were significant part of this community.

Barack Obama used online communication to reach people and by “Using the Web, the Obama camp turbocharged age-old campaign tools” (Lessig, 2008).  Kriess was able to show in his paper that a hybrid news system was created to reach the masses.

Christensen is a little less optimistic about the impact the internet and social media movements can have on political activity. He points out that much of the activity round political discourse is merely a form of ‘slacktivism’. Morozov (2009) defines it as ‘political activities that have no impact on real–life political outcomes, but only serve to increase the feel–good factor of the participants.”

While Putnam (2000) claims that a ‘generational displacement’ from politics and public life has taken place by youth based on the rise of a passive television culture, others see a new form of participatory politics emerging.   Youth civic participation has increased but in a way that has changed and evolved utilizing the digital world. Conventional participation in politics has been replaced by a ‘lifestyle politics’.  Youth are more involved in the production of their political identities rather than adopting the one their parents, church or school tells them they should have and have created a new means of civic engagement that is described as “social movement citizenship” (Bennett, 2008).  The generation gap in politics is being replaced by engaged youth who are forming Participatory Culture Civics (PCC) Youth and Participatory Politics (YPP) Networks focused on creating influence and influencing peers.  Young people have adopted a ‘self-actualizing citizenship model’ in environments that are based on networking horizontally rather than top-down, where there is interactivity and opportunity to contribute and create.

Withdrawal from civic and political engagement by youth has been replaced by a new form of civic participation (that includes civic activities, such as volunteering, community service or activism.  Youth are attracted to evolving means of civic engagement that include influence through consumerism including boycotts, blogging and  having their say through various social media channels. They are exerting their influence in different forms, reaching larger audiences yet still influence politics on the ground as in the 2008 Obama campaign.