New Media, Technology and Activism

This section of the fourth edition of the Gender and Media Diversity Journal, published by the Gender and Media Diversity Centre, explores new media including: comparing social and traditional media; mobile telephone activism; and a new web tool for youth groups using art to support HIV/AIDS activism.


It contains the following articles:

Impact of Social Media on Journalism by Glory Mushinge

This article addresses the relationship between social media and mainstream media. It discusses examples of how social media, such as blogs, can complement or compete with traditional media, and examines whether social media change the way traditional publications/media operate. It suggests a shift in news consumption from "control" to "engagement". The article uses the example of blogs to highlight the personal and narrative nature of engagement. It recognises the extent of the use of social media, and offers as examples: Indymedia; micro-radio; the CIVICUS network, linking civil society; and the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), linking non-governmental organisations. The article lists the advantages of social media as including: participation; openness; conversation; community; and connectedness. In comparing the function of traditional and social media, the author cites the lack of constraints and professionalism in social media as opening a question of whether social media can function to analyse patterns, spot trends, and increase social understanding in the way that traditional media does. The author states that, despite limitations, social media creates a platform for alternative views and voices; and, yet, certain issues, like gender, are under-reported.

Social Networks for Social Change: YAHAnet Goes Live by Claudia Mitchell, Bronwen Low, and Michael Hoechsmann

YAHAnet is a web tool that supports and creates a virtual community of youth organisations around the world dedicated to using the arts and popular culture to address HIV and AIDS. It uses the internet’s capacities to disseminate information and,in addition, uses the emerging social networking aspects of the “Web 2.0” online environment. Because, according to the authors, "Web 2.0" supports a shift in cultural development towards participatory forms, these authors foresee in social networking "a commitment to connecting with others to increase a virtual sense of community. The virtual relationship is very real to the participants despite the mediation of distance and technology." Intending to use the interactive possibilities of social media to create a community-building tool among youth groups, YAHAnet assessed the emerging community of youth groups in the field of arts-based approaches to addressing HIV and AIDS, asked what the organisations needed for a social networking tool, and created a web tool to that those youth organisations wanted. It is, according to these authors, "a multi-faceted information databank, a showcase, a networking space, a community centre, a curricular resource, a source of inspiration, and a site for dialogue and artistic expression."

Mobile Activism or Mobile Hype? by Firoze Manji

Based on two experiences using mobile phones in Africa to address women’s rights and social development, the author analyses whether mobile technology will bring social progress to the economically poor of Africa. The author first examines mobile phone use in the campaign for the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa, adopted by the African Union (AU)in 2003 and in need of ratification by 15 countries. The technical barriers to message transmission in the campaign and the message spamming that it attracted inhibited the success of this particular application of mobile technology but did not reduce the campaign effectiveness because the uniqueness of the cell phone campaign strategy drew a large amount of publicity for ratification. In the second example, the UmNyango Project intended to promote and protect the rights of rural women in the province of KwaZulu Natal (KZN), South Africa, from domestic violence against women and landlessness amongst women. The project created "an SMS gateway through which messages could be distributed to all those enrolled in the project, and it enabled every individual to send messages to the organisers and to the local paralegal officers where they needed assistance with regard to any incidence of violence or threat to their access to land....In practice, the project found SMS to be prohibitively expensive, despite the fact that some level of subsidy was provided by the project towards the cost of SMS." The author states that, "Mobile phones, after all the hype, are like pencils, tools for communication.... Like all technologies, tools do not themselves do anything." He uses the example of SMS hate mail messages to support the position that effects of technology result from the underlying values and morals of its developers, not from the tools themselves, and concludes: "In capitalist societies, all technologies have the potential for magnifying and amplifying social differentiation. It is only through the imposition of the democratic will of citizens can this inherent tendency of technologies be overcome."