Digitally Enabled Social Change: Activism in the Internet Age

by Jennifer Earl, Katrina Kimport

Much attention has been paid in recent years to the emergence of "Internetactivism," but scholars and pundits disagree about whether online political activity isdifferent in kind from more traditional forms of activism. Does the global reach and blazing speedof the Internet affect the essential character or dynamics of online political protest? In Digitally Enabled Social Change , Jennifer Earl and Katrina Kimport examine keycharacteristics of web activism and investigate their impacts on organizing andparticipation. Earl and Kimport argue that the web offers two key affordancesrelevant to sharply reduced costs for creating, organizing, and participating in protest;and the decreased need for activists to be physically together in order to act together. Drawing onevidence from samples of online petitions, boycotts, and letter-writing and e-mailing campaigns,Earl and Kimport show that the more these affordances are leveraged, the more transformative thechanges to organizing and participating in protest.

Genres: Academic, Sociology, Activism

258 pages, Hardcover

First published March 4, 2011

Reviews

[Ari Stillman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book that could have been a paper if it didn't repeat and recap points so often. Using the frameworks of supersizing and Theory 2.0, Earl imagines the possibilities for protest when SMOs are no longer necessary as the main brokers of activism and would-be activists have decreased costs that would deter them from participating in forms of protest. Her fieldwork draws from online petitions (when they were in vogue) and to that end the book already feels incredibly dated despite being published in 2011. Even so, the book's value today isn't in the continued relevance of online petitions but in thinking through how variables in protest change through technological affordances and how they make possible new conditions for activism and how we assess the significance of different forms of digitally mediated protest. To that end, the book is a worth a skim or at least reading a more thorough review.

[szymborskalyte · Rating 2 out of 5]

Feels dated.

[liz · Rating 2 out of 5]

the initial thesis is being repeated over five times throughout the book, and the writing is rather unprofessional

[Opensource.com · Rating 5 out of 5]

You've already heard both sides in the tired debate over the role web technologies play in contemporary social and political movements. "The web alters everything!" some say. "Organizing and mobilizing for social change will never be the same again! We need to rethink everything we know about studying activism today!" And others retort: "Politics have changed very little in recent decades! New technologies simply extend and amplify older tendencies! We needn't modify our research programs one bit!"

Read the full review at Opensource.com

Digitally Enabled Social Change: Activism in the Internet Age by Jennifer Earl and Katrina Kimportis one of the books on the Opensource.com 2014 Annual Reading List. Visit our site for details on how you can win a free copy of the book.

[Danna]

The book on activism in the digital communication age by Jennifer Earl and Katrina Kimport is mentioned in an article about "clicktivism" via Facebook (of course, ha-ha), and I was compelled to add it to the to-read list.