Uncategorized

Dear readers,

We have now come to the end of this assignment, which means that you won’t be seeing any new posts here in the future.

We hope that you’ve enjoyed our posts exploring the intersection of activism, digital technology and development.

For us it has been a fascinating and challenging journey – managing a blog was not an easy task – but we all feel like we’ve gained a lot along the way.

Some of the reflections we have from this experience include:

  • Activists use the digital tools available to them based on situations, needs, and the objectives they have for addressing injustice. 
  • The lines between what is and is not activism are blurred in online spaces, as messaging on social justice issues permeates all corners of the internet, social media, and online communities.
  • Interactions in online spaces (even if these spaces are not specifically focused on activism) can influence and help to form a person’s offline activist identity and even their broader networks due to the transference of ideas among people.   
  • However, offline power relations influence interactions in online spaces, often to the detriment of women or other individuals with intersectional identities. 
  • The digital sphere is an important and effective place to get things started, but change typically requires a combination of online and on-site activity. 
  • When it comes to memorable and shareable communication, memes are way ahead of the game. But be careful, what might be appropriate messaging in one part of the world, might be misread in another. 
  • When it comes to assessing the “success” of activism or movements in the digitally networked era it is crucial to look beyond the big numbers of protest attendees or hashtag users and to look at their deeper capacities. It may be relatively easier to bring large numbers of people together quickly in this day and age, but social change typically requires activists and movements to have a deeper underlying capacity that will allow them to change tactics and weather challenges.

Thanks for following us on this journey and to all the readers who engaged in discussion by commenting and sharing their experiences and feedback. We learned so much from you. We hope to cross paths with you all again one day, whether online or offline, in the pursuit of positive social change. 

Kasia, Lauren, Mercy, and Sam