Technology, Activism, and the Arab Spring

Information is power. It can raise awareness, change perceptions, expose injustice, impulse action, and improve lives. It can change the world.

Information Activism is what happens when people use information to promote positive social change. It is what happens when we have the information to confront a problem, understand the solution, and choose to take action. In our global interconnected world this means using information and communications technology. It means using the internet and cellular phones.

In 2011 the United Nations estimates that 2 billion people use the Internet and 5 billion use cellular phones world-wide. The Internet was conceived in a US Weapons Research lab during the cold war. Almost since the beginning activists have used the medium to communicate, colaborate, and share information. In the early years activists sent e-mails to lists of supporters, maintaind Usenet message boards, hosted FTP file sharing sites, and used internet relay chat (IRC). Later they put up websites to represent their cause, wrote blogs to diseminate alternative information, and pioneered online outreach for fundraising. In more recent years the web has become a medium for conducting research, lobbying government officials, and for cultural production of artistic works such as videos and photos. Cellular phones and SMS have become the primary tool for coordinating direct action such as street protests.

A case in point: youth and technology have combined in the past year to change the mideast forever in the revolutions know as the “Arab Spring”. One of the most helpful tools for understanding what is happening in North Africa is this interactive timeline which shows the path of each of 17 mideast countries and the important protests, political moves, international response, and ultimately regime change in that country.

Mohammed Bouazizi was a young unemployed college graduate who was trying to get by selling fruit from a cart in Tunisia when the police confiscated his goods because he did not pay a fee. In the ultimate act of protest he set himself on fire in front of the governors building on December 17, 2010. His friends shared cell phone video of the resulting protests on YouTube.  These videos were then shown by the traditional media like CNN and Al-Jazeera. Only 28 days later President Ben Ali was forced to flee the country after 23 years of repressive rule. This was only the beginning.

In Egypt there were two important tools used to organize and communicate the protests. The mosque for the older generation and Facebook for the younger generation. Facebook, text messages, and cell phone cameras enabled communication within Egypt, but also helped to bring international pressure on President Hosni Mubarak to step down which he did on February 11^th after 29 years in power.

The governments of Lybia, Syria, and other countries were not caught by surprise and the ongoing fight has been longer and harder there. Interestingly where governments have tried to block access to cell phones and the internet it has pushed more young people out into the streets to protest. Most young people see access to information as a fundamental human right.

Technology’s role in the Arab Spring must not be overstated. Technology empowers people for good or for bad. It serves to amplify the messages but it does not create the messages. However, without a doubt, it has had an impact and we see the change.

You don’t have to want to overthrow the government to adopt the techniques of information activism. Many problems, big and small, local and global, can be confronted with the techniques of information activism.

The information age is here and with it comes the power to all of us to change things.

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