The latest issue of Comunicar (Vol. XXV, n. 53, 4th quarter, October 1 2017) (https://www.grupocomunicar.com/index.php?contenido=revista&numero=53) sheds lights on one of the most popular topics in nowadays academia – cyber activism and empowerment. A meta-analysis leads four specific empirical studies based in different nations and regions.
In the past decade, along with the global uprising cases is the blossom of research on social activism that is inevitably intertwined with communication studies. Obviously, the prevalence of digital-aided communication tools has played an essential role not only in protesting activities, but in most areas of human social life. Use of digital media enlarges scale and transforms essence of social occurrences: the speed and scale of mass communication has been significantly heightened so that attentions on certain events have been broadened from local to global range; the breaking-out, mobilization and sustaining of social protests have been changed by people’s use of digital media. “Connective action” suggested by Lance Bennett and Alexandra Segerberg offers an innovative paradigm to refresh our understanding on how human actions could be connected with each other. (https://www.amazon.com/Logic-Connective-Action-Personalization-Contentious/dp/1107642728)
In this current issue, papers such as “Cyberactivisim in the Process of Political and Social Change in Arab Countries” and “Protesting on Twitter: Citizenship and Empowerment from Public Education” prove the prevalence and importance of digital-aided communication in protests that are both contentious and on everyday bases. The former one highlights the sustaining of movement networks that allied citizens from contentious moments to the ever longer period of “movement awaited” – the ebbs and flows of protests. The latter one offers a mapping of how anonymous citizens reacted to governmental decisions on the online platform.
That said, the spectrum ranged from connective action and collective action spans from one end of human-organization based to another anonymity end that is fraught with uncertainties. In “Cyberactivisim in the Process of Political and Social Change in Arab Countries“, human networks still contribute greatly in terms of protest mobilization and more importantly, bonding the morale when external stimulus demise. “Protesting on Twitter: Citizenship and Empowerment from Public Education” pointed out that, while the online platform is free from a lot of restrictions which hinder people’s participation in previous age, the citizenship, by all means, is actualized through people’s active social conscious and empowerment that is educated and practiced in everyday life in the real world.
New challenges such as human’s substitute AI (artificial intelligent) produce puzzles which are unsolvable at this stage, among which a crucial question goes to whether AI can really think. Perhaps AI can help with household chords while there is still a long way to go before AI can take an active role in the world – the learning, practicing and reflecting what do human mean to the society, and vice versa.
