MOBILE
ACTIVISM
BY THE NUMBERS
4.2
Billion people with mobile devices globally
3.8
Billion social media users globally
>50%
WHAT IS MOBILE
ACTIVISM?
Mobile activism involves the use of mobile technologies to plan, organize, participate in, and document campaigns and protests to bring about political or social change.
The global digital population is ever increasing with more than 4.2 billion active mobile internet users and 3.8 billion social media users and engagement in mobile activism is growing. Rapidly emerging mobile technologies have enabled more people to engage in activism and support the social, political, economic, and environmental causes they believe in.
What differentiates mobile activism from activism is how mobile technologies amplify the visibility of activist issues leading to more global support and mobilization. Previously, support of most causes was restricted to those either directly affected by issues or living in geographies with reporting on those issues, but mobile activism is transcendent . Most recently, mobile activism has sparked and sustained global support of the Black Lives Matter movement and historically it has played an important role in the following movements and revolutions (not an exhaustive list):
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2004 Ukraine Orange Revolution
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Arab Spring
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Iranian Green Movement
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Greta Thunberg's climate change movement
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March for Our Lives gun control movement in the U.S.
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Women's March movement, in response to election of Trump
MOBILE TECHNOLOGIES
FOR MOBILE ACTIVISM
Mobile activism has its roots in SMS communication, but the advancement of mobile technologies such as social media and communication apps have lead to its surge. Though there are apps, platforms, and tools created specifically for the purpose of mobile activism, the ones most responsible for its advancement are the social media apps people use in the scope of their everyday lives. Social media is commonly by mobile activists to plan, organize, share information and educational resources, transmit first-person live reports, and call for volunteers, donations, petition signing, and the boycotting of non-ally persons and organizations. With one click information can be shared, video can begin broadcasting, and it takes little time or effort to create a post and hashtag it to share it with a global audience.
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In a 2018 Survey by the PEW Research Center, 69% of Americans feel that social media platforms are "very or somewhat important for accomplishing a range of political goals" and 67% feel social media plays an important role in creating sustained movements for social change (67%). The most ubiquitously used feature of mobile technology that lends itself to mobile activism is the #hashtag. What was merely a simple way to tag posts within social media and blogs has become a powerful social, cultural, and media tool to create large communities and stimulate mass communication and the mass mobilization of people for change. A PEW Research Center Analysis of the hashtag #blacklivesmatter shows that on May 28, 2020, it hit a peak of 8.8 million uses in a single day - on Twitter alone - during global protests after the death of George Floyd in the U.S.
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Social media companies encourage engagement in activist movements by highlighting viral and trending campaigns by tracking hashtags and other data inputs and by creating and supporting campaigns within their platforms, such as TikTok for Good. Collaborative document systems such as Box and Google Docs are also used to foster contributions from mass amounts of people to create and massively share organizational, informational, and educational resources pertaining to activist causes.
CRITICISMs and issues
Though critics deride mobile activism as slacktivism or clicktivism, according to a 2016 study by Georgetown University those who engage in social activism through mobile technologies are cited as more than twice as likely to engage in activism offline by volunteering their time, participating in events, and as likely as other activists to donate to the causes they support. Some would argue that involvement in discourse on social media around activist issues does little to change the minds of those with differing views, but the aim of most discourse is to focus on the movable middle and engaging those who may otherwise stay silent about certain issues.
There is also a danger that the same technologies which facilitate mobile activism can be exploited to undermine activist efforts and put activists in danger. As a result, some activists have disengaged themselves from mobile technologies that track their location or collect their personal data in order to avoid being surveilled or outed to their governments and intelligence groups. There is a trend to abandon more widely used apps such as Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter, and Google docs for nonprofit platforms and apps with more strict privacy policies and those with encrypted or disappearing message capabilities such as Hustle or Signal.
EDUCATIONAL POTENTIAL
The educational potential of mobile activism is most realized informally outside the classroom. Through mobile activism people are able to share their voices and perspectives, learn from and teach others, and participate in discourse around highly relevant issues that affect their local and global communities. Mobile technologies have put the power to create change in their hands.
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The mission statements of many K-12 educational institutions and a goal of curriculum in Canada and the U.S is to create actively engaged citizens. In formal educational settings, engagement in projects centred on mobile activism at the local and community level gives students the opportunity to develop a wide variety of skills that are applicable to any course or subject matter and are important workplace skills, such as collaboration, critical thinking, critical media literacy, and 21st-century skills.
Mobile activism also gives students the opportunity to develop creative and technical skills such as video and audio editing for digital storytelling and podcasting and effective writing, communication, and design skills to present information in an attention-getting and keeping way. Most mobile social media apps have their own in-app creative and editing tools but there are standalone apps that can be used on mobile as easily as on a laptop or desktop computer: Canva and Adobe Spark can be used to create well-designed and sophisticated graphics, infographics, videos, and presentations that enhance campaigns, stories, and posts; iMovie and Adobe Premiere Rush are video editing apps with great mobile UI; and Anchor is a podcasting app for mobile.
EDU RESOURCES
Teaching Tolerance
Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center in the U.S. has a treasure trove of social justice and anti-bias resources dedicated to helping teachers and schools educate children and youth to be participants in a diverse democracy.
about
Educator. Lifelong learner. A forever Texan living in Ontario, Canada, photographer, gardener, and nature enthusiast. Current instructor at Niagara College, Canada and Master of Educational Technology student at the University of British Columbia.