Activism

Diana Daly

Key points

  • The Zapatista movement creatively used online activism to counter the negative impact of NAFTA on indigenous communities in Mexico.
  • The internet played a dual role for both activists and governments, with a focus on how the Zapatistas employed information warfare to gain global support.
  • Drawing parallels between Zapatistas and contemporary movements like Black Lives Matter underscores the role of online activism in tackling issues of race, income inequality, and political decisions.
  • Utilizing strategies such as speed, visuals, performances, inclusiveness, and “masked” leadership, both Zapatista and Black Lives Matter movements showcased effective online activism.
  • Addressing critiques, concerns include the swift mobilization of movements, potential shallowness, and the notion of “slacktivism.”
  • Acknowledging the intricate interplay between key figures and networked groups highlights the dynamic and evolving nature of successful online activism.

In this chapter

Read It: As school students strike for climate once more, here’s how the movement and its tactics have changed

Australian school students and others striking & organizing to demand real action on the climate crisis in Brisbane, Australia. The crowd holding many signs and banners watches as two female speakers address the protestors in solidarity.
School Strike 4 Climate/Flickr, CC BY-SA

Eve Mayes, Deakin University and Ruchira Talukdar, Deakin University

On Friday, students will once again down textbooks and laptops and go on strike for climate action. Many will give their schools a Climate Doctor’s Certificate signed by three leading climate academics.

These strikes – part of a National Climate Strike – mark five years since school students started walking out of schools to demand greater action on climate change. In 2018, the first students to strike defied calls by then prime minister Scott Morrison for “less activism” and to stay in school.

Last year, Australia voted out the Morrison government, in what was widely seen as a climate election. Teal independents won Liberal heartland seats on climate platforms, while the Greens recorded high votes. Labor came to office promising faster action on climate.

So why are school students still striking? Has the movement changed its focus? We have been researching these questions alongside young people involved in climate action in the ongoing Striking Voices project, as well as through the coauthor’s Sapna South Asian Climate Solidarity project.

We found the movement has expanded its demands from climate action to climate justice, stressing the uneven and unfair distribution of climate impacts. The movement itself has also become more diverse.

Image of a student strike for climate in Sydney, Australia in 2022. Students marching, three shown with megaphones, outside in organized protest with tall buildings and trees in the background.
Why are students still striking for climate justice? Because the job isn’t anywhere near done. This march was in Warrang (Sydney) in May 2022.
School Strike 4 Climate/Flickr, CC BY

From climate action to climate justice

Across the world, young climate advocates such as those from School Strike 4 Climate are calling for “climate justice” alongside “climate action”.

Why? Because climate change doesn’t impact everyone equally. As the Australian Youth Climate Coalition puts it, it’s “often the most marginalised in our societies who are hit first and worst by climate impacts and carry the burden of polluting industries”.

Mere semantics? No. The idea of climate justice draws attention to existing social and ethical injustices which climate change amplifies. The phrase also points to the need for climate solutions that work for people in a transformative way and help create collective and just societies.

In Australia, calls for climate justice are intimately connected with justice for First Nations people and to protecting, defending and “heal[ing] Country”, as Seed Mob write, with First Nations-led solutions.

Climate justice is central to the messaging of groups such as Pacific Climate Warriors diaspora, and Sapna South Asian Climate Solidarity.

In our conversations with young people, climate justice appears highly compelling. High-school student Yehansa Dahanayake explained:

I think I’d always thought of climate change as sort of a 2D thing. I thought about it as the temperature rise, deforestation, and sea caps melting – and while that is definitely true, I think [when] I started to learn about the justice aspects of climate change, [it] made me realise that there are many other factors that tie in, such as the Global North/ Global South difference and how that relates.

High-school student Emma Heyink told us about the importance of what she called a “justice-centred lens”:

You can’t look at climate change without looking at all these other issues. It just becomes so much more interlinked and solutions become so much more obvious.

Diversifying networks and strategies

So who are these young people, and what have they been doing in recent years?

Swedish student Greta Thunberg is frequently credited as sparking the youth-led climate movement.

But the movement is much larger – and more diverse – than one person, and increasingly so in recent years.

As a report by Sapna points out, Australia’s youth-led climate justice networks are more likely to be racially diverse than mainstream climate movements.

Yet climate justice networks are not immune from the oppressive dynamics they protest against. When the coauthor interviewed 12 now-graduated school strikers of South Asian heritage, they reported sometimes feeling sidelined in climate spaces – which are often white-dominated – as well as in media opportunities. As one young person put it, it seemed “hard to tell a brown person’s climate justice story”.

There are signs of positive change. The upheaval of the COVID pandemic saw stronger connections emerge between social movements, and clearer links between intersecting crises and injustices, both globally and in youth-led climate networks.

As recent high-school graduate and school strike organiser Owen Magee explained:

at our strikes, we are platforming First Nations people, rural and regional people who’ve directly been affected by the climate crisis, directly being affected by fossil fuel greed and corporation greed. That in itself is focusing on the intersectional nature of climate justice.

You can see this cross-pollination in the support shown by young advocates across multiple climate justice networks in the Power Up gathering on Gomeroi Country in northwestern New South Wales to show solidarity with Traditional Owners fighting coal and gas projects on their lands.

The targets and tactics of youth-led climate justice networks have shifted and proliferated in recent years – for example, to the banks that finance fossil fuel companies.

An image of a person's hand holding an iPhone while its camera captures a simultaneous image of school strikers protesting against fossil fuels outside of the National Australia Bank in December of 2021. Protestors were wearing medical masks and carrying red umbrellas, holding signs that generally say "stop funding fossil fuels".
Targets, tactics and strategies have evolved since 2018.
Student Strike 4 Climate/Flickr, CC BY

When school strikers graduate, some move into different modes of climate-related action.

Some have taken part in strategic climate litigation in a bid to create legislation embedding a climate duty of care for young people in government decisions on issues such as fracking approvals.

Others are involved in non-violent direct actions, such as next week’s Rising Tide People’s Blockade of the world’s largest coal port in Newcastle.

Young climate advocates are battling for climate justice on a wide range of fronts. They are calling on politicians to do the same.

We would like to acknowledge and thank the Striking Voices project research associates, Natasha Abhayawickrama, Sophie Chiew, Netta Maiava and Dani Villafaña.

Eve Mayes, Senior Research Fellow in Education, Deakin University and Ruchira Talukdar, Casual senior research fellow, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

 

Consider it: A new era in online activism?

First, read the article “The Second Act of Social Media Activism” by Jane Hu, published in June 2020 in New Yorker Magazine.

Also, consider findings from the Pew Research Center’s 2018 study of American perceptions of the internet as a tool for social activism.

Techno-sociologist Zeynep Tufecki argued in 2015 that the tools to organize activist movements online may move too fast to build coalitions that “think together”.  Whether that was true then, is it now? Support your answer, including what might you say to others in the Pew polls who think differently than you in order to explain your views.

A Pew Research graphic that reads, "Eight-in-ten Blacks say social media help shed light on rarely discussed issues; the same share of whites say these sites distract from more important issues." A graph shows the percentage of white, Hispanic, and Black US adults who say the above statement describes social media "very" or "somewhat" well. Black adults had the highest percentages of possible positive impacts while whites indicated they believed social media had negative impacts on shedding light on rarely discussed issues.

A Pew Research chart showing the percentage of adults who say they have participated in activism on social media in the past year (2018), including: taken part in a group that shares interest in an issue, changed profile picture to show support for a cause, and other activities.

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Graphics by Pew Research Center.

 

Media Attributions

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About the author

Dr. Diana Daly of the University of Arizona is the Director of iVoices, a media lab helping students produce media from their narratives on technologies. Prof Daly teaches about qualitative research, social media, and information quality at the University of Arizona.

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Humans R Social Media - 2024 "Living Book" Edition Copyright © 2024 by Diana Daly is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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