- Source: Aktivisme media
Aktivisme media adalah kategori aktivisme yang luas yang memanfaatkan media dan teknologi komunikasi untuk gerakan sosial dan politik. Metode aktivisme media termasuk menerbitkan berita di situs web, membuat konten investigasi, menyebarkan informasi tentang protes, hingga mengatur kampanye. Aktivisme media digunakan untuk berbagai macam tujuan. Media sosial sering kali menjadi alat bagi para aktivis akar rumput dan anarkis untuk menyebarkan informasi yang tidak tersedia di media arus utama atau untuk membagikan berita yang disensor. Bentuk-bentuk tertentu dari peretasan bermotif politik dan kampanye berbasis internet juga dianggap sebagai aktivisme media. Biasanya, tujuan aktivisme media adalah untuk menyebarkan kesadaran melalui komunikasi media yang terkadang mengarah pada tindakan.
Aktivisme media memberi kelompok-kelompok marginal kemampuan untuk menyuarakan pendapat mereka dan berorganisasi dalam kelompok yang lebih besar sehingga memungkinkan aktivisme yang lebih otonom untuk melakukan perubahan sosial. Selain komunitas marginal, aktivisme media memungkinkan generasi muda untuk bersuara dalam situasi ketika secara hukum mereka tidak dapat melakukannya - misalnya ketika mereka masih terlalu muda untuk memilih. Internet memungkinkan individu-individu ini untuk tidak merasa tidak berdaya ketika mereka tidak dapat memberikan suara. Ini adalah cara gratis bagi para pemimpin untuk berorganisasi dan memungkinkan lebih banyak orang yang tertarik untuk terlibat dengan gerakan tertentu secara daring daripada secara langsung untuk berbicara. Di sisi lain, ini juga merupakan bentuk aktivisme yang umum digunakan oleh para selebriti dan ada perdebatan mengenai seberapa efektifnya hal tersebut. Salah satu kritik terhadap aktivisme media adalah karena setiap orang memiliki suara, maka suara radikal akan terdengar sama kerasnya dengan suara rata-rata, entah itu satu orang atau tidak, yang dapat melemahkan gerakan secara keseluruhan..
Bentuk
Social media is often used as a form of media activism. Because of the interactive features and widespread adoption, users can quickly disseminate information and rally supporters. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter can reach a much larger audience than traditional media. Although often only a small percentage of people who express interest in a cause online are willing to commit to offline action, social media interaction is viewed as "the first step in a ladder of engagement"."Social media has helped us organize without having leaders," said Victor Damaso, 22, demonstrating on São Paulo's main Paulista Avenue on Thursday night. "Our ideas, our demands are discussed on Facebook. There are no meetings, no rules".
Live streams applications or websites such as Livestream is another media form which can replace TV when there is a kind of censorship. The protests in Istanbul can be an example of this way of broadcasting in terms of the lack of the objectivity of the actual media and the television. On the other hand, a lot of protestors used WhatsApp or the Walkie-Talkie application with their smartphones in order to improve communication between protestors during the manifestations thanks to its quick and instantaneous sharing of information. Moreover, the usage of applications such as WhatsApp can improve organization among protestors with added features such as group message. Similarly, YouTube is another efficient tool of spreading information and is generally used with other social media forms such as Facebook and Twitter.
Culture jamming, another form of media activism, is a subversive strategy of protest that re-appropriates the tropes of mainstream media "in order to take advantage of the resources and venues they afford".
Media activism has expanded its scope to include fields of study such as journalism and news media. Media activism additionally educates the audience to be producers of their own media. Media activism to be expanded to facilitate action through media production and involvement.
Case studies
Social Media has become a primary organizing tool for political and social movements globally. They serve to strengthen already existing networks of political and social relationships among activists offline. Media activism among youth can be linked to the way youth protest and create communities online over specific issues and social connections.
Black Lives Matter
Black Lives Matter, a campaign against violence and systemic racism towards African Americans, has been influenced strongly by Social Media Activism with leaders, hashtags, and policy proposals brought forward because of Social Media. The hashtag #blacklivesmatter was created in 2013 by Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi after the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the murder in Florida of seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin. Garza wrote a Facebook post titled "A Love Note to Black People" in which she said: "Our Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter." Once the hashtag was formed, it has been a rallying cry for various organizing efforts across the country centered on Black lives.
It is a movement that brings the African American community together. It is a campaign that does not promote violence but instead unity. There can be both negative or positive views on the movement due to the way the media affects people. This movement began in 2013 when people started hash tagging #BLM, #BlackLivesMatter, and #equality on Twitter, Facebook, and many social media platforms. In response to the visible violent acts against Black communities more than 50 organizations from across the country have come together to fight this unfairness based on color. Today this is still an issue, and in some peoples' opinion media does not have a positive effect on BLM. It causes people to riot and build more hatred for each other instead of the whole concept of unity. Sometimes the media, which has fake news can take things out of context, in result people will have an upsetting reaction.[1]
African Americans use Twitter at a higher rate than their white counterparts with 22 percent of online blacks using the service in 2014 compared to 16 percent of online whites. Hashtags such as #OscarsSoWhite, #handsupdontshoot, and #icantbreathe have sprung up as offshoots in the social movement and have helped create a subculture on the website that some have called "Black Twitter". Jelani Cobb, professor of Journalism at Columbia University, has argued that that "Black Twitter" has been as vital to Black Lives Matter as television was for the Civil Rights Movement.
Citizen reporting on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook help drive the coverage of traditional media on stories of violence, discrimination, and harassment.