The Internet can provide a voice for those who need to be heard louder than the rest of us. It’s ability to cut in-between traditional communication methods, and spread messages like wild fire has allowed us to change the way we interact with media. Web 2.0, ‘reflects the shift towards user-generated content and participatory culture’ (McStay). Not too long ago, the media reached a passive audience, whereby people would soak up and absorb information presented to them. This is no longer the case. The active audience thesis developed by Katz et al. (1974) has more recently been adapted and extended, to account for the changes digitalisation has made on an audience. Stafford and Stafford (2000), identified five underlying factors of web use motivations, listed as follows: ‘ a search factor, a cognitive factor, a new and unique factor, a social factor and an entertainment factor’. These various different uses for the Internet, allow us to communicate and share information, publishing user generated content, enabling us to listen to sources other then the government and the press in a much more available, assessable way.
We have seen recently, that activists and protesters have been using the Internet, and in particular social networking, to reach out to the public. Earlier this year, protesters in Egypt, published their protests online, breaking out of the government control, allowing us to see for ourselves the events of the time. The Internet, and in particular Web 2.0 have proven to be an effective outlets for activists and protestors.
In a much more local scenario, riots in the Stokes Croft area of Bristol, occurred when the council ignored the community’s voice. Riots started after a squat was raided, due to the police suspecting the occupants to have petrol bombs, the squatters were innocent however this then turned into a huge anti-consumerism, and anti Tesco, protest. The riots lead to several Police officers being badly injured, people getting arrested and the Tesco store in Stokes Croft was badly damaged.
Having driven passed the incident that night, I drew massive similarities from the Stokes Croft riots and the student protests earlier this year. The people of Stokes Croft, had been protesting and campaigning both online and in public for well over a year, one reporter for the Guardian said, ‘No Tesco’, graffiti dots walls up and down the road for a mile. Most prominent is a giant mural which gives a clear message to those entering the area: ‘Think Local, Boycott Tesco’. It is understandable, that an area like Stokes Croft, an arty, hippy independent and bursting full of culture part of the city would oppose to the corporate supermarket giant that is, TESCO, setting up a store there. I remember receiving constant facebook emails, to join the campaign, sign the partition and, ‘Say No, to Tesco’. Despite the efforts made to boycott the store, even when 93% out of 700 locals, said NO, Tesco went ahead and put their shiny red, white and blue store, smack bang in the middle of the street. Tesco may have opened the store, but it wont stay for long, Sam Allen for the Guardien said this, ‘Bristol City council has a clear choice now: continue to let Tesco trade and risk last night becoming a regular occurrence or support the community it is supposed to represent and tell Tesco to leave’.
The public sphere Is an area, that in people can get together and discuss problems, or issues within their community or society. The public sphere would hope that political action may be influenced by what the people have to say. However, it is noticeable that the public opinion has mattered less and less over recent incidents. Corporate and Government powers seem to override public opinion. User generated content may be a good thing, yes people hear what we have to say. But do we get any better response then we would have done if we were standing outside the houses of parliament? Online campaigns, when concerning politics, just don’t seem to work. We all ‘liked’ the facebook pages that stated things like, ‘students against UK top up fees reaching £7,500 per year’ in fact over 200,000 of us have liked that very page. But nothing changed. In fact, its caused violence and rioting in London on a huge scale, as we all know. We allow ourselves to believe that online campaigning can make a difference, and our voices will be heard. But in reality, Government and Corporate power still rules and until they listen to our protests, there are people out there willing to be violent and risk the law in order to stand up to what they believe.
However, digital activism isn’t always ignored. There are many examples of positive campaigns out there. Earlier this year I took part in MTV’s HIV awareness campaign, ‘Staying Alive’. The campaign used their website as a hub for bloggers and activists to voice their opinions. CSR is a big part of any large corporation, and MTV used the Internet successfully to get their message across. Many people would say that Tesco are aware of their CSR, but in the Stokes Croft case, they clearly don’t care what the people of to say.
In an attempt to lighten up this post with a bit of positivity, here is the advert, produced by my team and I, that reflects the brand image of MTV, at the same time getting the HIV awareness message across to the audience.
References:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/22/bristol-riot-tesco
