Activism after 9/11

Sijia Lin & Xuerui Zhang

Authors

• Deana A. Rohlinger

Associate Professor, Department of Sociology at Florida State University

Research:Social movements and political participation Mass media Political culture and democratic processeshttp://www.fsu.edu/~soc/people/rohlinger/

Authors

• Jordan Brown PhD student in department of Sociology of FSU Graduated in 2010 Research interests:

Social MovementsRace/Ethnic RelationsPolitical SociologyDeviance and Social ControlSociology of EmotionsHistorical Sociologyhttp://www.scribd.com/doc/22179460/Brown-jordan-Cv

Authors

• David Tablot

Former Editor-in-Chief of the Internet magazine Salon.com

Former Senior Editor of Mother Jones Magazine

Anti-war and “free love” activist in the 1960s

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1523

Journal

• American Behavioral Scientist For 50 years, American Behavioral Scientist has been a

valuable source of information . Each issue offers comprehensive analysis of a single topic,

examining such important and diverse arenas as sociology, international and U.S. politics, behavioral sciences, communication and media, economics, education, ethnic and racial studies, terrorism, and public service.

The journal's interdisciplinary approach stimulates creativity and occasionally, controversy within the emerging frontiers of the social sciences.

About MoveOn

• MoveOn.org It was found by a married couple Joan Blades and

Wes Boyd and first used to an online petition to “Censure President Clinton and Move On to Pressing Issues Facing the Nation”.

The organization includes two parts, Civic Action and Political Action.

Three Features

• At least three features of the Internet being a useful tool for challengers to express oppositional opinions Free space Allows users to participate anonymously Moves individuals from armchair to real world

Free Space

• How does the Internet act as a free space when serves for activism?

• What are the risks of participating in online activism?

• Knowing about the risks, why people still participate in online activism?

Anonymity

• Why anonymity is important for activists?• Could anonymity be guaranteed online?

People are concerned that someone would have access to their E-mails or been tracked them down when donating for political organizations using their credit cards

The idea of Privacy

• Invasion of privacy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGrji2bIiG8

• Google Desktop It help to search user’s computer as easy as searching the

web with Google. It's a desktop search application that provides full text search over your email, files, music, photos, chats, Gmail, web pages that you've viewed, and more.

Stores a user's indexed data on Google servers for up to 30 days.

Privacy?

• Government attempts to subpoena information from Yahoo, Microsoft and Google. Perhaps a subpoena for all the files indexed on your Google Desktop is not that far away.

• Then there are the wiretaps in the U.S. by those three-letter agencies, which we're just hearing about now. First reported by the New York Times, these were wiretaps on U.S. citizens that were sometimes done without requiring court approval at all.

• A new study by the University of Washington finds that one in twenty executables on the Internet contain spyware.

Identification Online

• Human-flesh engine Groups of people are collaborating and networking

online in new and more efficient ways because of blogs, instant messaging, Twitter and other new services. The types of group-forming he describes are sometimes called crowdsourcing and flash mobs.

Kitten killer http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2006-03/16/content_540375.htm

From Online to Real World

• How possible that online activism will move people from the Internet to street? A case in Egypthttp://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx6L3gRldJM&feature=channel

• The case happened in a very strict political climate, how about in a democratic country such as U.S.?

Activism after 9/11

• After 9/11, people who disagree with the government are treated as “unpatriotic” or “terrorist sympathizers”. “According to our respondents, the climate of

fear created by 9/11, buttressed by national security initiatives such as the Patriot Act and the Homeland Security Act made public political dissent risky.”

Continued

Some resources:• Amazon: Civil Liberties Vs. National Security In A Post

9/11 Worldhttp://

www.amazon.com/Liberties-National-Security-Contemporary-Issues/dp/1591022347

• Does the USA Patriot Act diminish civil liberty?http

://aclu.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=000716• FBI civil liberty violationhttp

://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/daily/graphics/gonzales_20070710.html

Dissent

• Can a democratic society exist without dissent? Democracy is the Right to Dissent

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llvjtgf9u9M An article: Is dissent still patriotic?http://www.denverpost.com/harsanyi/ci_11505879

The Burma Case

• Why did the Burmese government cut off Internet after the breakout of the protest?

• What’s the assumption behind this action?• In today’s world, is it possible to have a large-

scale activism action without the help of Internet?

A case in China

• The Chinese blogosphere reacts to Liu Xiaobo winning the Nobel Peace Prize

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZTaSsdVBlo• Liu Xiaobo@New York Timeshttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/09/opinion/09sat3.html

Thank you guys~