- Collective Action is defined as action taken by a group of people trying to reach a specific objective. We live in an age of computer mediated communication, this type of action has grown with the times, and also become more computer mediated than ever before. These types of things now come in the form of online petitions, online social media groups geared toward a cause, and even social media based platforms that allow interaction and donation to causes that users are passionate about.
- Change.org is a popular website where activists can start petitions to be shared online all over the world. The platform allows anyone to start a petition about a cause they are passionate about, anyone can then share a petition with their own networks making the reach on the petition much larger than a standard petition could be.
- Two popular petitions that caught a lot of attention outside of just the online community were a petition aimed at Bank of America and a petition to make teen magazines stop photoshopping their models.
- In October of 2011 Bank of America proposed a $5 charge for customers to use their debit cards. This caused an uproar among people who banked there, with many customers leaving for other institutions.A 22 year old use who thought the fee was outrageous started a Change.org petition that gained over 300,000 signatures and ultimately, Bank of America backtracked and decided against moving forward with the fee. Without the use of the online petition it would have been harder for customers to reach one another, and come together against the fee.
- This was reported differently across different types of media. Social media, and online platforms where the petition was shared reported that the petition was a large piece of why the decision was made. Other types of media such as an article in the New York Times did not report the petition at all, but did mention that customers were at the forefront of this decision.Reuters.com reported that Bank of America reversed their decision based on pushback from angry customers, but did not report the method in which the complaints were received.
- In the summer of 2012 a young girl started a petition against seventeen magazine for their use of photoshopping in their magazine. She felt that teen girls should be portrayed in a more natural state. She challenged them to publish one non edited photo for each edition of the magazine. Her petition ended up reached 80,000 signatures from all over the world. Seventeen ended up publicly making a statement about their authenticity. This also prompted several other young girls to do the same with other magazines. Using the online platform and mobile tools allowed girls across the world to connect, it also broadened the scope and opened the eyes of many non-readers as well making the petition more successful in the end.
- This, like the Bank of America story was also reported in many places. In this case though the cause gained more traction for the whole story, a young girl taking action and speaking out against magazines portraying false images, and so it was reported that way across the board.
- For me, I use news apps on my smart television, I ask smart devices in my house to tell me the latest headlines, or I use my phone to look at the exact media source I want to look at. No longer do we have to sit through an entire news show to get to exactly what we want to see. I typically hear a story first, also from the apps, or social media from someone else sharing what they saw. This is a very different thing from how many of us used to do things, when reading papers, watching tv, or listening to the radio in order to choose the exact thing you wanted, it was a news channel, or radio station, or specific newspaper, but that didn't get you to exactly what you wanted right away. There was still waiting, and still sifting through the entire thing to get where you needed to be. This has led people away from these types of media. While it is good to be able to access it, having it immediately at our fingertips has caused us to be over stimulated, and not as educated as we would be if we had to consume all sides of the story and not go directly to what we were looking for and nothing else. We have these devices at our fingertips everywhere and its super easy to pick them up and check apps, we get notifications and instantly grab our devices, it really makes it hard to stay away from. This causes problems at home, work, and educational institutions.
References
© [Andrey Popov] /Adobe Stock.
Priante, A., Ehrenhard, M. L., van den Broek, T., & Need, A. (2018). Identity and collective action via computer-mediated communication: A review and agenda for future research. New Media & Society, 20(7), 2647–2669. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444817744783
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