Practicum #5

After going to discreet message boards that discussed taboo and extreme activism, and coming up short of finding much activism at all, I decided I would explore higher trafficked sites that harbored more mainstream and popular activism. I did this in hopes of finding online environments that were more likely to be conducive to generating and exhibiting activism, which would hopefully mean finding more activism itself. As it turns out, I did find more instances of activism.

I went to reddit.com, a social news and content sharing site, where mostly anonymous users share and discuss stuff. The stuff discussed on reddit is often highly politicized, and among the thousands of subreddits on the site that are dedicated to sharing specific topics, a good chunk of them are political. One of the subreddits is called Occupy Wall Street or r/occupywallstreet, where news and discussion about the popular activist movement takes center stage.
The first screen shot shows the front page of r/occupywallstreet, and the following screenshots show different posts and the conversations that happen within a post. The users on r/occupywallstreet are constantly sharing info and updates about events, including original pictures and first hand accounts. There is also a great deal of discussion about basic semantics and rhetoric, which users take part in attempts to forward and sharpen their shared ideologies. Not only are significant events in the real world planned and circulated on r/occupywallstreet, but the ideological forces behind the activism are assessed, adding an important dimension to this activism. There is a fair amount of petty dissent, disagreements and arguing, but in comparison to my previous exploits into the online world of activism, r/occupywallstreet showed a glimpse of the significant benefits of the internet to activism.
Occupy Wall Street is a large global movement comprised of diverse and sometimes unorganized identities and ideas, so the ability for these activists to convene in one place is crucial. Although r/occupywallstreet may have minimal impact on Occupy Wall Street as whole, it still provides an opportunity for activists to organize, share, and discuss/debate their movement on an immensely popular website where they are given a much higher visibility than single-topic message boards. And more importantly to the definition of actual activism, that organization, sharing, and discussion actually is taking place. Also, due in large part to the fast pace of reddit and its large user base, one is far more likely to be able to interact with those who are a part of the movement. When I posted in threads asking various questions about events and chiming in on discussions, I was usually met with replies, which were at times insightful and informative. This willingness for users to engage each other also seems to be a crucial factor in generating activism.