What is an online activist?

[Admin]

Think about what people say about online activists and what they say about themselves.

• What are they like?
  
  
• What are they interested in?
  
  
• How do they work?

[Mdhamiri]

Out of the people who use the internet, I believe they can be generally categorised into two types. The passive and the active. The passive being those who solely use the internet as a means of entertainment, looking through facebook, watching youtube videos, etc.
The active are what I'd define as online activists, and they take their use of the internet further. It starts from the people who comment or take part in discussions on social sites such as twitter and youtube. Then there are people who start the discussion, ask questions, and upload videos, such as vlogs or review videos.
I believe they are the sort of people who are interested in having conversations with people, making a difference, and debating within forums.

[puzzle]

There are so many negative connotations that spring to mind when talking about activists, I suppose this comes through the Media coverage. But, to me, an activist is someone who wants to raise awareness of something that they strongly believe in and share their opinions with others using information that they have found whether they are deemed to be 'right' or not.

[Mdhamiri]

There are so many negative connotations that spring to mind when talking about activists, I suppose this comes through the Media coverage. But, to me, an activist is someone who wants to raise awareness of something that they strongly believe in and share their opinions with others using information that they have found whether they are deemed to be 'right' or not.

Do you think this is the same for everyone, in terms of negative connotations? Do you think there are those who place activists on the same page as anarchists, or revolutionaries? I'd say that through history we've seen how individuals and small groups can and do make a difference on a global scale, for example the French revolution, and there's no reason to place a negative spin on it.

[Angry Fossil]

I think an online activist can literally be anyone whether it is intentional or not. A story that jumps to my mind is 'Ryan's Banana Split Party'. It began small, then it received some media attention. It got a lot of traction fast making it more popular, now over 1 million people have been invited to the Facebook event. Anybody who has joined/shared this grouped whether they know it or not is an online activist.

This story is also very similar to 'Caine's Arcade' which also went viral after it got well known through Reddit.

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