Study Finds Digital Activism Is Effective, Mostly Non-Violent 69
vinces99 writes "Digital activism is usually nonviolent and tends to work best when social media tools are combined with street-level organization, according to new research from the University of Washington. The findings come from a report by the Digital Activism Research Project run by Philip Howard, a UW professor of communication, information and international studies. 'This is the largest investigation of digital activism ever undertaken,' Howard said. 'We looked at just under 2,000 cases over a 20-year period, with a very focused look at the last two years.' He and his coauthors oversaw 40 student analysts who reviewed news stories by citizen and professional journalists describing digital activism campaigns worldwide. A year of research and refining brought the total down to 400 to 500 well-verified cases representing about 150 countries. The research took a particularly focused look at the last two years. Howard said one of their main findings is that digital activism tends to be nonviolent, despite what many may think. 'In the news we hear of online activism that involves anonymous or cyberterrorist hackers who cause trouble and break into systems. But that was 2 or 3 percent of all the cases — far and away, most of the cases are average folks with a modest policy agenda' that doesn't involve hacking or covert crime."
Re:"non-violent" (Score:2, Insightful)
How so? It's not like people are DDOS'ing to get later bedtimes or increased allowance. They are doing it specifically to deny an electronic service for . Or is every single attempt to deny anything juvenile?
Re:Ha Ha (Score:5, Insightful)
Only if you use definition 4 of "hurt" from the same source. I think you know very well that the generally agreed-upon definition of violence is compatible with definition one of hurt, "to cause physical damage or pain", not all.
When you try to stretch words in this way they lose all meaning. It's okay to say "I don't like violence and I don't like hindering legitimate businesses". That's way clearer than claiming that hindering a legitimate business is violence.
But actually, when I searched for violence on dictionary.com I didn't get the definition you're quoting:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/violence?s=t [reference.com]
There are some obviously similar definitions but none are the same or even close enough to just be a typo apart. In particular, the word "hurt" does not appear on that page.
Re:"non-violent" (Score:2, Insightful)
It may be non-violent, but is it effective?