Online Activism and Transparency

The next speaker in this AoIR 2012 session is Constance Kampf, whose interest is in online activism. There are a number of different forms and levels of activism, of course – from a general expression of support for specific causes to radical and potentially dangerous interventions. Much online activism has been driven by issues of transparency, but that term is ill-defined: does it just mean the openness and availability of information about known phenomena, or also an absence of unknowns?

Another key issue in this is the role of knowledge as a cultural resource: transparency can become a socio-technical construct which is interlinked with the technologies that make information available and enable socio-cultural acts of knowing. Knowledge perspectives affect how we understand identity, innovation, and decision-making.

Constance now takes us through a number of examples of consumer protests, such as the famous battle between company eToys and artist group EToy and its aftermath. More recent activism has aimed to push major companies towards greater corporate social responsibility, or has engaged in vigilante justice against corporations and cyberbullies.

What needs to be recognised here is both the audience and the cultural dimension of transparency; we need to develop a more nuanced understanding of transparency to see how it addresses the balance of knowing and not knowing.