Bob Garfield Quotes

Twitter, it can be said, completely changed the way activism is done, who can participate, and even how we define it.

It no longer counts as remarkable that Egyptians organized their uprising on social media.

Digital activism did not spring immaculately out of Twitter and Facebook. It's been going on ever since blogs existed.

As Barbara Streisand discovered, adopting a militaristic posture against a tech-savvy mob of civil libertarians is not going to be of much help: Many of them run their own servers and blogs - and have thousands of friends on their social networks - so overzealous attempts to silence them only lead to wider dissemination of sensitive information.

What role did the Internet play in the Egyptian Revolution? People will be arguing about the answer to that question for decades if not centuries.

The Internet can empower groups whose aims are in fact antithetical to democracy.

The Chinese government clearly does pay attention to public opinion expressed on the Internet - the extent to which they choose to adapt their practices based on it, or ignore it, seems to vary.

A hashtag is not a movement.

Politically, we have seen the impact of social media organizing people through the Arab Spring.

21st-century activism is different perhaps in the sense that the individual can be more present in the process, especially via social media, but the underlying drivers remain the same as desire to change the status quo.

Stop using your phones and laptops as toys and use them to start a revolution.

This week a group of activists, known as Anonymous, hacked the Twitter account of the KKK. The KKK is furious. They said Anonymous is just a bunch of cowards who don't have the courage to show their faces.

The way to get people civically engaged, not just during the election but throughout the year, is to tap into Facebook and let them do it with their friends.

Today, for the first time - and the Obama campaign showed us this - we can go from the digital world, from the self-organizing power of networks, to the physical one.

Whenever a technology enables people to organize at a pace that wasn't before possible, new kinds of politics emerge.

The Egyptian Revolution makes it clear, if anybody was in doubt, that digital technologies are going to play a powerful role in the future of global politics.

It's extraordinary that revolutions taking place around the world were sparked by communication on the Internet.

Just as the Internet drops transaction and collaboration costs in business and government, it also drops the cost of dissent, of rebellion, and even insurrection.

There are many cases of activists having their Facebook pages and accounts deactivated at critical times, when they are right in the middle of a campaign or organising a demonstration.

Pages on Facebook are allowed to be anonymous. That is really important. People start revolutions; we need anonymity.

The most impactful way consumers can assert their power is to become mindful shoppers, giving their dollars only to socially responsible companies. In today's world of social media and smart phones, this is easy to do.

Governments must ensure that the power of blogs is cultivated and implemented in collaborative ways, with a view to preserve peace and human dignity.

We're all bloggers and punks and rebels with cameras. There is absolutely no respect for career journalists anymore.

Contrary to the utopian rhetoric of social media enthusiasts, the Internet often makes the jump from deliberation to participation even more difficult, thwarting collective action under the heavy pressure of never-ending internal debate.

Social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter should be urged to adhere to business practices that maximize the safety of activists using their platforms.