Digital Activism Quotes

Twitter can make a lot of things happen if you get enough retweets.

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.

The Tunisian blogger and activist Sami Ben Gharbia has written passionately about how U.S. government involvement in grassroots digital spaces can endanger those who are already vulnerable to accusations by nasty regimes of acting as foreign agents.

Censorship is saying: 'I'm the one who says the last sentence. Whatever you say, the conclusion is mine.' But the internet is like a tree that is growing. The people will always have the last word - even if someone has a very weak, quiet voice. Such power will collapse because of a whisper.

After Secretary Clinton announced in January 2010 that Internet freedom would be a major pillar of U.S. foreign policy, the State Department decided to take what Clinton calls a 'venture capital' approach to the funding of tools, research, public information projects, and training.

With support from techies, designers, artists and thousands of activists across the country, Black Lives Matter is now an online-to-offline political movement, affirming the humanity and resilience of black communities.

One of the things that I realized when I left office was that in the 1990's citizens across the world applied more power than they had ever had, as compared with the government, because of more people living under democracies than dictatorships for the first time, the power of the internet, which the young Chinese used to basically change China's policy on the SARS epidemic, and shut it down, and because of the rise in non-governmental organizations like my foundation.

The traditional media never gave Bernie Sanders the time of day. But he went viral the same way hip-hop and new dances go viral. And I'm part of that culture.

#BlackLivesMatter was born online but now lives in street actions, in conversations in our homes, and in the dignity swelling in our hearts. That is the power of the open Internet, and it is why we must do everything we can to protect black voices. Our lives depend on it.

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.

Industrial capitalism brought representative democracy, but with a weak public mandate and inert citizenry. The digital age offers a new democracy based on public deliberation and active citizenship.

Now technology gives you a chance to help organize. You don't have to wait for either the inefficiency or the corruption. You don't have to wait for government. You can actually self-organize and build institutions bottom up.

I don't think most people in the US realize how important WikiLeaks is and why Julian's case needs support.

The youth should work on popularising central and state government schemes among people. The young generation should make social media their weapon.

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.

We've seen over time that countries that have the best economic growth are those that have good governance, and good governance comes from freedom of communication. It comes from ending corruption. It comes from a populace that can go online and say, 'This politician is corrupt, this administrator, or this public official is corrupt.'

Even with censorship, the Internet is a force for change.

The thing I have come to find astonishing is that people from all political sides routinely say that the Internet has to be the model of free speech and freedom.

It takes a strong stomach and a thick skin to be a female activist fighting online censorship in Pakistan.

Let me start with Yahoo. As we meet today, a Chinese citizen who had the courage to speak his mind on the Internet is in prison because Yahoo chose to share his name and address with the Chinese Government.

Thanks to Twitter, I learn about the revolutions in the Middle East via Arab activists and writers, not just from American foreign correspondents.

The political system is broke. It doesn't matter who the leader is if you are frozen in time and your hands are tied. Social media is so strong that minority groups get a huge say.

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.

In 1791, the right to bear arms to defend against an over-reaching government wasn't theoretical. Today, it's hard to imagine physical weapons serving the same purpose. But it's easy to see how hacktivists might - especially if you broaden the opponents to include hate groups and rapacious multinationals.

The Bush administration works closely with a network of rapid response digital brownshirts who work to pressure reporters and their editors for 'undermining support for our troops.'