Making Sense of Life, Global Activism in the Cyberspace

ESU, AIDE

2017-01-01

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Abstract

Several recent works have examined the relationship between social media and social movements in the latest cycle of protest. This paper examines how media activism provides a cross-fertilising communication process by shaping a cosmopolitan imagination. The cases of Adbuster and Avaaz are analysed, as two examples of media activism, equally engaged in changing the state of the world. In this paper; similarities and the differences are highlighted in order to understand how a cosmopolitan imagination, as a new challenge to the global information society, is constructed. The article explores how action shapes an online community, bypassing state borders and takes a form that shares visions, actions and strategies and develops a new common language, representing a balance between two sets of tensions: the politics of universalism versus the acknowledgement of difference and the responsibility for action.