Social Justice in the Digital Age
For over a decade I’ve worked on several netnographic research projects for IGO’s and NGO’s around the world on various human rights issues. One was a groundbreaking study focused around three countries in Africa that sought to understand if online hate speech could turn into political violence in the street. This was 2012, long before the January 6th riots in Washington DC. Others were around women’s rights in in Islamic countries and how women supported each other through social media. Others on a range of human rights issues.
As I looked back on these research projects and what was learnt through the lens of cultural anthropology and how humans use technology and socialise online, along with the rise of social justice movements and issues, I thought it important to look at how these movements, while damaging, are actually good for democracy and how we are evolving our societies around the world. And the role digital technologies are playing.
In many Western countries, we are seeing an increase in culture wars and resulting social justice movements. Some of these are expressed through what are called revitalisation movements such as Christian Nationalism and Hindu Nationalism and Transhumanism. These types of movements are usually based on some nostalgic idea of way society used to be and an imagined future that returns to what used to be. Except that idealised past never existed.
These movements, although generally small in terms of the overall population of a country, can have a profoundly negative impact on a society. They have long been a part of the modern sociocultural system, coming and going. They usually arise at times of mass migration pressures, economic turmoil and when one social group feels threatened by another during times of societal change.
They also often coincide with advances in revolutionary technology. The printing press lead to the enablement of the Christian Reformation. Television through news media fostered greater national disturbances in the USA in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s as Black peoples gained more rights and America was at war in Vietnam.
Communications technologies enable societies to learn about and explore the world more. Prior to the internet and social media, then mobile connected devices, the communications channels were largely one-way and aside from radio and television, rather slow. Digital communications tools such as social media, the internet and mobiles now enable rapid gathering, organising and coordination of social groups.
Such tools are being enabled even in authoritarian regimes, from China to Zimbabwe, Hong Kong and others. Oddly enough, when political protests happen in these type of states, authorities turn off internet access or throttle it, which makes it worse for them. Instead of sitting at home watching small mobs protesting, with no internet access, people go out in the streets.
The internet enables social media and mobile devices to come together in powerful ways that, 25 years after the internet slipped into our societies, are now profoundly changing them. This ties in with how long it generally takes a technology to begin to truly change society. it usually takes about a decade for a technology to become broadly adopted and between 25 and 50 years for profound changes to start changing society. If we consider the fact that the internet, mobile devices, computers are all only enabled due to the invention of the microchip, we are pretty much bang on for the 50 year mark.
And while the Arab Spring of 2011 is over a decade in the past, it was one of the first events in which we began to see how social justice movements were starting to evolve through the use of new communications technologies. Then along came the #MeToo movement, Black Lives Matter and movements supporting LGBTQ+ movements.
Equally, opponents of social justice, such as the revitalisation movements I mentioned above, were equally able to use the same technologies. WhatsApp played a significant role in India for use by Hindu Nationalists to revive the movement and coordinate acts of violence against Muslim populations around the country. Racist groups like Proud Boys and other neo-Nazi groups also lurched out from under their dank hiding places.
Toss into this frothy societal soup the rise of populist politicians like Trump in America, Pierre Poilievre and Maxine Bernier in Canada, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, Modi in India, Jimmie Akesson in Sweden and the mix gets stirred up. Then the largest mass migrations in human history. Followed a global pandemic and then massive inflation, rapidly increasing gaps in the division of wealth, the loss of women’s rights in America and well, that’s quite a soup of social issues.
While this all may sound bleak and paint a dismal future, it’s actually a normal part of an evolution in humanity. The fact that there are so many social justice movements is a sign of democracy working. They’re happening because those in minority positions in society, feel that they now have the opportunity to rise up and fight for greater equality. And they do.
Humans have a much greater propensity to form more egalitarian societies than not. We have been experimenting with various social structures for thousands of years. We do this through the use of culture, which includes the arts, but also political systems, military, economic systems, traditions, norms and social behaviours.
Digital technologies have given a voice to groups that would otherwise have struggled to gain significant traction on issues of equality and rights. This has meant a speeding up of the issues and greater reach as well as rapid formation of ideologies and organised groups.
In the short term, perhaps the next decade or two, it will likely get worse before it gets better. More riots, more anger and hatred, more culture wars. But over time, as has always happened in our history, our sociocultural systems will evolve and get better. This is especially so through generational change.
Because of of advances in communications technologies, it may even move faster.
