Full RJR35

corporation that packages user information and
networks and sells this information to advertisers
and developers, effectively exploiting users for hours
of unpaid, immaterial digital labour. On the other
hand, its profits rely on providing an open platform
for the public to share their interests and beliefs.
As their mission statement reads, Facebook is
committed to making the world “more open and
connected”. They seek to provide “a platform where
people can share and surface content, messages
and ideas freely, while still respecting the rights of
others”. This should not be read as a commitment to
creating and sustaining communities or to improving
information rights across the world. It is a business
statement. But it does provide an interesting insight
into the way Facebook necessarily functions: it needs
the support and trust of its users to survive. This is
what gives users the power to shape and inform the
nature of the public spaces social media sites have
become.
The #FBRape campaign is a great example of the
power of global networked feminist participation
in the 21st century, illustrating the emergence of
subversive cultural and political movements and
the creative reconstruction of ICT for social change.
When the initial era of utopian cyber-optimism
about digital democratisation that accompanied
the late 90s and early 2000s explosion of new
information-communication technologies had
passed unfulfilled, critics started to investigate the
other side of the coin.
Rather than democratise communication and
foster robust public debate and free self-expression,
internet spaces seem to have become enclaves for
some of the worst aspects of society; here, racists
and sexists find expression, governments and
corporations can surveil and control their citizens,
and cyber-bullies have taken over the playground.
Debates are polarised and fruitless as keyboard
warriors fight it out from opposite sides of the
screen. Critics also argue that the internet has had
a depoliticising effect on citizens, fragmenting
communities and fuelling rampant narcissism,
flattening the intellectual landscape to a landfill of
personalised news feeds and pictures of cats. While
Rather than democratise
communication and
foster robust public
debate and free selfexpression,
internet spaces
seem to have become
enclaves for
some of the worst
aspects of society.
we have more access to information and networking
power than ever before, the overflow of information
threatens to engulf our political sensibilities until all
we are able to do is click Like and Share.
However, the feminist victory against Facebook
misogyny that is the #FBRape campaign carries an
important message for anyone working, playing,
and living on the internet. The internet is a complex
series of locations that dynamically embodies new
models of citizenship and political activism. #FBRape
is a great example of how people are interacting with
new technologiesas citizen-activists. By subverting
the logic of capital and putting it to work towards
social justice ends, thousands of citizens spoke back
to corporate power and systemic misogyny, getting
one step closer to creating the kind of internet we all
want to live in.
Kayla Roux lectures
in digital media at
the Rhodes University
School of Journalism.
She is currently
studying towards
her Ma degree with
a focus on the role
of the internet in
feminist activism.
k.roux@ru.ac.za
42 RJR 35 August 2015