Gladwell asserted that the world is in the midst of a revolution. The tool of this revolution is the social media but the causes can be as many as there are the countries in the world. However, technology has also a drawn a sharp contrast between social activism and interactions considering that in the past, most of the social protests began with interactions. Nowadays, social change begins with one strange tweet or even a video shared on Facebook such as was the case with the beginning of the Arab spring that began in 2011 and in countries like Syria it is still on cause. Based on this understanding, I set out to explore a virtual community called Pawa254. I first learnt about the community from CNN when the international broadcaster featured the founder of this virtual community over his contributions to social activism and artivism in Kenya. Based on the observation of this virtual community, this paper posits that despite the infamous praise of social media’s contribution to social activism, the fight for social justice would not be possible without more interactive and engaging events such as art days and that the social media only play a supporting role in the cause of fighting for social justice.
Pawa254 is a social activism and artivism community founded and led by one Mr. Boniface Mwangi. The community has been behind several social protests in their country and through their struggle for social justice, the Pawa254 virtual community has gained global recognition. President Obama has mentioned the community severally in his address of African issues. The lead activist has also been on talk shows in some of the Ivy League institutions including the Harvard School of Business and Yale University where he addressed the students on various matters of social justice. He has been on various talk shows across Europe including in Germany and in France where his one stunt with the French police saw him addressing some of the social issue that the black community has to undergo with regard to inappropriate screening. In other words, the Pawa254 is slowly gaining global recognition and support which is why it attracted my attention.
Pawa254 is not only an online or virtual community though the number of activists on the online platform are more than those that engage with the community on one on one basis. One of the community’s projects that put it on the global map was the address of post-election violence concerns in the country in the years between 2008 and 2011 when Kenya was involved the almost perennial political violence after elections. Pawa254 captured the suffering of the victims of violence through the lens of the camera and through the moving pictures that the community captured, this virtual community began a lasting healing and reconciliation process that would later receive various awards across the world. The reconciliation campaign would then emerge as the single major event that would explain the role of this virtual community in the nation and across the world.
My interaction with this community has been majorly through shared videos, blogs, and the social media networks that include Facebook and Twitter. Through these channels I am able to community with the virtual community and air my views concerning the work that the community does within their area of operations and I have also been able to get a few of my friends to interact with the community through the same channels. Though I have never met any of the members of this community on a one on one basis, I believe in the cause that the community has taken in the fighting for social justice. Some of the issues that have been in the limelight and in the community’s discussion forums in the recent past pertained to corruption in Kenya. The issue of corruption in the country hit the international news headlines a few months back when the opposition faction in the country asked the attorney general in the US to assist in the investigations of the US accounts through which some money raised by the country through a bond was lost. The second issue involved the recent acquittal of the post-election violence by the international criminal court which means that the post-election violence victims in the country my never get justice and that the propagators of the violence may never be brought to book. Though my knowledge in the two topics may not be extensive, I have learnt a lot from the community and these lessons form the bulk of the next few pages.
One of the first major lessons that I got from this virtual community that I have become fond of is about the strength of the social media as a tool of fighting for social justice. Pawa254 form time to time organizes demonstrations and peaceful protests in Kenya. These protests circumvent various issues relating to democracy, social justice, and human rights. Before these protests can get to the streets of Nairobi the community uses powerful hashtags on Facebook and Twitter. It is through these hashtags that the mood of the population is gauged against and protests launched. One of the street events that the world would remember is the issue of terrorist attacks on a university in the country in which the country lost a hundred and forty-seven lives. The government seemed to give much attention to the losses of the 147 students compared to the loss of 67 lives in another terrorist attack in the country that had happened a year before. The Westgate terrorist attack received a lot of attention from both the local and the international media and as the virtual community claimed this was because those affected in the attack were influential people in the society including dignitaries from the international arena. However, in the Garissa University terror attacks those affected were the children of the poor and the media did not give much attention to them. Through the #147isnotjustanumber, the Pawa254 community managed to get break the internet attracting support from the international arena including prayers in Belgium, Germany, and Australia in solidarity with the Kenyan fraternity. Were it not for the social media, such events may never have been possible. This is why the social media is considered as a major tool of social change across the world.
The second major lesson is the fact that the social media alone does not and cannot stir social change in any given situation. Instead, there has to be a binding cause and struggle for justice. Hashtags have become the formal way of communication in the social media and these hashtags are ranked based on the number of people talking about them on social media. The hashtags are often not just a number of word that are shared by the virtual community but rather, the hash tags represent a strong message that define a particular cause. I have been going through the Facebook and Twitter pages of Pawa254, the virtual community that I am analyzing, and there was a hashtag that got CNN to literary apologize to the Kenyan community. I learnt about the hashtag #SomebodyTellCNN under which Pawa254 among other virtual communities literary attacked CNN for calling Kenya the hotbed of terror. This was sometime before President Obama’s visit in Kenya. The visit of the president gave the country a lot of media attention and the hashtag was taken up across borders including in the United States and the UAE. Virtual communities across these countries defended their country by mentioning and indicating that terrorism was a global threat and that Kenya was just one among the many countries that had been targeted by the terrorists. Through this global campaign, Pawa254 in conjunction with many other virtual communities from Kenya and across the world had joined a cause of not only marketing Kenya but also in addressing the perception of and fight against terrorism across the world. For the first thing, this proved that the hashtags are used to communicate appealing causes to the world. Secondly, the hashtags implies that the social media in itself just support the cause and without the cause the understanding of its involvement in global revolutions may be opaque.
Interacting with Pawa254 virtual community indicates that interactions beyond the social media and virtual networks is important not only in ensuring cohesion among the members but also in ensuring that the members are united towards a given cause. These interactions are majorly based on interests of the groups joining the virtual community. Particularly, the virtual community ought to be viewed as any other discourse community such as a community of professionals in finance or even medics. This illustrates the importance common goals among the members, same level of understanding, and even same perspective on certain issues. Without these characteristics, it may get difficult to hold the virtual community together after organization.
At the Pawa254 community, the first realization that one makes with regard to interactions is the fact that the community has a meeting place in Nairobi which is the capital city of Kenya. In this physical location, some members of this virtual community do meet to interact and mingle and here, the real meaning of artivism and social justice is brought to light. Through the periodic meetings the community shares a lot of information about what goes on in the world. People present their art and this virtual community acts as a support system for the artists. The virtual community has brought to life the passions of many members by ensuring that as much the community engages in activism through art, the artists also display their skill. Through interactions with members of Pawa254 on Facebook and Twitter I realized that one could actually purchase or sell their pieces of art to people in the community. This creates stronger bonds among the members of this community and it is based on the understanding that this paper argues for the need of interactions between and among the members of the virtual community. Arguably, the ability of the members of the artivism virtual community to interact freely on one on one forums makes it easy for the community to unite towards a certain cause and similarly, this synergy creates a lot of energy through the social media platforms that form the channels of communication among the members of the community. In words of Gladwell, therefore, the revolution that the world is currently undergoing would not be possible without the social media but then the physical interactions and a just cause are a major reason for successful campaigns for social justice.
Ethnographic studies with the virtual community proved just how much the social media contributes to the formation of discourse communities with similar goals and interests without considering the international boundaries. The analysis of Pawa254 revealed that despite the community having all its operations in Kenya, there are many people from the international are members of this community at least through Facebook. These people may have little knowledge about the political-social environment in Kenya and in Africa as a whole. However, the mere fact that the Pawa254 virtual community fights for social justice through peaceful means and that it uses art as the tool of communication attracts many people from many countries across the world.
I interacted with a few members of Pawa254 through Facebook. One realization that came from the ethnographic study was the fact that this community endeavors not only to inspire social change in Kenya but also in Africa and in other parts of the world. In one of the comments, the Pawa254 virtual community taught me that all countries across the world go through more or less the same problems with the only difference being the prevalence of some problems in some parts of the world. For instance, the issue of refugees handling in Europe came into the picture with the community indicating the dissatisfaction of the handling of Syrian refugees by authorities in Europe and in Australia. The community mentioned the issue of terrorism in countries like Belgium and the negative perception that the terror attacks form with regard to the Muslim community. Additionally, the community also mentioned the issues of racially inclined justice system in the United States with regard to the racially discriminative means of handling crime suspects and drivers on US roads. Through the mentioning of these problems the virtual community opened my eyes to the understanding of how the social media networks help in fighting the common social problems facing communities in different parts of the world and the fact that though the social media, people from different parts of the world can help in fighting social ills. For instance, the Pawa254 virtual community members reminded of the global union behind the #ChibokGirls campaign which touched on the abduction of school girls by the Boko Haram terror group in Nigeria. Without the social media, the #BringBackOurGirls would not have been made and without virtual communities such as Pawa254 the definition of such a cause would have been difficult.
According to Baym (2010) on his discussion of new connections, the creation of virtual communities has redefined communications across the world. Formerly, organizing protests against social injustices was difficult and involved a lot of violence to even get people together. In the new era, however, there has been a new shift in communications and governments are now finding it harder to deal with protests since the power of the internet has empowered those that are otherwise disenfranchised. Consequently, the governments are now finding more hard to deal with protests simply because the power of the social media. Most importantly, the governments are concerned that these virtual communities do not know any political borders and this is why countries such as China are weary of the internet.
In conclusion, this paper focused on the analysis of Pawa254 as the virtual community that I have had experience with. I have only engaged with the community through the social media. Through ethnographic studies, the study of the virtual community revealed the importance of social media as a tool of communication in social change. Additionally, the study revealed the importance of interactions and a just cause to be able to support the fight for social change. The most important observation is the fact that the virtual communities transcend international boundaries and bring change to areas where it is least expected as seen in the various areas where hashtags have been in application.
Works Cited
Baym. New Forms of Personal Connection. 2010.pdf
Baym. Technological Determinism. pdf
Gladwell, Malcolm. Small Change: Why the Revolution will not be Tweeted. The New Yorker. 2010. Print.
