New Media Technologies and The Zapatista Idea
The Zapatista idea is the use of tactical media to draw public attention to a political cause. Used as a form of political activism, the Zapatista idea is the notion that “the important thing is the spectacle that you make out of an event in the media, as opposed to the event itself". The concept derives from the Zapatistas' ability through new media to communicate and generate universal solidarity in Mexico and worldwide.
The “communications revolution has generally shifted the ‘balance of power’ from the media to the audience”. This has allowed the Zapatista idea to flourish, opening up new channels and providing a powerful forum for political participation by citizens (see edemocracy) on a scale like never before. “Digital, networked media allow for faster, diverse, two-way communications between users who have both more control and more choice” as they become simultaneously users, producers and agents of social change.
Read more about this topic: Zapatista Army Of National Liberation
Famous quotes containing the words media and/or idea:
“The media network has its idols, but its principal idol is its own style which generates an aura of winning and leaves the rest in darkness. It recognises neither pity nor pitilessness.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“A CAUSE is an object precedent and contiguous to another, and so united with it that the idea of the one determines the mind to form the idea of the other, and the impression of the one to form a more lively idea of the other.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)