Can Cute Cats Help Your Cause?

What do LOLcats and successful digital activism campaigns have in common?  

While the answer to this is unlikely to feature in any standup comedy routine it could be vital to the success or failure of your cause’s campaign.

Digital activism campaigns are more extensively taking advantage of the internet and how easy it is to spread an idea.  From Greenpeace and World Vision to more controversial political campaigns, these organisations are diversifying their message across multiple platforms.  Bur what happens when a government dislikes the message and tries to shut you down?

This is where promoting your campaigns on Facebook and the like can have huge advantages.  In 2008 Ethan Zuckerman began discussing his ‘cute cat theory’ which states activists should promote their campaigns in the same domain that people post pictures of cute cats.  Why?  Zuckerman claims most internet users use the net and social media for harmless activities.  One of the most popular of these being looking at or posting pictures of cute cats, turtles, or any other creature deemed potentially adorable.  Therefore for a repressive government to block your campaign on these websites they would also have to block access to the cute cat pictures potentially causing much more of an uproar than if they were just blocking your website or local network.  This allows potentially controversial campaigns to continue to exist without threat of closure by an authoritative organisation.

Shutting down a popular public platform can cause a much larger backlash than shutting down a smaller one which means while a website dedicated to a cause with an active community may be beneficial, by moving the discussion to a larger platform any chance of it being taken down is diminished.  A small community of passionate political supporters unfortunately will not cause as big an outcry as a worldwide community of cute cat lovers.

Combining this with social media’s sharing capacity and it seems very appropriate to build a campaign using these mediums.  A facebook page or youtube channel has the ability to greatly widen an audience, and the more people in your audience the more people may decide to involve themselves in change.  While social media is still very new, it is already becoming an increasingly popular tool for activism and one that can potentially change the world.

Heninger, N. (2011) Telex and Ethan Zuckerman's "Cute Cat Theory" of Internet Censorship. Freedom to Tinker, [blog] July 22, Available at: https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/nadiah/telex-and-ethan-zuckermans-cute-cat-theory-internet-censorship/ [Accessed: 6 January 2013].

Kessler, S. (2009) Why Social Media Is Reinventing Activism. Mashable, [blog] October 10, Available at: http://mashable.com/2010/10/09/social-media-activism/ [Accessed: 6 January 2013].