Public vs Private
How might activists assess risks, especially those concerning privacy and security, as they share their stories online? In a widely shared critique of so-called “Twitter Revolutions,” The New Yorker’s Malcolm Gladwell argues that online activists do not face the same kinds of risks as previous generations faced in their struggles for civil rights. Yet, we are finding that there are high risks for, say, undocumented youth who post videos coming out via YouTube or American muslim youth who use social media to think through their identities in the Post-9/11 era. Many of these risks emerge as these youth make choices about the bounds between publicity (“coming out,” “speaking out”) and privacy, which are similar to more mundane choices confronting all youth in the era of Twitter and Facebook.
Real World Example:
Coming out of the Shadows utilized the documentary format of interviews combined with more cinema verite protest footage. The interviews help to contextualize and emphasize the vulnerability and risk that these protesters are taking to expose themselves in public spaces, to “come out of the shadows”. The emphasis on (in)visibility within immigrant reform protests plays out in an interesting tension with video as some protesters prefer to keep their identities hidden while others want to share their story in order to humanize their situation.
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