cover image The Revolution That Wasn’t: How Digital Activism Favors Conservatives

The Revolution That Wasn’t: How Digital Activism Favors Conservatives

Jen Schradie. Harvard Univ, $29.95 (384p) ISBN 978-0-674-97233-9

In this scholarly study of the 2011–2012 fight over public sector unionization in North Carolina, Schradie, a documentarian and activist turned sociologist, tests a central assumption of early internet theorists—that the supposed ease of digital activism would reinvigorate democracy and create a more inclusive, egalitarian marketplace of ideas—and finds that, instead, “digital activism has simply ended up reproducing, and in some cases intensifying, preexisting power imbalances.” She identifies three primary factors for this outcome: The members of working-class pro-union groups in North Carolina had less digital access, skill, empowerment, and time than their conservative counterparts. While conservative groups tended to embrace hierarchy and designate a skilled person to manage communication and publicity, progressive groups tended to manage tasks more collectively, leading to less effective communication. And conservative groups also tended to have a central, cohesive concept of individualist “freedom” that was successful in a right-wing media ecosystem, while left-leaning groups had sometimes competing ideas about how to define or achieve their central idea, “fairness,” which tended to lead to fragmentation. In the end, Pro-union groups in North Carolina failed to reverse the statute against public sector collective bargaining. Although Schradie’s conclusions have broader implications, the academic nature of this work will likely limit its appeal to sociologists, political scientists, and new media theorists. [em](May) [/em]