Talk:Activism

message: The opening sentence is strong and precise. This article was used as an example of a strong but neutral article during my Wikipedia class. All of the links work, there are several of them but they are necessary for such a broad topic like activism. 
WP:NEUTRAL 
 Millyg123456 (talk) 21:44, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Great Article 

message: Wow, first person to write here.
Shouldn't there be a Social Activism - as in activism conducted by groups of people to affect a change by getting the public support for a cause. This differs from political activism where you wish to dialogue with politicians to get governments to take action.
An example could be Clean up Australia Day which started in 1990.
I bring this up because I would like to write an article on "West Papuan Social Activism" -- to:
* list such groups from around the world;
* discuss possible reasons why there seems to be a lack of any such group in the US (and its not apathy from the American people; I'm thinking more like the vested interests of Freeport, Indonesia, and the Ford Foundation);
* and itemize what constructive actions such groups could work towards.
Daeron 18:06, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Social activism?

message: People, I think that the following:
Activism, in a general sense, can be described as involvement in action to bring about change, be it social, political, environmental, or other change. This action is in support of or opposition to one side of a controversial argument. 
is what the activists call what they are doing, but I do not think that this makes for a quality encyclopedia definition. Thing is, anything anybody is doing is causing some kind of change. What the CEO of KillingNature Inc is doing is "change" too, maybe just not exactly of the kind that activists would prefer, and to judge what is and is not change by someone's criteria is POV. Needless to say, we need to keep it as a self-description, but we should not have it as a basic definition. A better definition should be more specific to what 'activism' really entails, in opposition to other human activities. I think part of it entails something like participating in activities that would not be considered a "legitimate occupation" for an individual. Basically, there are some occupations, sometimes paid ones, that do not "qualify" as a real "job", sort of like protesting against Walmart, fighting against wishy-washy school curriculum, or training suicide bombers for Hamas. So if you cannot say that this guy has such and such job, you would say he is an "activist" for whatever it is that he is trying to accomplish. I am sure there are other symptoms, sort of like a "deviant" goal of the activity. Anyway, I will try working on it later, but I just wanted to open up the discussion about it. Let's make this article more analytical and less of a teach-in-truth-out kind of broadside. Watcher 09:14, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Activism is about social and/or political change, and many acts of CEOs do not do this. If a CEO does (for example if (s)he orders his/her company to start offering same-sex partner benefits, or if (s)he orders his/her company to deny such benefits if they currently exist) then it would be activism. Activism is an act, not necessairly an occupation. There are activists whose primary jobs are activist related, but I don't see how this would be a "non-legitimate occupation" --- and such a statement would not be NPOV. Likewise, trying to define activism as supporting a "deviant" goal is not NPOV. Because activism generally involves advocating for change, it often does try to change or challenge the accepted standards of a society. However, "deviant" is a loaded term. --SecretAgent 02:03, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Watcher's comments

message: In contemporary use, "activism" tends to be a word associated with the actions and ideologies of those on the political left... An activist may be called a freedom fighter by some, and a terrorist by others, depending on which side of the political fence is making the observation...An activist may be called a freedom fighter by some, and a terrorist by others, depending on which side of the political fence is making the observation.
:Removed this content as it appears to be original, unsupported research.  Activism comes in all flavors, from left to right, so claiming that the word is associated with the political left wing is absurd; and the comment about "freedom fighters" and "terrorists" seems highly POV.  Perhaps there may be another way to phrase it, but one should cite sources in any case.  Let's talk about what activism is or isn't, not about what it might be subjectively called by an unnamed party. --Viriditas  | Talk 28 June 2005 13:30 (UTC)
::The first sentence is debatable, but it seems to have some truth to it, particularly in the United States.  The second sentence doesn't seem to be particularly problematic.  Certainly people use either positive and negative terms for activists depending on whether they are praising or condemning them.  Though I suppose that example is relevant mainly to particular kinds of activists, like guerillas. Dforest 08:02, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: While the article lists only lefties, and the term is exclusively used of lefties, I think we need to say so. Roger Pearse (talk) 11:06, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed content 

message: I believe this list should be removed. There are about a million different acitivst issues. What makes these so special? Unless the authors can state some criteria for putting names on this list, the list is pretty useless. --Griot
:Though a specific list may be non-conclusive it still servers a very valuable purpose of providing examples for understanding (just as seen in dictionary's where a word is demonstrated in a sentence..)
::Examples might help readers understand the subject of the article. -moritheilTalk 03:58, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Activist Issues" 

message: I don't think ethical shopping can be considered a form of activism. It doesn't contribute to changing society. If this were true then going to live in the woods in a cabin could be considered activism. I think activism has to do with somehow seeing to change the rules, laws, or social norms of society. I think promoting ethical shopping would be a form of activism. But not engaging in ethical shopping by itself. A link to the forms of non-violent resistance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_resistance might be good to add at the end as well.
-- Chris Williams, December 18,  2005, 3:46pm EST
: I think financially supporting companies, stores, etc. that agree with your values can definitely be an "intentional action to bring about social or political change" (as the article defines activism). I do agree that activism is often seen as being more confrontational than that, though. --SecretAgent 02:10, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ethical Shopping 

message: This page is heavily biased.  Why is it that in the "mainstream" (liberal) press, people who vigorously pursue liberal causes are called "activists", while people who vigorously puruse conservative causes "extremists" or "fanatics" and the like?  This should be discussed.--jrwilheim@yahoo.com
:Can you give specific examples that are not so vague, and maybe cite sources? -moritheilTalk 04:13, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, sources from the "mainstream" media criticizing the "mainstream" media. Good luck with that!--136.183.240.185 (talk) 18:27, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bias 

message: I found the reference to Flamingantisme on the French wikipedia. I have asked the person who posted this (Roby) for a citation. But also  and  look very interesting on this, but my dutch is quite limited. Harrypotter 21:54, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Belgian separatists are not the first thing which comes to mind when I see the phrase Flaming Activists. The English word is Fleming or Flemish; it's Vlaams (or variations thereon) in their own language. Incidentally, when I first saw the sentence about the Flamingant movement, my first thought was that it was related to Flamingoing. I guess I was wrong. Argyriou 20:02, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I know it was very bad joke!Harrypotter 14:46, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Flaming Activists

message: Can someone PLEASE delete the article social activist.  It is subjective and useless.  Bytebear 00:38, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Social Activist 

message: I am removing the External Link to Wikia with this guideline as cause.  The Wikia area in question is a wiki with only 2 edits in the past 4 weeks. -- JossBuckle Swami 22:15, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removing External Link to Wikia 

message: The section on judicial activism is incredibly POV--judicial activism is not ordinarily considered a type of activism; it's a recent invention to selectively characterize judicial decisionmaking.  At most it should be a footnote to a separate article on judicial activism. --lquilter 22:03, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Judicial activism?

message: I have proposed a merge of Youth voice into this article. I'd even suggest a simple redirect. The Youth voice article openly states that it is a neologism. It also claims that it is a "fairly common" neologism, but provides no source or evidence for that assertion. The term is also used rather anachronistically through most of the article, applying it to things that would never have used the term in their day, whereas "activism" would have been. The article is simply about a narrow form of activism using a term that I suspect most people would not search for. Agent 86 22:32, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Opposed There are more than 370 google scholar hits for the term "youth voice" - it is not a neologism. The article is poorly written, because the term embraces far more than simply involving youth in activism. It would be inappropriate to merge the youth voice into the activism article. - Freechild 22:46, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: P.S. Agent 86, I can't help but think you nominated the article for a merger in order to circumnavigate the talkheader. - Freechild 17:32, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The talkheader on which talk page, this one or the "youth voice" one? How? And for what purpose? I completely fail to understand what you're accusing me of. If you think I have some ulterior motive, I take umbrage at the insuation. Agent 86 10:14, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The talkheader on the discussion page, which clearly states that it is not for general discussion about the article's subject - which you have circumnavigated with your proposal, and creating a seperate discussion here. It doesn't matter now though - your comment clearly shows you didn't have anything else in mind. - Freechild 15:25, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

text: For what it's worth, that header on the other talk page means that people aren't supposed to treat the talk page like a chat-room to discuss the issue of "youth voice". It is entirely appropriate to talk about the merits of the subject as an encyclopedic article or likewise. What I did is also in keeping with the directions at WP:MERGE. Agent 86 19:23, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

text: For what it's worth, I rewrote the article, and your proposal is no longer valid. Would you consider removing it? - Freechild 13:45, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge of [[Youth voice]] into this article

message: well?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.91.2.77 (talk) 04:40, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: No one has found any proper sources.  Please find sources and add a section. -moritheilTalk 05:15, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Why isn't there a "criticism" section?

message: The article doesn't even mention this word! I am astounded at how inaccurate it has to be... --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk  18:54, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Please find sources connecting the two, and then add the term. -moritheilTalk 05:15, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Social movements

message: I've added a POV tag to the top of the article. The reason is that this article looks like it was written by activists. That is, it's pro-activist, and thus biased. It tries to paint activism in a positive light. It assumes activism to be a positive thing.
The language throughout the article is slanted in favour of activism. Someone who likes "transformational activism" appears to have written most of the article.
I don't mean just having a "criticisms" section. That relegates criticism to the end. However, it would be helpful to have a criticisms section that discusses connections between emotion, ego, and activism. It might discuss whether activists are truly attempting to change the world for the better, or whether they are trying to satisfy emotio-political needs to satisy their need for, or even addiction to, personal power. It might look at whether activists tend to look at more than one side of an issue, or even bother to understand alternate views before making judgements. The question "does activism = change or does activism = war?" is worth looking at as well.
Some of these are changes that would need more balanced researching, and others are simply changes in the tone ot wording of the article. But the tag shouldn't be removed until they are addressed. 66.183.132.33 (talk) 00:57, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Can you find any reliable sources that state activism, in general, is at times a harmful and negative thing?  Without them, we cannot support the existence of such a section. Please add sources as you find them.  -moritheilTalk 03:57, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

text: But this is just a stub. It tells almost nothing on the subject. There are books which describe the issue from your perspective . You are very welcome to improve this article. Biophys (talk) 16:11, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV tag 

message: Never heard of her, the others are well known worldwide but she appears not to be at all notable outside the usa, maybe a better alternative could be found. 92.0.144.237 (talk) 18:06, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gloria whatsit 

message: I suspected something when over a dozen links disappeared, but the majority of them really do appear to have been specific activist groups, and thus lacking in encyclopedic merit. We should be sure to welcome links that are about activism in general, for or against, even as we delete promotional links. -moritheilTalk 05:22, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Link Farming 

message: How could anyone wrote that feminism "tries to persuade people to change their behavior directly, rather than persuade governments to change laws."? The feminists are focused primarily on changing the laws! 
If no one protest, I will delete it after a week.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Čermi (talk • contribs) 21:23, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Feminism 

message: I have no particular views on this subject, but this article is very bad indeed.  This is because it consists of a series of assertions by various persons unknown, all unreferenced to any reliable source.
I'd simply delete nearly all of this article, if there was consensus, and start again.  We could start with a dictionary definition, and look up the term in some academic papers (not the sort that consist only of political polemic).   A history of the term and its usage would seem appropriate. 
:: why is there no such section?? 108.35.251.135 (talk) 05:07, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I would second that completely (though I don't feel like doing it myself!). The article is heavily biased (take for example the "notable activists", who are no more than the most recognizable figures/idols in the average middle-class Western-left psyche), and "transformational activism" seems to be an obscure term that gets just 700 hits on Google, mostly blogs, nothing published as far as I can tell from a cursory look (definitely nothing to warrant being the main body of the Wikipedia entry). That section is also badly written as far as grammar is concerned. So a serious re-write would be great. IronChris  |  (talk) 03:46, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: There, I added a re-write template to suggest giving this article a facelift. I can imagine that it's a hot topic and a difficult one to get consensus on, but in its present state it's really appalling. Like I mentioned in my edit summary, the reasons for this are: complete lack of references, original research throughout, biased perspective (especially biased towards Western mainstream leftist activism), lack of notability of the only main section, and lack of a logical, encyclopedic structure (e.g. History/Development, Geographic Variation, Types, Legality, Impact, etc.). IronChris  |  (talk) 04:06, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article needs large deletions 

message: I 'd like to add a new section. I discovered recently that ACT UP has been using ACTIVISM techniques. Also Hackers can be seen as activists. Anyway...having examples could make this page more concrete. After we can all discuss, and find the best exemples. But i saw that there was some discussions around "social activism". Social activism could be cited as an exemple. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dumont jeremy (talk • contribs) 11:36, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: What you are talking about probably belongs to articles Act up and Hacktivism. Biophys (talk) 23:19, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

text: Sure, we can. Biophys (talk) 16:22, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  New section (?) examples 

message: I propose that activism industry should be merged into this article, under a new section. activism industry is a pretty small article, without much room for expansion, so I don't think it really deserves to be its own article. I also think that the "fields in the activism industry" section should be completely removed as part of the merger, since the activism category already covers that info. --The Kakistocrat (talk) 18:59, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Concur. Meclee (talk) 15:12, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merger of Activism Industry into this article 

message: Nelson Mandela may be a fine example for "hunger strike" reference as he has refused to eat inside his prison during Apartheid in South Africa. Just the tip. 95.34.141.171 (talk) 20:16, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hunger strike - Nelson Mandela 

message: add Slacktivism under "See also"
also add something related to this paper--counterpoint to "the internet helps activism" --> https://www.msu.edu/~garyh/docs/lee-chi2013-slacktivism.pdf
Westerlycalifornia (talk) 16:52, 3 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edit request on 3 September 2013 

message: Is there anything against adding March Against Monsanto to the samples of boycott? --huggi - never stop exploring (talk) 01:50, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Methods with samples... 

message: Can we overhaul or outright delete the section regarding youth activism? 
There is absolutely nothing Encyclopedic about this entry. The tone isn't remotely neutral, the manor in which it says "we" should do x, y or z is completely inappropriate and the reasons it says x,y,z, should be done ("challenge racist, heteronormative and misogynists representations of youth" and "have open conversations to youth about systems of oppressions, power and resistance") is even more inappropriate.
This section reads more like the opening sales hook of a power point presentation (and a very biased one at that) than it does an encyclopedia article  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Badwater11 (talk • contribs) 18:36, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: While I think an article on activism certainly ought to have a section on youth activism, you are totally right in that there was nothing encyclopedic about this section. Also, it smacks of a copyright violation, but I couldn't find anything to support that. -- Irn (talk) 15:56, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Youth Activism 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello, I'm a new Wikipedia Fellow. I just added a citation from a seminal paper by sociologist Jackie Smith on the 1999 Seattle protests in the subsection on Internet Activism. I plan on making more substantial changes to this page in the coming weeks. I've read over the comments on the talk page so far, please let me know if you have any additional ideas to add. Thanks! --JaredMWr (talk) 21:08, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citation Added, More Coming Soon 

message: Hello everyone, like JaredMWr I am a Wikipedia fellow here to help contribute to this article. I think the work that has already been done on this article is valuable, but I have ventured to make a few edits and shifted the placement of the subheading on activism industry to come a little later in the article. Thank you to everyone who has contributed thus far. Regards Beutber (talk) 20:27, 23 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Altered Placement of Subheading on Activism Industry 

message: The first sentence is incorrect. ″Activism consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make improvements in society.″ Not all activism is to improve society. Maybe only within the mind of the activist theirselves. Activism is a desire to change a subject to what the individual or group wants topic to be. To control what is not currently their control. You can't say that Nazism, Communism activists are an improvement on society the way the majority thinks, just what Nazi or Communist activists think things should be. Firejack007 (talk) 18:57, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Activism definition, First Sentence 

message: Hi Drmies, I appreciate what you are trying to do with the article. I am curious though why you wrote "please don't write essays here" for a short paragraph I had added under Definitions of activism. Could you please elaborate on what you meant by that? I believe the part I had added there helped round out the definition, so I am wondering how to improve it. Thanks. --JaredMWr (talk) 23:20, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps citing sources for the statements you are making? Work permit (talk) 05:17, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Drmies "pruning" 

message: Greetings, 
The edits and additions to this article were phenomenal! Because the article was already nearly perfect I only added a small bit of information to the "Visual Activism" section. I believe that both fashion activism and craft activism are forms of visual activism which is why I chose to add it. The photograph that I paired it with was the person in the black printed cap. This was added to show a sort of combination of craftivism and fashion activism.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aswill25 (talk • contribs) 01:52, 24 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Addition of Fashion Activism and "Equality" Image 

message: With respect to the section 'types of activism', how do we decide if one form of activism is a different 'type' than another? What distinguishes a 'type' of activism from a 'method' of activism (to be found in the list in the following section)? For example, visual activism/craftivism/artivism is listed as a type of activism, but perhaps this is a method? (People commonly use art and design as a method to inform, inspire, or impact other people's behavior). Similarly, environmental activism and science activism are listed as 'types' of activism, but perhaps these are 'activist issues'? I can't detect any formalized scheme here. Internet activism is listed as a method. Is it also a type?
In reviewing the talk page, it appears that there was once a list of activist issues, but that this was perhaps abandoned because it wasn't easy to formalize a criteria for including particular issues on the list and not others.
If no formalized scheme exists for determining that one type of activism is different from another type, I'd propose that 'types of activism' might be merged with 'methods'; though I would like to pursue some higher level of distinction that would allow further categorization of activist activity if that distinction could be well formalized. Perhaps--as this is a relatively broad and high level article--it would be appropriate to briefly make distinctions between the broadest fields of activity (ie, 'environment' and 'human rights') and leave lower level articles to sort out the further distinctions. (We'd need some treatment of the intersection between environment and human rights, but it's probably do-able). There might be one or two other equally broad categories as well. These very broad categories could be listed as 'types' (or whatever other language seems suitable)
Larataguera (talk) 10:49, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Since there were no objections, I carried out the suggestion I made above. I think this is a more easily formalized way to categorize 'types' of activism and this categorization is supported by sources that I cited. This also begins to transition the 'methods' section toward a prose style instead of a list. The article still needs a lot of work....Larataguera (talk) 04:07, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  what are 'types' of activism? 

message: Larataguera and I have been discussing left-right balance in this article on my talk page and how (and whether) to include this in the lead.  We are moving the talk here. Steveok1 (talk) 19:31, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I had suggested including content about disinformation on the left in the final paragraphs of page 4 and continuing on page 5 of Freelon, et al (2020) to balance your inclusion of content about disinformation on the right from that same source. What do you think of this? Larataguera (talk) 19:38, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Left-right balance + lead 

message: Separating activism and terrorism can be difficult and has been described as a 'fine line'.[10]
Bohmer, Carol (2010). Rejecting refugees: political asylum in the 21st century. Routledge. p. 258. ISBN 978-0-415-77375-1. OCLC 743396687
With respect to "fine line," why point only to immigration when that difficult distinction could point to dozens of other types of activist fights that could be perceived as terrorist? E.G., climate change activism involving pipeline personal occupation and protesting, posting threats on social media, . Alinstpete (talk) 11:47, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reference to only immigration when defining the difference between activism and terrorism may have a political agenda.