Moribund Social Movements in the Shadow of Technology

Modern social movements have undertaken the function of presenting an alternative life and future vision in the geography where they emerged in the 19th and 20th centuries. In other words, social, political, economic, psychological, etc. experienced around any phenomenon such as individual, society, animal, environment as a reason for existence. They have been trying to put forward an alternative paradigm and policy against stuckness, alienation and barrenness.

The development of technology in the 20th century, especially the mass media taking a prominent role in individual and social life, articulated the general course of modern institutions and life practices and the forms of existence of parallel social movements. In particular, the meaning that social movements largely attributed to communication technologies, the reasons for using them and their practices, was to position them as a tool that would bring their imagination to life, whatever the reason for their existence.

However, this positive meaning ascribed to communication technologies in terms of social movements has started to change over time, and contrary to its claims, it has started to transform from being a tool to being a goal and a practice of just being there. Especially after the development of new communication technologies and social media in the last quarter-century, social movements often come to the fore, but the thing that comes to the agenda and is talked about more is the new communication technologies themselves.

The fact that new communication technologies give the individual, social movements and many other collective structures the right to speak, and offer opportunities such as participation, organization and mobilization turn the attention to this new technology itself. This intense meaning attributed to new communication technologies has begun to transform the priority, intellectual and operational priorities of social movements. In this sense, the premises of social movements such as being more visible, producing more content and increasing interactivity have started to emerge. In the meantime, what is happening; The existence of social movements is the existence of significant erosion in basic parameters such as the individual and society imaginations, and the designs of a habitable world.