The cute cat theory of digital activism is a

theory A theory is a systematic and rational form of abstract thinking about a phenomenon, or the conclusions derived from such thinking. It involves contemplative and logical reasoning, often supported by processes such as observation, experimentation, ...

concerning

Internet activism Internet activism involves the use of electronic-communication technologies such as social media, e-mail, and podcasts for various forms of activism to enable faster and more effective communication by citizen social movement , movements, the deliv ...

, Web censorship, and "cute cats" (a term used for any low-value, but popular online activity) developed by

Ethan Zuckerman Ethan Zuckerman (born January 4, 1973) is an American media scholar, blogger, and Internet activist. He was the director of the MIT Center for Civic Media, and Associate Professor of the Practice in Media Arts and Sciences at MIT until May 2020 ...

in 2008. It posits that most people are not interested in activism; instead, they want to use the

web Web most often refers to: * Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal * World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to: Computing * WEB, a literate programming system created by ...

for mundane activities, including surfing for

pornography Pornography (colloquially called porn or porno) is Sexual suggestiveness, sexually suggestive material, such as a picture, video, text, or audio, intended for sexual arousal. Made for consumption by adults, pornographic depictions have evolv ...

and

lolcat A lolcat (pronounced ), or LOLcat, is an image macro of one or more cats. Lolcat images' Idiosyncrasy, idiosyncratic and intentionally grammatically incorrect text is known as lolspeak. Lolcat is a Compound (linguistics), compound word of the ...

s ("cute cats"). The tools that they develop for that (such as

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

Flickr Flickr ( ) is an image hosting service, image and Online video platform, video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was previously a co ...

Blogger A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

, and similar platforms) are very useful to

social movement A social movement is either a loosely or carefully organized effort by a large group of people to achieve a particular goal, typically a Social issue, social or Political movement, political one. This may be to carry out a social change, or to re ...

activists because they may lack resources to develop dedicated tools themselves. This, in turn, makes the activists more immune to reprisals by governments than if they were using a dedicated activism platform, because shutting down a popular public platform provokes a larger public outcry than shutting down an obscure one.

The Internet and censorship

Zuckerman states that " Web 1.0 was invented to allow physicists to share research papers.

Web 2.0 Web 2.0 (also known as participative (or participatory) web and social web) refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture, and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, a ...

was created to allow people to share pictures of cute cats." Zuckerman says that if a tool has "cute cat" purposes, and is widely used for low-value purposes, it can be and likely is used for online activism, too. If the government chooses to shut down such generic tools, it will hurt people's ability to "look at cute cats online", spreading dissent and encouraging the activists' cause.

Chinese model

According to Zuckerman,

internet censorship in the People's Republic of China The People's Republic of China (PRC) internet censorship, censors both the publishing and viewing of online material. Many controversial events are censored from news coverage, preventing many Chinese citizens from knowing about the actions of ...

, which relies on its own, self-censored, Web 2.0 sites, is able to circumvent the cute-cat problem because the government is able to provide people with access to cute-cat content on domestic, self-censored sites while blocking access to Western sites, which are less popular in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

than in many other places worldwide. "Sufficiently usable read/write platforms will attract porn and activists. If there's no porn, the tool doesn't work. If there are no activists, it doesn't work well," Zuckerman has stated.

References

External links

*, *{{cite news , last=Cohen, first=Noam , newspaper=

The New York Times Magazine ''The New York Times Magazine'' is an American Sunday magazine included with the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times''. It features articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors. The magazi ...

, url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/technology/internet/22link.html , title=As Blogs Are Censored, It's Kittens to the Rescue , date=2009-06-21 , accessdate=2012-04-12 Internet-based activism Technology in society Internet humor Metaphors referring to cats

The Internet and censorship

Chinese model

See also

References

External links