From Federal Reliance to Community Resilience : The Role of Mutual Aid & Empowerment Using Online & Social Media

Sammanfattning

With the United States recent change in government creating less reliance on federal aid during natural disaster and crisis, and more reliance on communities to help themselves, it is more important than ever to understand the effectiveness of mutual aid. Using a networked content analysis and comparative analysis, this thesis looks at online and social media as an effective strategy to increase a sense of empowerment, participatory communication, and various ways in which it can be used, asking how mutual aid groups empower participatory development using social media, while also analyzing how social media has changed over time. Looking at 3 different mutual aid group’s websites, social media, and related literature, we gain a better understanding of how mutual aid groups empower participatory development using online and social media. Depending on the goal of the mutual aid group, we see that different forms of online media work best for that particular group, with websites being the most effective for advocating for change, while social media is often the better method for engaging with community to provide direct and immediate aid. This thesis demonstrates the effectiveness and importance of mutual aid for long-term reliance and decreased reliance on government or traditional aid.