Soon traditional Chinese will join the other eleven subtitle options already available for the 10 tactics documentary. New media masters student at the University of Amsterdam, Yufen Cadence Chen, is spending her winter vacation translating "10 tactics for turning information into action" because she believes that “it is a good film to share” and one she wants Chinese speakers to have access to. With a firm belief in environmental activism, borne out of her passion for organic urban farming and an academic focus on digital media, a film about info-activism resonates strongly for her.
An info-activist in her own right, Yufen has an interesting story to tell about how she came to understand the potential of digital tools to communicate a cause. While at community college in Taiwan, she helped her organic farming class set up a blog to promote their work in the public sphere. She quickly found that as more of her classmates participated online, their campaign gained visibility and force and soon her teacher, previously “a lone organic farming advocate”, was approached by a TV station to produce a show about urban farming. As Yufen says, this is just a small example which supports her “belief in the power of the mass and social media.”
Yufen feels that 10 tactics reveals the power of digital technologies, showing how they can be used for activism, but more importantly, it empowers people to force social change in their own way. “Each individual can also achieve a meaningful contribution by simple involvement with the internet or mobile technologies. Citizens can have a say to change the world and it is important to realise that we should not be controlled by the commercialised side of technologies; instead we have the right to influence the world by the freedom of communication.” Yufen is translating the film using the online translation service, dotSUB and welcomes and offers to help her. Please get in touch: infoactivism[at]tacticaltech.org.
Image: Yufen Cadence Chen