Last fall, I asked the students in my Contemporary Art & Media Education class to collectively propose, design and implement a multifaceted guerilla marketing campaign for a human rights/social justice issue. This ended up being a really interesting assignment - essentially an experiment in community organizing and popular education. The students decided to focus on Network Neutrality - one of the key human rights battles of the digital age. They named the campaign: NetED.
They designed an educational campaign, including an interdisciplinary curriculum, that culminated in a public intervention at Union Square here in NY.To demonstrate how Internet Service Providers can (and do) divert and manipulate Internet traffic, the students diverted pedestrian traffic along the sidewalk on the southern edge of the park through a small path.
The video footage below was shot by Tara Finneran and Jason Rosenstock and was remixed by Jason Rosenstock. The propaganda animation playing on the laptops was created by Chris Haske.
Here’s a second video of the intervention: a bird’s-eye-view shot and edited by Tara Finneran.
As part of the project, the students also created and field tested a series of classroom exercises to help teach young people about network neutrality and media consolidation.
The video below was shot and edited by Jason Rosenstock.
