ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a specific example of cyberactivism, the viral Flash activist
film The Meatrix, which offers for professional communication classrooms a
heuristic for discussions that may benefit a wide range of rural, urban, and suburban
communities and communicators in their discussions of social topics such as factory
farming. Whether they realize it or not, most U.S. residents buy milk, eggs, and
meat that have been factory farmed, and The Meatrix can prompt students to think
of factory farms not as a problem “out there” (out of sight, out of mind), but as a
problem for everyone. This chapter analyzes The Meatrix as a case study of the
possibilities and limitations of digital organizing and digital information dissemin-
ation, as a critical literacy problem-posing exercise, and as an opportunity for
exploring the kinds of “oppositional consciousness” and “alternative solidarities”
(Bousquet, 2003, p. vii) that are necessary if professional communication students
are to become mindful users of the products of digital technology.
