Become an
armchair activist
Online technology gives protesters real power to change the status quo -
without taking to the streets. We sign up
The next time you get an electronic petition in your e-mail inbox, think twice
about passing it on. Other than making you feel better, does sending it to 10
friends make any difference? Is anyone going to read it?
Online activism is changing. A new generation of campaigners is using technology
in innovative ways to further social change or voice their dissent. Some
initiatives, such as file-sharing copyrighted material, are legal - others are
not - but all of them go some way towards creating an atmosphere for change. So,
rather than forwarding chain mail, in what other ways can socially minded
internet users take part?
Sign that petition anyway
While e-mail petitions may not be worth the paper they're written on, not
everyone agrees that electronic petitions are pointless. Randy Paynter, the
founder of Care2 (www.care2.com), a for-profit company that runs a four
million-member on-line network for activists, believes that web-based petitions
hosted on the firm's thepetitionsite.com, can make a difference. "We built the
thepetitionsite.com in response to those e-mail petition chains that were having
no impact," he says. "We wanted those letters to be used in a powerful way."
Petitions from the site have yielded results in the past, he says, and that they
are valuable as an awareness-raising mechanism for "light greens" on the
sidelines of activist communities.
Join a smart mob
Joining a boycott from the comfort of your desk is an attractive option, but
does such push-button activism truly engage individuals with the issues? "I
don't believe that there's such a thing as digital protest," says David Taylor,
the founder of Radical Designs, a San Francisco-based company selling hosted
content management services for activist groups. Instead, he sees it as simply a
means to an end; an organisational tool for more traditional forms of protest
that lets activists play a bigger part in the planning process than they did
under the top-down model, when a small group of organisers would control an
event. "What this allows for is a decentralisation of power and decision
making," he says. "A lot of these mass actions now work using an affinity group
model, which is a decentralised decision-making model."
Organising people who don't know each other to work in concert is the concept
underlying "smart mobs", a principle defined by computing icon Howard Rheingold.
Electronic hubs that gather together activists are appearing worldwide. In the
US, The League of Pissed Off Voters is using its indyvoter.org site to
co-ordinate political actions. Meanwhile, Taylor uses text messaging to quickly
organise large groups of people. While supporting the Green Party candidate for
the Mayor of San Francisco, he built an emergency list to help co-ordinate
volunteers. "We had maybe 400 people on the list and we'd get 80 people coming
to a certain place within the hour," he says. "It's really useful for
last-minute political organising."
Become a video activist
Just as e-mail and websites can be used to organise communities, they can also
be used to publish messages that "big" media may not be interested in covering.
The Indymedia network started in 1999 to document the World Trade Organisation
protests in Seattle. There are now more than 100 Indymedia centres across the
world.
"It was started by a group of activists who had been involved in community
newspapers and media reform movements in the US," says Evan Henshaw-Plath, the
founder of activist community website protest.net, who is involved with the
group. "They knew that CNN, ABC and Fox were going to provide a pro-corporate
view of the protest, and they didn't want to let them do that. They wanted to
create an opposite of the corporate newsroom." The group organised ad hoc
television and radio channels to complement news on its website, and other
groups began copying the event, using the model to cover local protests and
bring issues to the public's attention.
Jam some culture
Culture jamming takes the independent media idea one stage further by co-opting
corporate messages and modifying them for activist purposes. Andy Bichlbaum is
one half of the Yes Men (www.theyesmen.org), an activist duo that makes websites
mimicking those of target organisations, but with altered messages. Bichlbaum
develops sites, like www.gatt.org and www.dowethics.com, to present an
alternative viewpoint to the targets that host the "real" sites (www.wto.org and
www.dow.com.) "The Gatt site makes it a lot more obvious what the WTO is really
about," he says.
Give it away
Rather than voicing dissent by using the technology that you have, why not
further social change by giving it away? Environmentalists were shocked by a
United Nations research group report in March that revealed
heavier-than-expected environmental impact caused by personal computers. Giving
away computers to worthy causes is an act of high-tech activism that carries an
environmental and social benefit. Tony Roberts, the CEO of UK-based charity
Computer Aid, explains that PCs donated to his organisation go to schools or
non-governmental organisations. "We're supplying computers into the
meteorological office in Kenya, so that, at the district level, farmers can come
in and analyse information for forecasting and planning their crops," he says.
Or you could keep your computer and use it to connect to Freecycle
(www.freecycle.org), the donation and gifting network that Deron Beal started in
Arizona in 2003. The network, which uses Yahoo groups to unite local
communities, focuses on donating second-hand goods.
Instead of throwing out old junk, Freecycle members list it on the local group.
If another group member needs it, they come and pick it up - for free. "Why
throw something in the landfill that you can reuse?" he asks, adding that
assuming each gift donated on the network weighs a pound, Freecycle is saving 33
tons of junk from the landfills each day.
Clearly, in the world of digital activism, there's always room to branch out
into something new.