I think Twitter and any other social platforms are good for the kind of activism that you stated above.
However for something so revolutionary, it takes more than just being a slacktivist who sits their ass on a comfy chair while doing a 'political reformation'.
I doubt someone committing to donate $x for every retweet validates Twitter as an activism tool. It's just a well meaning PR stunt that uses Twitter instead of any number of on/offline tools.
A real test would be something like the protests in Iran. I remember wondering why the regime doesn't just block Twitter, like they do for other sites. Apparently it wasn't worth the bother, the impact was more felt in the Western hyposphere than Iran. Personally what really concerned me was the State Dept asking Twitter to reschedule downtime for this. I'd hope they have somewhat better sources.
Yes, I'm not claiming this was any great revolutionary activism - but it was action beyond "Western self-congratulation" as John writes about in the linked post.
People took out their wallets, and paid. See if you can find the 28 people who matched. It's not easy - they're not getting any PR. This was someone who on a whim decided to attempt to raise money for a charity through the Twitter medium, and he gained a lot of support. The trigger was favs, not RTs - I'd argue it's not a PR stunt.
I do share your cynicism about the Iran situation, but I think Twitter can be used as an effective tool around smaller issues as demonstrated.
What if in the future there are 2 billion twitter users instead of 170 million? Do you think there will generally be higher awareness of global issues? Before you can act on something you need to be aware of it right?
I have a friend here in the states who is from Iran and he spent many nights during the protests refreshing twitter and Facebook. I can't say whether twitter changed the way the protests went, but they seemed the best way to get a sense of what was happening.
On the other hand, if raising $15,000 for breast cancer (why is it always breast cancer and never bowel cancer btw?) is the biggest thing that has been accomplished by twitter after all the attention it has gotten, then its potential so far has been somewhat overstated.
For a sense of scale, I googled "raises $15000 for breast cancer" and found the following folks who had also raised $15000 for breast cancer sans worldwide brouhaha:
"Maquette Bank Employees Raise $15000 to Fight Breast Cancer"
"Buckley Senior Raises $15000 for Cancer Research through Cabaret"
"In conjunction with Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Special Effects Hair Salon raised over $15000 hosting a Cut-A-Thon fundraising event..."
This reminds me of the excellent point made by Andrew Mason (founder of Groupon) in his talk at Startup School: the easier it is for people to lend their "support" to a cause [1], the less meaningful their participation. If signing an online petition takes a single click, a million "signatures" might mean less than 10 hand-written letters to your congressperson.
1. Obviously, donating money or doing something tangible is different, but I'm speaking of things like signing petitions, swapping out your profile pic, etc.
What an utterly random and unprovoked denigration of activists.
Claiming activists primarily generate "moral satisfaction" is like claiming that the primary output of entrepreneurs is ego. It doesn't just miss the big picture, it misses everything.
"Somewhere in the thick of these successes, Malcolm Gladwell wrote a sly piece in the New Yorker saying that Twitter couldn't start a revolution. I think that most would agree that the Science Is Vital campaign proved him wrong."
I think that most would agree that the Science Is Vital campaign proved him wrong.
So the achievement of the "Science is Vital" campaign was to deliver a petition to the UK Government asking them not to cut science funding, which later wound up being cut by less than somebody predicted at some point?
And this is isomorphic to a "revolution" how? Call me when there's a gay pride parade in Tehran.
A tweet or retweet of a social cause may help spread the news, but it takes just as much effort as retweeting a LOLcat.
Twitter is inhomogeneous. I pay attention to retweets from people I follow, because the people I follow don't retweet LOLcats. (And the day one of them does is the day I unfollow them.)
You have to crawl before you can walk. Weak ties can turn into strong ties; cheap affiliations can grow into durable ones. Once you're self-identified with a cause via something cheap and easy like Twitter, various cognitive/behavioral effects will draw you further in, over time. So give it time.
I agree with the post here. To me, there is a sense of complete hollowness in almost everything that I see fostered on Twitter. It's so easy to tweet that there is no commitment to anything most of the time.
But Twitter has just started what will probably have a long future of product development. Twitter has fought the plague of twitspam and will maybe surprise us with a more sophisticated version of tweets if they take the $200M they are rumored to be raising.
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[ 172 ms ] story [ 3314 ms ] thread28 people matched the 10c donation, and there was $8,000 of adhoc donations inspired by the action. See: http://favstar.fm/users/Mike_FTW/status/27901780152
However for something so revolutionary, it takes more than just being a slacktivist who sits their ass on a comfy chair while doing a 'political reformation'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacktivism
A real test would be something like the protests in Iran. I remember wondering why the regime doesn't just block Twitter, like they do for other sites. Apparently it wasn't worth the bother, the impact was more felt in the Western hyposphere than Iran. Personally what really concerned me was the State Dept asking Twitter to reschedule downtime for this. I'd hope they have somewhat better sources.
People took out their wallets, and paid. See if you can find the 28 people who matched. It's not easy - they're not getting any PR. This was someone who on a whim decided to attempt to raise money for a charity through the Twitter medium, and he gained a lot of support. The trigger was favs, not RTs - I'd argue it's not a PR stunt.
I do share your cynicism about the Iran situation, but I think Twitter can be used as an effective tool around smaller issues as demonstrated.
What if in the future there are 2 billion twitter users instead of 170 million? Do you think there will generally be higher awareness of global issues? Before you can act on something you need to be aware of it right?
For a sense of scale, I googled "raises $15000 for breast cancer" and found the following folks who had also raised $15000 for breast cancer sans worldwide brouhaha:
"Maquette Bank Employees Raise $15000 to Fight Breast Cancer"
"Buckley Senior Raises $15000 for Cancer Research through Cabaret"
"In conjunction with Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Special Effects Hair Salon raised over $15000 hosting a Cut-A-Thon fundraising event..."
1. Obviously, donating money or doing something tangible is different, but I'm speaking of things like signing petitions, swapping out your profile pic, etc.
Claiming activists primarily generate "moral satisfaction" is like claiming that the primary output of entrepreneurs is ego. It doesn't just miss the big picture, it misses everything.
"Somewhere in the thick of these successes, Malcolm Gladwell wrote a sly piece in the New Yorker saying that Twitter couldn't start a revolution. I think that most would agree that the Science Is Vital campaign proved him wrong."
So the achievement of the "Science is Vital" campaign was to deliver a petition to the UK Government asking them not to cut science funding, which later wound up being cut by less than somebody predicted at some point?
And this is isomorphic to a "revolution" how? Call me when there's a gay pride parade in Tehran.
Twitter is inhomogeneous. I pay attention to retweets from people I follow, because the people I follow don't retweet LOLcats. (And the day one of them does is the day I unfollow them.)
Not all retweets are created equal.
And I agree with the writer - if you want to make a change get out there and just do it.