Possibilities for Effecting Change Through Social Media
February 26, 2012 § Leave a Comment
If you know me, you know I regularly participate in and post petitions to my facebook wall. I didn’t used to be the type to take part in petitions. I saw them as a nice attempt to part water with a teaspoon. Realistically even 10 years ago getting mass support for any petition involved physically putting the petition in peoples hands. It required manpower that most organizations did not have. Today, you can use www.change.org or a host of other websites to create, circulate and popularize any petition you care to write. With the added benefit of social media “sharing”, you can have that same petition in the hands of thousands if not millions in one 24 hour cycle. Finally, you can get the signed document in the hands of decision makers, all without ever getting up from your desk. Pretty impressive and efficient.
Of course there are those that disagree. That is the beauty of relative freedom. You can disagree; and some of these dissenters make valid points about charity organizations simply wishing to collect your email address. They can have mine if their cause is good. They already know everything about me anyhow…
The fact is, some petitions DO work. This writer does an eloquent job of summarizing some of the value of signing these petitions and near the bottom cites several real examples of petitions that worked and a few that didn’t work but helped increase awareness and added needed regulations where they might not have been otherwise.
Have you ever started an online petition?
Did many people sign it?
Do you think it made a difference?
