Cav's Place

I’m writing this post after participating in the second scheduled protest against ACTA, which was attended by roughly 150 people, though over 3000 said on Facebook that they were going. In itself, the ratio was exactly the expected one, as two weeks ago some 40000 said that they’ll go to the first protest and only about actually 2000 did, but this serves to once more highlight a problem that already was obvious when it comes to protests organized through such social networks, at least over here.
Don’t get me wrong; nobody can deny the benefits of on-line social networking when it comes to protests, especially considering the key role such sites have played, and may still play, in the movements that took over the Arab world. However, while they do a wonderful job of spreading the word and facilitating communication, they also offer a way for people to express their grievances and vent that can replace actual protests in the eyes of those who aren’t exactly dedicated to the cause and are looking for the easiest way to apparently participate. As a result, a number of people who may otherwise have taken part in street protests will no longer do so and the discrepancy between the apparent number of participants on-line and the reality on the street is likely to discourage even more, plus that it will give the protests a bad image that will readily be exploited by opponents.

When you try to organize a protest by creating an event on Facebook or in any other similar manner, particularly when it will take place in an area that’s hardly known for the locals’ willingness to take part in such actions, you should know that you’re leaving the door wide open for a huge number of people who are unable or, more often than not, unwilling to understand how something like this is supposed to work. As such, they’ll either treat the event itself as something very similar to a petition or think that by selecting “going” they’re essentially just giving a “like”, either way considering that clicking to say that they’ll be going while sitting comfortably in front of their computers is a sufficient action to take. As I already said, some of those who are looking for the easiest way out may even consider this to replace actually participating in the protest, so they won’t go anymore even if they might have at least showed up for a few minutes if this option wouldn’t have been available.
What this does is artificially inflate the apparent number of participants and generate expectations that could never be matched by reality. On the one hand, this disheartens those who do end up going to the specified location, making some turn back, causing many others to manifest themselves in a significantly more subdued manner than what they would otherwise have been capable of, and almost certainly reducing the potential number of participants for the next protest on the same issue. On the other, in addition to making the media lose interest and give less or even no attention to any future protests on the same theme, it also allows opponents to easily say that the protest lacks real support and the entire movement behind it, if there is one, is based more on the “cool” factor than on real grievances.

Of course, seeing as people first need to know about a protest before they can attend it and on-line social networking is usually way better than anything else at spreading the word about such events, not to mention that such pages also allow people to quickly and easily exchange ideas and opinions, it’s quite true that the pros still far outweigh the cons. However, we need to keep in mind that there are some inherent problems with this approach and take measures in order to mitigate them as much as possible, and those measures may well include working with the sites that offer such services in order to make some changes aimed at reducing this discrepancy.
It shouldn’t take long to clearly spell out even before providing any further information that the event in question is not a petition or a call for virtual support, but is in fact created for an actual protest and only those who know that they will actually take part in it, in the specified location and at the specified time, should pick the option saying that they’re going. And it also shouldn’t be much of a problem for the sites that allow such events to be created, and of course I’m mainly referring to Facebook now, to add some options for those who want to express support despite knowing that they won’t actually attend, and preferably also give event creators the option of stating very clearly and visibly whether their event takes place on-line or off-line and possibly also include an optional warning for those who say that they’re going to off-line events.

The above are only some simple observations and suggestions, of course, and I’m sure that, on the one hand, other ideas could perhaps be even more useful and, on the other, most of the problem has to do strictly with the people who say that they’ll attend and then fail to show up and not with the organizers or the sites used. However, we need to do something to mitigate these issues as soon as possible and I’m quite sure that these simple measures would be a very good place to start. After we’ll implement them, we’ll be able to observe their effects and determine what, if anything, should be done next.
True, we’ll never be able to completely eliminate this discrepancy or its disheartening effect, but it’s simply a question of figuring out how to maximize the benefits and minimize the drawbacks of what is quite clearly a very good method of spreading the word about and even organizing such events. It’d certainly be a bad idea to start shunning such sites due to these inherent issues, but we need to keep them in mind and act accordingly… And hope that, in time, people will learn to lie just a little less…