Professor Theodore Lowi of Cornell University’s Government Department often reiterates the theme of not living virtual lives, whether political or…sexual, as he puts it in lecture. He recalls a time when Cornellians left the classroom, took buildings over by force, and marched for change.
Nevertheless, the virtual realm has become one of the battlefields against genocide. In fact, the Genocide Intervention Network (GI-Net), started by Swarthmore College students, is not only at the forefront of raising awareness of modern day holocausts, but hosts fundraising events for UN-African Union peacekeepers by selling trendy “Save Darfur” wristbands. GI-Net uses popular social networking websites such as Facebook, MySpace, LiveJournal and YouTube as vehicles in spreading the anti-genocide message, advocating the cause and organizing events. The donations, now amounting to half a million dollars, go towards both protecting the civilian population and supplementing the UN’s humanitarian relief effort.
The structure of these social networks provides the ideal connection between edges for information to diffuse amongst various nodes. This is particularly true because the structure is made explicit in online “friend lists” where groups and activities can be shared with hundreds of acquaintances with just a click of the mouse. If only a dozen people act upon the message (c.f. Gladwell’s Connectors), then the information will continue to cascade around the network (e.g. Schelling’s Herding). Given the interconnectivity of these online networks and small world phenomena, it may take as few as six steps to reach a great deal of active users–socially active high school and college students.
Lowi’s skepticism of whether virtual concern will be mirrored in real life action is answered by the existence of five hundred schools with a STAND chapter (A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition). Although virtual technology and social networking sites now play a key part in facilitating information about the world’s crises, they cannot replicate the formal structure of international peacekeeping organizations nor understand fully how genocide victims suffer.
I think the case of the older generations disregarding internet activism is simply a matter of inflexibility and lack of foresight on their part; as they die off, this dialogue will completely disappear.
The most important part of activism is the spread of information. The only reason that real life activism has been so effective in the past is because it receives news coverage. 100,000 protesters make more news than 100; 100 naked protesters makes more news than 100 clothed ones. If the police kill or maim protesters, the audience the protest reaches is an even larger one.
With the internet, we can spread information without the aid of large centralized news source. I think this is better in every way. The spread of the news doesn’t rely so much on its sensationalism (although it does to some extent, a la fark.com) but rather its content. This way, people will be less affected by the fact that people were killed giving this message and more by the content of the message itself.
If the message is truly worth passing on, it doesn’t need to be touted by naked people.