Practicum (5)

For this post, I want to get into the reality of what online social activism can do for the work that happens in the non-digital landscape. The website, Protest.net is pretty much like a filter between the real activism that takes place and the internet.

On this website, there is a list of any protest or activist happening, search able by location and search able by issue. Anyone can post to the site and that's what makes the internet a great way of learning about activism aside from the whole not being able to find that much info on how to get involved as I first had problems with. The moderator of this site is actually pretty interesting because he believes that anyone should go and protest anything at anytime, even if they don't know much about it, because he enjoys rabble rousing.
To me that's all well and good but the negatives outweigh the benefits. In seeing the talk on some of the pages and forums, i get the idea that a lot of people don't know what they are talking about when it comes to some pretty big issues. I feel though, that this is the same as bullying through the internet. People don't really feel like the internet is a true interaction in a lot of cases and that being said, the amount of people who understand an issue and who participate in issues that they don't understand is probably going to be many many times more than those who know exactly what they're talking about and believe in the cause.