Hello Kitty, Britney's fragile mental state, and Internet Activism

by Alex Steed

Published December 03, 2008 @ 11:48AM PT

Holy crap! CNN actually reported on something other than Britney's fragile mental state, Lohan's lesbianic trysts, or Hello Kitty being named Japan tourism ambassador!

Stupidly-predictable Gil Scott Heron pun aside, CNN published an entire article about Internet activism!

[Note to marketers/parents/old people: Common millennial generation — especially media activist — behavioral pattern: Super-snarkiness about how dumb/bad corporate media is/can be with undertones addressing how I believe I would have written a better story had I had the opportunity to do so.]

According to the article, "Some of the most creative forms of protest and philanthropy are taking place online."

[Note to marketers/parents/old people #2: Of course it is! That's where the people are. In fact, check this out - Change.org Gay Rights blogger Michael Jones got the most hits in Change.org blogging history when Perez Hilton linked his post about the Vatican's anti-gay efforts - That's more folks that came to the site when they accidentally thought it was President-elect Obama's Change.gov!]

The sort-of well-rounded piece addresses criticisms of potential absenteeism in activism 2.0 land, the opinions of WaterPartners International, and the age-old question of "online or in-person?"

Other subjects of interest: YourCause.com, MySpace Impact, and Goodwill of Greater Washington, a personal favorite that used "wittiness" to reach out to a younger, hipper crowd (ie. Millennials who like second-hand clothes that don't smell like hamper).

What bums me out about this piece is that since it's more-or-less a profile — an over-arching view of how activism plays out online — is that it is still stuck on a either/or binary re: activism/volunteerism/service dialog. Within many of the communities that are building and smoothing out the various methodologies of action that are playing out online, there is a concentration on creating a holistic synthesis between on and offline organization. While on the road, I met with:

• Focus the Nation, which created an offline infrastructure and then communicated and organized them online.
• Mary Ann Hitt of ILoveMountains advised that their organization's successes stemmed from work they were able to do online, but also from a synthesis of that and attending meetings and knocking on doors.
• The Bang Gang, a recreational, bicycle advocacy group in Ann Arbor happened to organize via Facebook, but did all of their work together, as people.
• Mariah McKay, author of the Spovangelist and on-the-ground, face-to-face organizer extraordinaire (check out her Spokane, Washington Blog Bible (made out of real paper!) here).
• And many, many other young people who valued the importance of, for the purposes of pragmatism, responsibly bridging on and offline action.

There is a touching story in the piece where Paul Loeb, author of "The Soul of a Citizen,'' a book that examines the psychology of social activism, tells about the importance of conveying the human will/spirit by physically showing up to a march or a protest. CNN couldn't have conveyed this story without playing on the dialectic about this contention between action online and action offline — so for the sake of good story-telling, the contention becomes the focus. Further, it's difficult for an article like this one (An article! CNN almost wrote a real news article!) to convey how people are synthesizing their actions accordingly.

Finally, it's worth noting that some necessary actions don't require people taking it to the street. Revisiting the story of the Washington, DC Goodwill mentioned in the piece, their goal was to rebrand Goodwill and to make it appeal to more young people. That's not a task best-approached by a directing an angry mob. As access-points become more-plentiful, opportunities for different kinds of participation — not just impassioned picket-sign wielding — become possible. Getting more people to reduce/reuse/recycle by shopping second-hand while also supporting the mission of Goodwill will not require shutting down Washington, thus its probably OK that their action remains solely online for the time being.