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Do online protests really work?

Posted on 17 Sep 2009 at 13:16

The problem, however, was that this all took place over one weekend. Amazon, while undoubtedly making errors in its muddled initial response to the furore, soon pinpointed the fault as human error. In this case, an employee effectively pushed the wrong button and managed to recatogorise tens of thousands of books in one go. Once it had isolated the problem, Amazon corrected matters speedily.

But to an extent, the damage was done. Such was the ferocity of the Twitter protest, that it barely left Amazon time to react. Everything it did in response was then examined in microcosmic detail, and distilled into increasingly furious 140-character posts. In short, the brand took a pounding for a policy decision that it hadn't made.

No time to think

That's the danger: the ease by which a user can bash 140 characters into Twitter or add their name to a web petition, reduces the time that many spend thinking about an issue, and their position on it. It's why some people are quick to dismiss internet protests, because they're not perceived to involve much in the way of effort.

Yet it's their speed and virulence that gives them an advantage over their offline equivalents, according to Peter Bradshaw of thinktank Demos. "Helping Iranian citizens to spread pictures, footage and news across Twitter might help to add fuel and momentum to a campaign that has clear idea about how change can happen," he said. "You never know, we might be witnessing the first serious political change aided fundamentally by social media".

The power to change minds quickly is the reason Jo Swinson, Liberal Democrat MP for East Dunbartonshire, regularly runs petitions online. "E-petitions can be very effective", she told us, "especially when used to mobilise many people in a short space of time".

Swinson tabled an early day motion in Parliament earlier this year, which opposed the Government granting MPs an exemption under Freedom Of Information legislation. When she needed support from colleagues, she contacted the groups MySociety and Unlock Democracy, who in turn contacted their mailing lists, urging recipients to encourage their local MPs to sign Swinson's motion.

The whole process was completed in a matter of days, and that would have been near-impossible using offline tactics alone.

Smaller issues

Protests, however, don't have to be about life-changing issues. For instance, Facebook is regularly lobbied by its members, and in February of this year it relaxed plans to retain users' messages on their servers, even if they were no longer a member. Facebook is particularly susceptible to such protests, given that it plays host to so many itself, and tends to be more sensitive and reactive when an electronic flash mob arrives on its doorstep.

But it isn't alone there. Computer games company Electronic Arts felt the force of public opinion when it released the game Spore in the autumn of last year. An eagerly-awaited, multi-million pound blockbuster title from the creator of The Sims, the release was marred for many by the digital rights management (DRM) system that restricted users to only three installations of the game, after which they'd have to call an EA representative to get permission for a further install.

This, it's fair to say, didn't go down well. Yet the subsequent protest managed to hit Electronic Arts firmly where it hurt. For someone hatched the idea of heading to online shopping juggernaut Amazon, and adding a one-star customer review, explaining the problem with the game as they did so. Soon, hundreds had followed suit, and at the time of writing, more than 3,000 customer reviews have been placed at the US arm of Amazon, 2,662 of which award the game bottom marks.