The Fragmented State of Online Activism

Friday - March 30, 2007

Wikipedia's definition of Internet Activism states:

Internet Activism (also known as electronic advocacy, cyberactivism, and online organizing) is the use of communication technologies such as e-mail, web sites, and podcasts to enable faster communications by citizen movements and deliver a message to a large audience. These Internet technologies are used for cause-related fundraising, lobbying, volunteering, community building, and organizing.

As I am someone with a strong technical background, whenever there is something I'm curious or concerned about in my community, whether local, statewide, national, or global, I start with the net. That means, starting with a search engine. As an example, let's say I'm concerned about responsible growth in my City (Austin,TX.). Searching in Google returns scores of news articles, blogs, and web sites of varying value. So, I start clicking around to try and find relevant information. I end up reading articles of questionable value and re-reading the same stuff I read somewhere else.

Next, let's say I want to provide some support for some of these organizations. This might be as simple as just commenting on an existing story or providing some additional information I may have. What I discovered is that there are just too many different sites to check out. Which ones are current? Which ones will have the biggest impact? What are all the sides of the story? How do my fellow citizens feel? It's all very tedious and time consuming.

Recently, after launching my website, I started contacting activist groups around Austin and Texas to let them know about Actt Up. One individual that replied was involved in fighting the expansion of toll roads in Austin. Looking at that website, there are links to no less than a dozen other organizations and websites focused on the same subject. While all of these sites have great and varying content, it's difficult to judge which ones are most valuable to me.

This led me to the conclusion that while Internet Activism may be alive and well, it's very fragmented. It's difficult for citizens to filter and search through the scores of information to find out what is of value to them. Additionally, it's very hard to find out how the community in general feels about an issue. Most of the sites are static with little, to no, community aspect.

Hence the creation of Actt Up.

The goal of Acct Up is to allow the public a single place to find news, events, and information on how they can be involved in issues that concern them and their community. The site is an aggregator of information. Users post stories that include links to websites, blogs, and news and other users can vote for those stories and add their own comments. Alternatively, a user can submit a story with no link and editorialize on an issue concerning them. This community activity coupled with real time online chat on a story should help user's quickly understand the issues that interest them.

There are existing sites that perform this function for general news, but nothing focused around community activism. It is my hope that people will find the site and use it to strengthen their efforts and to get themselves and their community more involved in the events surrounding our lives.

Feedback: admin@acttup.com