G20 summit protests aided by Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube
The right to protest (peacefully) is one that should be afforded to all people regardless of the country they live in. But what were once disorganized and messy affairs are now becoming powerful shows of force by an unsatisfied public. For the G20 summit protests currently happening in London, social media has played a key role in mobilizing protesters.
World leaders from the G20 countries, including the United States, the UK, Australia, and France are meeting in London this week for talks. Unsurprisingly, the agenda is dominated by efforts to revive the global economy. This presents protesters with the perfect opportunity to express their displeasure with how governments are running and, in some respects, ruining our lives.
While the age-old methods of mobilizing and organizing protests and protesters are still used – word-of-mouth and telephones – according to The Telegraph, social media sites are now also playing their part. The biggest player this time around is Twitter, which affords protest groups with a fast and simple method for communicating with their followers.
The micro-blogging service enables simple instructions and meet-up points to be disseminated to thousands of followers at once, many of whom will choose to receive and respond to them on their mobile phones. This makes flashmobbing simple to set-up and manage by those determined to have their say on what is happening in world politics at the moment.
Facebook is also being used extensively, housing protest groups such as G20 Meltdown. The more-than-3,000 members active in the group can discuss and debate their views openly and without fear of persecution, and can then make plans to attend one of the many protests happening in and around London taking place in honor of the 2009 G20 summit.
YouTube has its part to play, playing host to hundreds of videos concerning the G20 summit, the scale of the protests, police violence towards protesters, and the facts behind how the global economic crisis came to be.
This is yet another example of the new and innovative ways in which social media is being used to affect everyday life. Interestingly though, the very nature of social media and its propensity for being on public display and viral means the authorities charged with policing the protests can also keep tabs on what is happening and where it’s due to happen. Which probably helped today’s protests be contained and confined.
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April 3rd, 2009
Oh great, hippies with iPhones.