Blogging, tweeting etc provide a powerful tool to achieve decentralised collective action. Social movements in a virtual world has negligible cost to the co-operators and the gap between unilateral non co-operation and universal co-operation is very less. In such movements, selfless utilitarians and" process benefits" people dominate while there is no role for unconditional cooperators and full utilitarians.
Snowballing phenomenon is seen in such movements. The protest against the Mangalore Pub incident is case in point.
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What you have mentioned is known as "web 2.0". It is associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Web 2.0 applications are fast becoming a strong medium for expressing one's thoughts. The "pink chaddi campaign" last year on Valentine’s Day is an evidence to this phenomenon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Chaddi_Campaign
Web 2.0 would enable the individual empowerment no doubt but still the authenticity and validity of the information available would not provide the level playing field for all as the technology can uplift and exploit at the same time as it can create the digital divide be it social,political,economic,spatial or cultural basis.So the need of the hour is to think more on providing the access to information and then opportunity first to all equally to bridge the existing divides rather than creating more complicated divides.
Its true that social networking sites have become one of the strongest platforms for collective action. But this can also be due to the fact that its convenient and requires very less effort as compared to an actual situation. There are many who join an online movement without really intending to follow it afterwards.millions become members but very few continue to visit theses sites regularly.
If we assess the protest march at Mumbai after 26/11, the candle march for Jessica Lal. Even the impact of these events have fissiled out after initial gung how. This was the case with real people on real streets; just imagine people fighting out for a cause in Cyber world.These people don’t even have faces. You can’t even determine who is full utilitarian and selfless utilitarian. An actor blogging might have publicity in back of his mind. The computer density and Internet usage is limited so the critical mass for snowballing might be difficult to achieve for a social cause.
@Ritesh: I agree and the pink chaddi campaign was inspired by the Mangalore Pub incident.
@abhi:It is as you say a limited medium. The 'digierati' is urban centric. Hence collective action on the web is confined to such urban sites.
@Nitya:Yes I agree."Process benefits" people are higher in such movements.
@hari:"An actor blogging might have publicity in back of his mind." and "These people don’t even have faces." are seemingly contradictory statements.
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