Whether it’s raising awareness or calling citizens to action, technology has played a significant role in connecting people with a common goal of change. Messaging through email listservs,
Facebook rally invites and
change.org petitions are now the norm for many activists.
It all started in the 1990s and has continued to grow, most recently as a driving force in the London riots. With the Web 2.0 movement and social networking boom of recent years, just about everyone has a voice via the Internet — and many are using theirs to mobilize.
Here is a timeline of some key moments in online activism, most of which resulted in a physical protest or directly affected change. Do you remember where you were at these moments in history? Share your story in the comments below.
Lotus Marketplace — April, 1990
In 1990, a product called Lotus Marketplace: Households aimed to revolutionize the marketing list industry. Instead, it raised new concerns about consumer privacy and led the public to take action.
Software company Lotus and credit bureau Equifax combined to create the product, which contained names, addresses and purchasing behavior of 120 million Americans in CD-ROM form.
Concerned consumers organized through email and message boards with the primary goal of determining how to contact Lotus and opt out of the list. Eventually, some 30,000 people did so, making the controversy what many consider the first online protest. In the face of unforeseen criticism, Lotus and Equifax decided by early 1991 not to release the database.
Image courtesy Flickr, Meuh !.
Zapatistas — 1994 to present
The Zapatista movement was started by the EZLN party in Mexico, a revolutionary leftist group that planned to use non-violent tactics to help the indigenous people of the Chiapas state receive some benefit from the harvest of natural resources in the region. Much of their organizational efforts utilized email and usenet groups as well some of the earliest kinds of DDoS attacks to bring down government websites and garner attention for their causes.
In addition to representing Chiapas, the Zapatista movement hopes to help any groups they consider marginalized by governments around the world, including women and LGBT groups. The movement is still active, and continues to use online tactics.
Image courtesy Flickr, 20 Letters.
MoveOn.Org — Sept. 15, 1998
Fed up with Congress deliberating on how to deal with Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs Joan Blades and Wes Boyd took to the web to send a message to Washington: “Censure President Clinton and Move on to Pressing Issues Facing the Nation.”
The simple online petition, dubbed MoveOn.org, was originally sent out to about 100 family members and friends -- and within a week had garnered 100,000 signatures. Eventually the petition would receive half a million. MoveOn.org is now a 5 million-member site that allows participants to propose ideas for political change.
Image courtesy Flickr, Alan Light.
World Trade Organization Protests in Seattle — November 30, 1999
Months before the 1999 WTO Ministerial Conference was scheduled to take place, NGOs, interest groups and individual protesters against globalization organized via the Internet. They planned out strategic routes that blocked city streets and set up a dense and diversified communications network. While on the ground, the 50,000+ protesters relied on mobile phones, allowing quick shifts in strategy and taking police by surprise. These opposition organizers also created the Independent Media Center, now a worldwide alternative news source, as a grassroots reporting tool for their demonstrations.
Image courtesy Flickr, djbones.
California Immigration Protests — March 27, 2006
In late March 2006, Los Angeles area high school students used text messaging to organize a classroom walk out in opposition to proposed changes to U.S. immigration law. These students then reached out to other teens in California's Central Valley on MySpace, inspiring another 1,000 students in Fresno to join the walk out.
Reports estimate about 40,000 students participated across Southern and Central California. Though the demonstrations were mostly peaceful, there were some clashes and several arrests.
Image courtesy Flickr, Peter Ito.
Colombian Las Farc Protests — February, 2008
In February of 2008, more than 12 million people across the world marched against Las Farc, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a guerrilla faction that has been terrorizing the Colombian people for decades. In December 2007, after the release of some hostages, Oscar Morales, a 33-year-old engineer appalled by the situation in his country created a group on Facebook called "Un Millón de Voces Contra Las FARC."
Soon the group had thousands of members and Morales organized a march to protest against FARC and demand the liberation of hostages kept captive by them.
Later in 2008, Morales founded the One Million Voices Foundation, which fights for general human rights in Colombia and works closely for the release of FARC hostages.
Iran Election Protests — June, 2009
On June 13, 2009, Iranian students gathered in force to protest the highly disputed reelection of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Because protesters were communicating via social networks, the Iranian government shut down Internet access.
Access slowly returned, but many social media and news sites were blocked. Protesters used social media to trade lists of proxy servers to get around the restrictions, but authorities monitoring the situation gradually blocked these proxies. One of the turning points of the protests occured online, as the killing of a young Iranian woman, Neda Soltani, was recorded on video. Highly graphic amateur videos of her death spread across the Internet and bolstered the rallying cries of supporters in Iran and worldwide.
Image courtesy Flickr, harrystaab.
WikiLeaks — April 5, 2010 to present
WikiLeaks is a non-profit organization that publishes classified media to its site by anonymous news sources and whistleblowers. Though it launched in 2006, the site became a household name in 2010 when it published footage from the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike. The video showed Iraqi journalists, among others, killed by snipers in a U.S. helicopter. In July 2010, the site published a collection of documents about the war in Afghanistan. Later that year, WikiLeaks released 400,000 documents called the Iraq War Logs in conjunction with major media organizations such as The New York Times, sparking the height of the site's controversy.
It has since released a number of U.S. embassy cables and documents related to Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Pictured above is the site's founder Julian Assange.
New Jersey Education Protests — April 27, 2010
Thousands of New Jersey high school students participated in a walkout in protest of education cuts. The protest was sparked by a call to action on Facebook.
The event was organized by 18-year-old Michelle Ryan Lauto — a Pace University student who once attended high school in New Jersey. Lauto took action after Governor Chris Christie announced that he would cut $820 million in educational funding. Nearly 16,000 students RSVP’d “Yes” via Facebook. According to students who took part in the protest, it was largely organized via social networking efforts — texts, MySpace and, of course, the original Facebook Event.
Greek Protests — May, 2010 to present
The protests in Greece began on May 5, 2010, when people organized in response to the country's debt crisis. It was one of the country's largest protests since 1973, halting flights and ferries, paralyzing schools and hospitals. Three people were killed. Inspired by the protests, the Indignant Citizens Movement was created in Spain as well. The movement called for demonstrations across the country through Facebook. Some of the slogans for the protest were geeky: "Error 404, Democracy was not found."
The protests have continued since then, the most recent taking place on August 7, 2011.
Image courtesy Flickr, monika.monika.
Arab Spring — December 18, 2010 to present
The Arab Spring refers to a series of revolutions and uprisings throughout the Middle East and North Africa, starting in Tunisia on December 18, 2010.
Since the Tunisian revolution, there has been an Egyptian revolution, civil war in Libya, uprisings in Bahrain, Syria and Yemen, major protests in Algeria, Iraq, Oman, Morocco and Jordan, and demonstrations in several other countries. Much of the information about each event was disseminated via blogs, Twitter, and Facebook Groups, whether it was for the benefit of those organizing inside the country, or those in the rest of the world trying to get news on what was happening inside of the country.
Twitter hashtags such as #Jan25, the date of the Egyptian revolution, are still active on Twitter.
Image courtesy Flickr, magharebia.
Spain 15-M Protests — May, 2011
The 15-M movement (related to May 15, the date the first protest occurred) was a series of peaceful demonstrations that took place throughout Spain in May 2011. The protesters opposed the unemployment level, welfare cuts and Spanish politicians, among other issues.
The demonstrations took place in 166 cities across the country, some of which lasted longer than a month.
Facebook pages were created for each city to rally citizens. On Twitter, #spanishrevolution was used to follow the protests.
Image courtesy Flickr, vreimunde.
Saudi Women Driving — June, 2011
Women of Saudi Arabia organized to drive on June 17, 2011, one month after Manal al-Sherif — a key figure in a social media campaign against a ban on female drivers — was arrested for posting a YouTube video of herself driving around the city of Khobar.
Activists pushed the movement via Facebook, Twitter and other online outlets before some of those accounts were shut down. Online support for the campaign has lived on through Facebook and Twitter in several forms, including the Honk for Saudi Women viral campaign, which featured videos of women and men from around the world honking their horns in support of Saudi women who drove on June 17.
The above photo is of a t-shirt, which says in Arabic, "Yes to women driving."
London Riots — August 4, 2011
On August 4, police fatally shot Mark Duggan, a resident of the Tottenham area of north London. A peaceful protest of about 300 people gathered around the police station in Tottenham. Unconfirmed reports state that violence erupted in reaction to a confrontation between a teenage protestor and a policeman. This inspired violent riots throughout London, coordinated mainly via Blackberry Messenger.
The riots continue, but people are now flocking to Twitter to coordinate clean up efforts. Twitter's traffic has sharply spiked: One out of every 170 Internet visits in the UK on August 8 was to Twitter.com.
Image courtesy of Flickr, Alan Stanton.
Mashable community team members Stephanie Haberman, Todd Olmstead, Connie Preti and Chelsea Stark contributed to this report.
Photo courtesy Flickr, Anonymous9000.
More About: Hacktivists, online activism, protest, timeline
For more Social Media coverage:
