{"id":1491,"date":"2011-08-24T09:02:46","date_gmt":"2011-08-24T14:02:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ict-pulse.com\/?p=1491"},"modified":"2011-12-21T07:15:23","modified_gmt":"2011-12-21T12:15:23","slug":"online-versus-real-life-activism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/2011\/08\/online-versus-real-life-activism\/","title":{"rendered":"Online versus real-life activism"},"content":{"rendered":"

The springboard for this post is the uproar in Jamaica about inaccurate billing by the local power company. The protest began in earnest online, but observations were made that it did not successfully translate into similar levels of protest in real-life.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Over the past several months, there has been a growing outcry in Jamaica about the drastic increase in electricity bills issued by the incumbent power company, the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPSCo). Over the last week or so, the uproar reached a point where campaigns on social networking sites, especially Facebook, as well as via email, were launched asking the public to wear black T-shirts and\/or completely switch off the electric supply at their premises on Friday 19 August.<\/p>\n

By that Friday, the power company, utility regulator and government were engaged in dialogue to determine how best to address the concerns raised. However, news reports indicated that the public response to wearing the black T-shirts was \u201cunderwhelming\u201d, although the protest appeared to have considerable support online. The seemingly wide disparity between the level of agitation recorded online and that physically demonstrated last Friday should not be surprising, when the impact of the Diaspora and the difference between awareness and commitment are considered.<\/p>\n

Impact of Diaspora<\/h3>\n

The Jamaican diaspora (similar to other Caribbean countries) is considerable and its impact on matters occurring in Jamaica should not be underestimated. To varying degrees, Jamaicans overseas are keen to participate in matters back home, especially when injustices have been alleged. Consequently, a sizeable number of the online participants might actually have been its expatriate population, which would distort reports of the actual number of residents that were clamouring for action.<\/p>\n

An instructive example of the impact of such external forces\u00a0 is the protests following the 2009 presidential elections in Iran, which is sometimes referred to as the \u201cTwitter Revolution\u201d, since it was reported that protestors relied primarily on Twitter to communicate with each other.\u00a0 However, in\u00a0The Twitter Devolution<\/a>, Golnaz Esfandiari makes a powerful case that Twitter (and other social networking sites) did not contribute to the demonstrations within Iran, since among other things,<\/p>\n