WI: Politics and Campaigning

For this Politics and Campaigning post I decided to focus on online campaigning. In my research I was directed to an article from the guardian called Avaaz: can online campaigning reinvent politics. The article focuses on Avaaz an online campaigning site and how effecitive it has been in influencing international politics. Avaaz creates petitions to protest various global issues and gets as many people as they can to sign them. Basically getting a petition considered by world governments is a numbers game. For example in the UK there's a law that says Parliament will respond to every petition that meets or exceeds 100,000 signatures. In the U.S. it only takes 25,000 signatures. Avaaz takes knows these laws so they pick an issue to tackle and they work on gathering the required amout of signatures to get these governments' attention.

There are many who say petitions don't really make much of difference in politics and that Avaaz produces nothing more than clicktivism. However activist Noami Colvin said "An Azaaz petition at the right time does swing the balance on a lot of issues." This happened in cases of the Bradley Manning support network and the Occupy movement.

These online campaigns really do seem to have their place and they provide a convenient way to get involved in world politics. I feel like it fits in well with today's age where narcotizing disfunction runs rampant. Avaaz makes activism just as easy and clicking like on Facebook or using a hashtag to promote a cause. And since they have made a difference in many cases I think they do a have significant role to play in the future of politics.