The failure of Facebook organizing
Jesse Root, one of the protest organizers in Ottawa, where around 3,00 people came out, told the Citizen, “There have been a lot of questions about whether Facebook can be used to co-ordinate a political movement … Look around.”
In today’s Globe and Mail, former NDP press secretary-turned freelance media relations, Ian Capstick, wrote, “Never before has Facebook filled Canada’s streets. It did today.”
But considering the Facebook group “Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament,” has over 200,000 members, Facebook organizing has got to be one of the least effective ways to organize a protest. If anything, the headlines should say that Facebook organizing is a failure, when less than one in 10 group members actually bothered to move from their computers to actually protest.
Of course, anyone who is actually on Facebook knows how meaningless these groups are. The most popular groups seem to be about “protesting” changes to Facebook, with several boasting over a million members.
Strangely, the group “Canadians Against a Liberal/NDP Coalition Gov't” still has over 100,000 members, some of whom are also in the anti-prorogation group.
In the rush to get hip with it, it seems Canada’s media (and protest organizers) have forgotten that there were protests — bigger protests in fact — before Facebook.
In 2005, tens of thousands of people in Montreal protested climate change. The anti-prorogation protest here drew a mere 300.
In 2006 8,000 farmers were in Ottawa to protest agricultural policies. I have the feeling they didn’t use Facebook.
Almost 30,000 Tamils protested in Ottawa last spring, again Facebook probably had little to do with that.
Hundreds of thousands of Canadians protested the Iraq war in February 2003.
In 1971, 10,000 people protested Soviet Premier Alexei N. Kosygin’s meeting in Ottawa with Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
More than 15,000 people gathered in Ottawa to protest cruse missile testing in 1982.
Key conclusions: few Canadians care about the prorogation – or at least care enough to do more than click a button. And Facebook is a crap way to get people out.
As for the protests themselves, while organizers attempted to portray the protests as reaching out to Canadians of all political stripes, both NDP leader Jack Layton and Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff addressed the protesters in Ottawa. Liberal and NDP members also spoke at many of the smaller rallies across the country. Like it or not, these protests aren’t about prorogation or democracy. They’re about politics. Had a Liberal government done the exact same thing, we wouldn’t be seeing these crowds. We might be seeing a different crowd, but these protests are more about a dislike for Harper than they are about prorogation.
There was also a nice touch of sillines, as Layton did his best Ronald Reagan impression saying, “Mr. Harper, unlock these doors.”
Spotted at the protest in Montreal was a picture of “Stephen Hitler,” which featured Harper’s mug with a Hitler mustache. Classy.
