The Power of Pink

Being part of a social change has never been so easy. While the Baba Amtes
or Medha Patkars needed nearly their whole lives to sustain social movements,
today it requires a few clicks to translate activism into real time action. If
you are on any of the popular networking sites, say, Orkut or Facebook, you
would know what we are talking about. And while critics would crib that this is
timepass by wannabe socialites, the success rate of several campaigns through
these social networking sites tell a different story.

Picture this. Post Mumbai terror attack on 26/11, when Shubham Kanodia formed
a community on Facebook, In memory of all those who died in the 26th and 27th
November Mumbai massacre, little did he realize that he would have more than
91,000 people joining it, from across the globe. This huge scale of online
mobilization for a cause is significant. In fact, the efforts of these online
communities led to the mass candlelight vigil at Gateway of India in Mumbai that
ultimately created enough pressure on the government to go on a diplomatic
offensive.

With social networking sites apparently turning out to be conscience keepers
of the active Indian networkers, social activism seems to be growing beyond
what only committed NGOs would like to take up. But now things appear to be
different; there is a change in how people are expressing their frustration, and
the medium they are choosing. And thanks to sites like Facebook, Orkut and
MySpace, more and more people are able to vent out their anger and frustration
easily.

The Pink Chaddi was a vibrant campaign, sending a strong message using a humorous twist and irreverent streak

It wouldnt be wrong to say that as Internet becomes an essential part of our
lives, use of this medium for activism now looks like a mere extension. Says
Shubam, Online activism is much easier; I could reach out to a much larger
number of people, and more importantly, to those who I didnt even know. Not
only do physical boundaries cease to exit, people are binded by a common cause.

It isnt surprising then that the community saw participation from more than
fifty countries including the US, UK, Australia, France, and Pakistan.

Global participation showed the power of the medium, but the real surprise
was that Shubham is no hardened NGO-guy but just a 14-year old who felt this
urge of doing his own bit. He says, Being a resident of Mumbai, I felt peeved
with the terror attacks. I was active on Facebook, so I thought of forming this
community. He is just one of those thousands of young people out there waiting
to get a chance to express themselves.

For this young, and lots of not so young, socially active breed of Indians,
social networking sites are coming handy as an attractive place to be in. Its a
place where they can not only keep debating burning issues for longer than usual
but also resolve by taking them offline. For them social activism obviously
means much more than just protest marches. And there is no dearth of examples to
vouch for that.

A recent case which comes to mind is of Aman Kachroo, a 19 year-old medical
student who was ragged to death. Close to ten communities were formed on Orkut
asking for justice in the case, while Facebook saw six communities. The biggest
one was on Facebook, called Justice For Aman Kachroo, which has close to
13,000 members. There was a big candlelight march organized by one of these
communities at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi.

The Aman Kachroo community on Facebook generated mass response which translated into a candlelight march at Delhis Jantar Mantar

In fact, it is interesting to note that some of the most successful campaigns
had the right mix of online and offline activity. It is really not the quantity
of members of a particular community that matters, it rather depends a lot on
the commitment of the moderator and the design of the campaign.

Managing collaboration in an online community is perhaps one of the tougher
challenges. Certain activities are required to be done for the online community
to stay vibrant, but often even that is not enough. So most social media
initiatives are primarily trial and error affairs. Most websites fail to
become vibrant communities. Most communities fail to collaborate towards a
shared objective. Most collaborations fail to produce collective action. Most
collective actions fail to achieve the desired results. In this light, one-off
successes like Mumbai 26/11 or Aman Kachroo or Priyadarshi Mattoo or Jessica
Lall become templates for these conditions which are necessary for effective
collaboration and collective action in online communities. Actually, since
normally people from similar social strata and profile tend to network together,
the best idea is to identify the social, political and cultural ethos of the
target group and then add some humorous twist or irreverent streak to them.
Nothing illustrates this better the Pink Chaddi movement which seems to have
caught the imagination of all social networkers.

The community Consortium of Pub Going, Loose and Forward Looking Women
formed by a Delhi based journalist Nisha Susan on Facebook was an instant hit.

The election fever seems to be catching on in Orkut, even as the networking site launched its official community around the theme

Nisha recollects, I really did not think it would get the kind of response
it did. On the first day there was only one member, but than the next day it
suddenly grew to 500, and the third day it was close to a 1000. And before she
knew, it had already reached a member count of 59,000 within a span of a few
days.

The community was kicked off on February 5, 2009 to oppose the Sri Ram Senas
act of beating up a few pub going women in Mangalore. The campaigns success did
beat Nishas expectations.

The offline action of dispatching pink underwear to the Ram Sena clicked, as
a result a huge response was generated from the communitys members. More than
2,000 undies were sent to Pramod Muthalik of Shri Ram Sena, both by men and
women.

The support for the Pink Chaddi campaign came, not just from India, but also
from across the globe including countries like Afghanistan, US, Singapore, UK
amongst others. Interestingly, there were local communities formed following
this. London based Natasja Schive started a local community to support the
cause, while another was created by Mathew Hackell in New York.

Origins of Online Activism

Specifically, in India if one was to trace the seeds of social activism
through the Internet, one has to go back to the massive online campaign that was
kicked off to seek justice in the Priyadarshani Mattoo murder case. Soon, the
mainstream media too picked up the case strongly, which was followed up by
speedy conviction of the accused in the case.

It didnt take too long before justice came in other high profile cases too
which included that of Jessica Lal, and Nitish Katara after online campaigns
were triggered. Though what is significant to note here is the fact that for any
campaign to succeed offline, it is important that social media goes hand in
glove with the traditional media.

Indeed, this is one crucial aspect as no amount of online activism could
succeed unless it gets strong offline support. The campaign must be designed to
translate online engagement into offline action. There is need to make it easy
to take collective action by breaking it down into smaller individual actions .

The Manjunathan murder case and the SN Dubey case around the same time were
two other big cases which helped online activism get a strong footing in India.
And they were good examples of offline support too.

Interestingly, now the social media is expected to play a big role in this
years general elections. Orkut is upbeat, as it recently launched its
official community on elections called The Voice of Youth.

Orkut describes it as a a fun and colorful hangout, where one could have the
opportunity to express opinions, and find out what others are thinking about
these important elections. Through the community the site is also conducting a
poll, designed specifically around the theme.

The idea is to generate interest in politics, politicians, voting, and raise
issues of relevance. It is very interesting to see the answers that we get from
these young guys, they are very insightful. We really feel that these people are
going to make a huge difference this time in the elections, says Rahul Kulkarni,
product manager, Google India.

Orkut today has close to 1000-odd communities on politics, and half a dozen
OpenSocial applications around the theme of elections, witnessing discussions
ranging from ensuring a hygienic political system to policies that would shape
the future of the country.

The Jago Re! One Billion Votes, designed around the elections, is another
engaging campaign that deserves a special mention here. Supported by the
Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy and Tata Tea, the campaign is
centered around a website that hosts a first-of-its kind online voter
registration engine. The site has been set up with an intention of ensuring that
people cast their vote.

While pink chaddis and Aman Kachroos are burning contemporary issues, social networking activism boasts of some permanent causes; much of the proselytization or evangelism around these issues are driven by active online participants

As Rahul of Google India points out, We have seen networking sites evolve
from just being a fun place to a place where members look forward to emotional
and moral support. Orkut is playing a key role in binding people with a common
problem or a cause. These are fine pointers to the fact that the voice of the
youth seems to be finally taking off, as they have started to acknowledge the
importance of being part of the social change far more aggressively.

Perhaps the only time the youth strongly came forward to voice their opinion
was at the time of the Mandal Commission. This fresh new wave of like minded
people definitely seems to believe that the kind of mobilization online social
networking gives them cant be seen if they were to stage a dharna. This is
building perfect virality into the campaign. The message around elections is
compelling enough, once you build in the virality, the job is nearly done.

While Orkut had the first mover advantage in the space, one cant deny that
Facebook is giving it a tough competition off late. There is a specific news
feed feature on Facebook which automatically updates a person on what
communities and groups their friends are joining. Having said that, it is also
true that almost two third of active Internet users in India use Orkut, whereas
Facebook is primarily used by a more metro-centered elite crowd.

Seeing the success of this wave, the other big players like MySpace, a
networking site popular in the US, too are gearing up for consumption by the
Indian users. Though the communities on MySpace are yet to gain momentum as its
counterparts on Orkut or Facebook, there are some communities like Indihubwhere
current burning topics are discussed by members which are doing pretty well.
The hot topic right now is elections, says Hari Krishnan, country manager,
MySpace India.

Though there are lots of positives that go in favor of the social networking
sites increasingly acting as the forum for activism, but critics doubt if this
medium of activism really means anything when it comes to collaborative and
collective action.

A big challenge which these campaigns face is to keep the momentum going
months after any event happens. Of course, there are some communities which
are not time bound. The real challenge is not to initiate a community, but to
stay committed to the cause. Whether we have matured to that level needs to be
seen.

Urvashi Kaul

urvashik@cybermedia.co.in