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He calls it the new normal.
The Internet and the rise of Web 2.0 tools have created a new reality, one in which anyone can become an agent of change capable of affecting public opinion, Canada's most prominent digital activist, Michael Geist, told a Toronto audience on Wednesday.
It's a new reality that policy makers ignore at their own peril and one the Canadian government doesn't quite understand how to respond to yet.
“Governments need to be receptive to this,” said Mr. Geist, who teaches e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa.
Michael Geist talks with Rob Hyndman about digital activism Wednesday, May 21 in Toronto at the mesh conference
Mr. Geist's keynote address to the 2008 mesh conference outlined the various ways that social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Google Maps are increasingly being used to disseminate messages of advocacy across the globe at rapid speeds.
“The potential for digital advocacy to change our policy, our political discussions, our democracy, our education and our communications, to change so many different issues that matter … we have to recognize that it's not about “hands off the Internet,” but recognize that those kinds of features are in our hands,” he said.
Social media and the Internet are the newest and most powerful weapons in the activists' arsenal. Protesters in Europe now use Twitter to communicate in real time with fellow supporters, while sites such as Ushahidi.com utilize Google Maps and Google Earth to catalogue violent incidents in Kenya that the local governments don't want recorded or shown to the rest of the world.
Although smaller, specialized advocacy sites are effective in their own right, sometimes larger sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are a better means for disseminating a message, especially in oppressive regimes where these sites are tougher to block, Mr. Geist said.
“Because advocacy is only one per cent or less of these tools, it is that which makes it so difficult to stop in many communities and it's that that makes it far more accessible to large segments of the population,” he said.
Many governments, including Canada's, are accustomed to largely one-sided modes of communicating with the public, he said, but the rise of sites that allow users to voice opinions through videos, blogs and social networking groups has given the public the ability to transform that monologue into a dialogue.
One government that has taken a lead in this area is the British parliament. Recently, 10 Downing Street launched a YouTube channel as a sort-of video town hall where citizens can ask the Prime Minister questions. The government then answered the questions online.
The YouTube channel comes on the heels of another project dubbed “E-Petitions” which allows Britons to start an online petition through the Prime Minister's office to see how many fellow citizens share their views. The government now uses these online petitions as a barometer to gauge public sentiment on hot-button issues.
The Internet has provided ordinary citizens with the organizing power that was previously available only to large corporations, Mr. Geist said.
Mr. Geist himself gained a certain degree of celebrity last December when he started a Facebook group called Fair Copyright for Canada, which sought to raise awareness about impending federal copyright legislation.
The group became a Facebook phenomenon, attracting more than 40,000 members, and morphing into a channel for protesting the government's position on copyright legislation. The legislation was eventually scrapped.
