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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.

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