---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Quora <[email protected]> Date: Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 11:05 PM Subject: New answer to "Are social networks the new platforms for social activism?" To: [email protected] [image: Quora]New answer to "Are social networks the new platforms for social activism?" *Seb Paquet*: Social networks in their current incarnations do offer a rudimentary platform for awareness-raising (through word-of-mouse information sharing), petition-style activism, and passive group-forming (join the group, become a fan, forget about it). As such, they serve an important function. Deep change rarely happens unless people (1) are pissed off, (2) know that lots of others are pissed off too, and (3) are aware that everyone knows that people are pissed off, which makes action socially acceptable (credit for this observation goes to Henry Copeland <http://www.quora.com/Henry-Copeland>) Awareness is necessary but insufficient for change, however, and *action platforms *are needed to conduct effective activism online. In this century, effective activism is no longer about taking institutional power to effect change; it's about *getting new things started* and *building alternatives*. Project-based, creative and viral activism is where it's at. Current-day social networks are not really designed to support this kind of activism, but there is already some promising work in that direction. See e.g. Open Projects: What websites help you start, plan, and run open projects?<http://www.quora.com/Open-Projects/What-websites-help-you-start-plan-and-run-open-projects> *To see the question page with all answers, visit: http://www.quora.com/l/ec3nX4WO* Thanks, The Quora Team We sent you this email because you are following this question. To stop following it, click this link: http://www.quora.com/l/b0Zb5hkF/_STOP_FOLLOWING To control which emails we send you, visit: http://www.quora.com/l/HWkr4qoU This email was sent by Quora, a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it. To disable all email from Quora, visit the following link: http://www.quora.com/l/K3HE3bvA -- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens Think tank: http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI