Monks, Democracy, and Facebook
Today, people around the world are wearing red to show their solidarity with the people of Burma. How do I know? I didn't get it from NPR, the news, or even email. I heard it on Facebook.
There's a lot of activity related to Burma on Facebook right now. There are 379 groups, and 141 events, in a myriad of countries and languages. I belong to one of the groups and have been following their work to see how they are using Facebook to create some real social change.
In this kind of work, with so many organizations and people involved from so many places, there's little chance to pin any particular outcome on any particular actor. But, if we consider social change to be engaging the previously un-engaged -- getting people who didn't know Burma from Bali to learn and take some action -- then I think we can do a nice little investigation.
If group size is any indication, then Facebook has been an incredibly successful platform. The group I joined posted these stats:
**GROUP NEWS** Look how we have grown!
12:00 UK time- Close to 90,000
28/09/2007 60,000 Members
27/09/2007 30,000 Members
26/09/2007 12,000 Members
25/09/2007 6000 Members
24/09/2007 3,500 Members
KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!
We all know that numbers don't tell the whole story, so I'm going to take some time to do some research. I'll let you know what I find out. In the mean time, check out the group that I joined and the plethora of community created content:
