In reading recently about political campaigns online and about the activist actions that spring up around them, I was struck by a quote from Carol Darr of the Institute of Politics, Democracy, and the Internet which is at George Washington University. She is quoted as saying:

“Given that the Internet is interactive and requires an affirmative action on the part of the users, as opposed to a passive response from TV users, it is not surprising that the candidate has to be someone people want to touch and interact with.”

What she means is that in online activism, no matter it’s objective, the Internet users must actively engage with the topic, seek it out, affirmatively, and be attracted to it in the first place. Whether the issue with which you choose to engage is a candidate or an abstract concept, the process remains the same. She compares this Internet process to TV which she describes as a more passive medium. But let’s consider this idea instead of accepting Internet media as wholly affirmative.

What about Twitter?

True, with Twitter you must take an “affirmative” action and sign into the thing. It doesn’t just appearbefore your eyes without doing so. Neither does TV, for that matter. You must at least turn the TV on. And you do the same with Twitter. You turn it “on.” And then, based upon your selection of followers, you are either greeted or assailed with message types that you are actively seeking or with message types that you aren’t actively seeking, kind of like on TV.

I suppose we could consider the now-famous “Motrin Moms” flap an issue of commercial activism. Commercial literally, as the “Motrin Moms” collectively exerted their pressure and caused the maker of Motrin to remove a commercial video which some found objectionable. But in this incident, which has been well-documented (just Google “Motrin Moms” and you’ll find all you need on the incident), the moms weren’t actively, affirmatively, seeking out information about commercial videos that they might find objectionable. Many of the people who joined into the cause we’re simply watching their Twitter accounts, and discovered the incident that way. Passively.

So, is online activism always a product of affirmative action? Not if Twitter has anything to say on any subject.

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