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Protests Move From the Streets To YouTube

Posted by kdawson on from the getting-word-out-of-the-Phillipines dept.

weighn writes "One factor driving the move of political statements to YouTube, and away from old-style street protest, is that on the Internet the chances of being personally associated with a protest are lower. Mounting your political message online is also safer in countries where taking part in a protest can result in your death or injury at the hands of your country's army. We've seen how street protests and online polls alike are being shunted aside and ignored. What is the future for the common person who yearns to be heard?"

5 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. Not only protests... by o'reor · · Score: 4, Interesting
    ... political statements, partisan criticisms and campaigning too.

    Here in France as the presidential elections are coming near, the two main candidates, Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy, have more than their fair share of partisan and protest videos on YouTube.

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  2. Re:What's the point? by Timesprout · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How does that advance your cause?
    It doesn't.It just gives some armchair rebels a chance to feel good about themselves by 'supporting' their cause without having to go through the inconvenience of facing confrontation or rebuttal.
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  3. Re:What's the point? by Psx29 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Well if a political statement is turned into a 'viral' youtube video (a la hillary 1984) then it's very likely more people will hear it than a street protest. Of course this just means that in a (mostly?) free country like the US you can have a street protest AND a viral video on the net, why choose just one?

  4. Re:What's the point? by mrbluze · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Surely the whole point of having a street protest is that it is visible to everyone

    This is the problem with a street protest nowadays. If it doesn't cow-tow to the opinions of mass media moguls, then it is not visible to everyone. I remember when we had over 150,000 people marching in the streets of Melbourne against the Iraq war (biggest ever protest), and you'd read in the news and see on TV: "Thousands marched" or "scores" and not "A hundred and fifty thousand stopped the entire city" which is what actually happened - everything had to stop. However, if you didn't live in Melbourne, you wouldn't have thought much more of it. The politicians knew this and therefore didn't give a rat's about it.

    Putting the protest on the net simply makes it even more useless. Unless you go there and look, you won't know.

    However, what is working is the fact that more and more people are reading news from non-commercial sources and this is getting politicians a little nervous (hence the drive for censorship).

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  5. Re:Gut-less new generation of protestors by koreth · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The question is, if YouTube had been available back then, would those protesters have been as ready to hit the streets and get beaten when there was another avenue available to get mass attention? The situation has changed, so that might have some effect on people's actions.

    Also, assuming you're talking about the Vietnam War protests in the US, there was a military draft back then. Many of the protesters were literally fighting for their own lives -- if they didn't go out and get beaten by the police, they faced the prospects of going out and getting killed or maimed in southeast Asia. I suspect you'd see protests get a lot more serious in a big hurry if the draft were reinstated to send people over to Iraq.