Canadian Rallies Organized by Just Folks . . . and Social Media
Attention: Editors, Journalists, Reporters, Journalism Students and Professors:
Are you aware of what just happened? The story is not just about Prorogation of Canadian Parliament. The story is about the use of social media like Facebook and Twitter to enable ordinary Canadians to communicate, organize and protest. You saw something similar during the Obama campaign but the reporting was on how the campaign organizers used social media. This movement was not organized by a funded campaign organization. Ordinary Canadians did this. The people organized themselves.
This fundamental shift was made possible by the web, growth in computer access and the use of social media software. How important is this? How important was the advent of the printing press? Until relatively recently, most people have not been able to publish their thoughts or organize themselves. Newspaper printing presses are expensive. The selection of which information to communicate has been for the most part the perview of large media companies. That is changing.
The ability of people to communicate with each other and organize independently is increasing. Most major media in Canada that I saw were initially a trifle dismissive of the CAPP group on Facebook. Even the Facebook posters seemed surprised as the group grew. It is now 213,251. Most of the media seemed to take the growth in the Facebook group as some sort of anomaly; perhaps a bunch of kids or people from other countries? This can not be a real force; there is nobody to organize them. There is no political party or even NGO giving direction. Apparently they were real. 25,000 Canadians went out in the middle of January. They showed up. They were real. This is real.
Welcome to a new world. Do you think that is overblown? I am sure there were some that figured the printing press was a nice tool but it won’t change my life.
I look forward with interest to the first journalists who pick up on this and write about it . . . both professional journalists and just folks.
I am a bit of a homer,. I would like some Canadian journalists to take note . . . after all . . . it happened in Canada.
