Online antinuclear organizing shifting away from Email to Facebook (and twitter and wordpress)

[bananas]

I'm not on faceborg and can't even view these.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NucNews/message/33493

Online antinuclear organizing shifting away from Email to Facebook
Sep 24, 2011

For folks who have noticed a drop off in email around nuclear issues, I'd like to share with you a few reasons why this is.

Some of this has to do with burnout. Fukushima has been more than a bit exhausting, if not even more so at the present, because many activists are trying to juggle not one but two or more issues at the same time. By this, I mean, keeping an eye on what's happening around Fukushima, but at the same time also catching the wave of local organizing that has been spurred on by the Japanese crisis.

However, this doesn't account for why a lot of the mailings lists are seeing fairly large reductions in use. Probably the biggest change has been the dramatic increase in active use of Facebook.

Today there are at least a half dozen major Facebook sites with a withering volume of activity.

For example, and this is by no means even a partial list of all the Facebook groups that are active:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/Fukushima.informations/ 2,342 members
https://www.facebook.com/groups/Fukushimamiyagiiwate/ 1,612 members
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dianuke/ 1,401 members
https://www.facebook.com/groups/113622485391538/ (C.A.N.) 669 members

And there are many more sites that are active as well, that aren't necessarily about just getting the general public to be active.

There is now more information being posted on just one of these sites in a single day that may happen in an entire week on the largest email lists.

I've yet to even mention twitter <snip> on the search line type the following --- #fukushima --- There are now thousands of people using this tag to talk about fukushima all over the world. <snip> the one being promoted in california >> #nukefreecal <<

<snip>

The most popular online blogging package in the world is Wordpress. In the last year Wordpress has been going through a lot of changes including major security upgrades. However, the biggest change has been with their new version of Wordpress MU when combined with an add-on known as BuddyPress.

<snip>

[Nihil]

1. I suspect spam filters might have assisted this "move" ...

... especially given the tendency for some people to do the
"wall of cut & paste" trick every time ...

> Today there are at least a half dozen major Facebook sites with
> a withering volume of activity.

Good luck to them.

(Mind you, the line between "activity" and "gossip" is pretty thin.)


> many activists are trying to juggle not one but two or more issues
> at the same time.

I'm really not sure that you can "juggle" one issue "at the same time" ...
:rofl:


> The most popular online blogging package in the world is Wordpress.

And there we have it: not so much of the "anti-nuclear activism" or even
"informing the general public" but so much more of the "let's piss on the
internet wall and hope that someone interprets this as information".


I for one am much happier to see the genuinely informative anti-nuclear
message coming out (e.g., from you) without so much of the content-free
spam & dribbling re-posts from wannabe "activists" whose real incentive
is to get their post-count up and look like they know something.

That way I can read good information without the pointless & distracting
echoes from the peanut gallery.

:thumbsup:

[Kolesar]

2. The antinuclear activists I work with are nothing like you describe

eom

[bananas]

3. Thanks, but I'll probably be posting a lot less on nuclear issues

If you remember a few years back, my main point was that nuclear won't play a major role in solving the climate crisis (who said that? Al somebody...). That should be pretty obvious now, so I'm not going to waste so much on it.

Also, I'm not really "anti-nuclear",
I've never gone to any anti-nuclear protests or been involved in any anti-nuclear activism,
I'm extremely skeptical but not entirely opposed to research on new reactor designs,
and I support research on fusion and hope we eventually get it to work.