The problem with petitions
Posted: Tuesday, May 4, 2010 by Kathryn McConnachie in Labels: activism, care2, chain emails, digital petitions, online petitions, slacktivism
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We all hate chain emails that threaten to curse us for the next few years if we don’t forward them to 15 friends in the next five minutes. Email petitions are however a form of chain mail that becomes a little harder to ignore. These petitions function by appealing to one’s conscience rather than one’s superstitions.
Online petitions that one finds in one’s inbox are often cleverly constructed to pull on the heart strings and spur one on to ‘action’. Action is in inverted commas because while I have sometimes been ‘that friend’ who forwards the email to my entire friend-list, when I’m not overly emotional and feeling helpless about the plight of the whales/ greyhounds/ [insert worthy cause here], I’m skeptical about the efficacy of this form of digital activism.
Online petitions that one finds in one’s inbox are often cleverly constructed to pull on the heart strings and spur one on to ‘action’. Action is in inverted commas because while I have sometimes been ‘that friend’ who forwards the email to my entire friend-list, when I’m not overly emotional and feeling helpless about the plight of the whales/ greyhounds/ [insert worthy cause here], I’m skeptical about the efficacy of this form of digital activism.