Sign in and be counted

Technology Can online petitions ever pack as much of a punch aspen and ink? Alice-Azania Jarvis investigates

All it takes is the click of a mouse button. For most "onlineactivists" - those of us who sit at home and join, virtually, thevarious protests that come our way - very little is required. We'renot risking our safety on the front line, we're sitting at our desk,adding a hash tag to our tweets or joining a group on Facebook. Butwe're doing something - or that's what we tell ourselves.

Last week, it was Show Your Support for Egypt. This week, it'sSave Our Forests. Countless pages spring up on Facebook. "Click herefor a link to our petition," they say. It's so easy, and when it'sdone, you can sit back, smug. It's a fast-track to feeling good.

But does it make any difference? Last year, Malcolm Gladwell senta ripple through the digital world with his insistence that itdidn't. The great civil rights movement of the 1960s couldn't haveachieved what it did, he said, had the internet taken the place oflocal networks and community organisation. No doubt he's right: theGreensboro sit-ins required the sort of intimate, involved relationsforged through years of living, working, and attending churchtogether.

"Clicktivism" has become the common, derogatory catch-all foronline protest. But it's not always a fair one. Allying yourself toa cause online may be easy, but that's not to say it accomplishesnothing. Protest group Avaaz has demonstrated this only too well.With almost seven million internet members, it can propel the mostobscure cause to prominence in record time. Users lend support forissues ranging from conflict chocolate to bee conservation -frequently with concrete results. When Avaaz allied with anti-trafficking charity Ecpat, it got some 310,000 people calling on theHilton hotel group to commit to stamping out abuse in its hotels. Ashaming billboard was threatened, and Hilton promptly relented.

In Britain, online activism may soon have the power to shapelegislation. Ten Downing Street has long housed a page dedicated topublic petitions, its effectiveness (or lack thereof) neatlydemonstrated by the perpetual presence, in the final year of hispremiership, of a petition for Gordon Brown to resign. But theCoalition Government has announced that any e-petitions made via thenew Directgov website and boasting more that 100,000 signatureswould be debated in Parliament.

Away from the traditional medium of the petition, Twitter,Facebook and YouTube have all proved their worth, in terms of bothorganising protests and awareness-raising. UK Uncut, the direct-action group responsible for shutting down Topshop during theChristmas rush, was born as a Twitter hash tag. When a few friendssent out tweets inviting people to join them in protesting againstSir Philip Green's alleged tax avoidance, they had no idea so manywould arrive. Likewise, YouTube footage from recent studentdemonstrations has forced the police to defend their heavy-handedtactics - in particular their treatment of the wheelchair-bound JodyMcIntyre. And who could forget one of the biggest stories of thepast year: the leaking of thousands of government cabals via thehacktivist website WikiLeaks.

Online activism may be easy. It may be cheap. And it may be nosubstitute for the old-fashioned, placard-waving alternative. But asa tool in itself, it has all kinds of potential.