The power of social networking

(News Terupdate) - The power of Facebook in Indonesia was emphasized when a cause group on the site was started to raise money for jailed mother Prita Mulyasari.

Prita complained about the services at a Jakarta hospital and, after the complaint was published on the Internet, she was fined Rp 204 million rupiah and imprisoned.

A Facebook group called “Koin untuk Prita” was started, making pleas for coins to help Prita pay the fine; support was so strong, the fine was paid with money to spare, and the lawsuit was dropped.

Worldwide, people are using the sheer capacity of Facebook and other social networking sites to get their message across.

Yes, some of the groups are pointless and just for a bit of fun; see Facebook group “Can this pickle get more fans than [popular teen vampire movie] Twilight?” but some of the groups, like “Koin untuk Prita”, have been successful in promoting a worthy cause.

Many Facebook cause groups exist worldwide, in order to raise awareness of various illnesses, diseases and issues.

Similar perhaps to Prita’s story, a woman in France created a group to raise money for her father’s business after bankruptcy plagued the company and the father committed suicide. She raised over ¤200,000 and used the money to pay the company’s employees their wages owed.

A controversial “Breast Cancer Awareness” group started a phenomenon of status updates describing the color of a woman’s bra to remind women to get mammograms.

Support for natural disaster victims such as the Victorian Black Saturday survivors can be given via Facebook, and money can be donated to cancer charities via the “North Wales Calendar Girls Raising Money for Cancer” group.

July 2009 saw the “causes” application on Facebook (the application allowing organizations to create a cause page) reach US$10 million in donations.

Twenty five dollars is the median donation, and more than 375,000 causes have received donations.

Some of the top fund-raising causes of all time are the nature conservancy, having raised over $300,000; the “Love without Boundaries” orphan group who have raised over $145,000; and the “Race to End Cancer” group with 5.9 million members and funds raised in excess of $60,000.

There are also many politically driven cause groups found on Facebook, such as a recent group striving to have the statue of Barack Obama removed from Menteng Park.

A political group on Facebook having any influence on policy, however, is seen by some as being anti-democratic.

Only 25 million of the 230 million people in Indonesia have Internet access, or 10.5 percent. And while an overwhelmingly large percentage of Internet users are active members of Facebook (13.9 million), it is still only a small minority that has the available equipment.

This means decisions such as the removal of the Obama statue are being decided by a small number of elite Internet users.

Many political groups can be found on Facebook, including a “Support Obama” group, a group petitioning against Tony Blair being EU president, and the “Liberal Americans United for Change” group, who started a campaign entitled “Palin, stop lying”.

The influence of these groups in the political sector is hard to monitor, yet the numbers of voters supporting these groups would be hard for the politicians to ignore.

Any political opinions expressed by Facebook groups, however large they may be, are not expressions based on a true cross section of the community, as not everyone has a say in the World Wide Web.
Indonesia’s example exemplifies this, with only a 10 percent minority having Internet access.

So while Facebook causes can be constructive in helping charities and causes, many argue politics should remain within the scope of the polling booths to be truly democratic.

Posted in: News Today