One might imagine this slogan coming from Greenpeace, or perhaps the Sierra Club. However, it comes from a more unlikely source: Facebook. The social network is stepping outside its parameters as a public sphere and actually becoming an advocate itself for the environmental movement.
According to a statement on the PR News website, Facebook joined the Digital Energy Solutions Campaign (DESC), which “works to advance ideas, best practices and public policies that promote information and communications technology-enabled energy efficiency, clean energy innovation, and sustainable growth.”
Facebook has created its own “green” Page highlighting their “efforts to be a green and sustainable global citizen.” People can go there to learn about different clean energy technologies and initiatives.
Under the Info tab on Facebook’s Green Page, they describe the role Facebook plays in conveying this message: “We are proud that Facebook plays a unique part in promoting efforts to achieve a clean energy future. By enabling millions of people from diverse backgrounds to easily connect and share, we believe we can help unleash innovative environmental initiatives across the globe.”
Social networking technology has allowed for a particular kind of agency. The prevalence of networked ICTs changed ways activism gets done and has mobilized people in different ways than ever before. It makes you wonder how people were able to coordinate demonstrations prior to the invention of the Internet, similar to imagining what it was like to successfully pick someone up at the airport before mobile phones.
Clearly ICTs have enabled for worldwide interconnectedness on social justice issues. They enable instantaneous communication. Images of tragedies and injustices can spread virally. People from all over the world come together, not always driven by the same ideologies, to connect for transnational activism.
Facebook provides this structure for various stakeholders and enables opportunities for activism. Am I more likely to become an activist because Facebook allows me to learn about different causes and social movements? Does that make me an activist just because I click on “like”? According to my Apple dictionary, activism is “the policy or action of using vigorous campaigning to bring about political or social change.” I’m not sure I would classify the opportunities on Facebook as “vigorous campaigning.”
The PR News article described Facebook’s commitment in more detail:
“Facebook's membership in DESC is part their ongoing program to develop energy efficient computing systems while also enabling public activism. Earlier this year, Facebook engineers launched a programming language, HipHop for PHP, which allowed their servers to do the same amount of work with half the number of servers. To spread the benefit, Facebook has open sourced the programming language so that other companies can get the same energy saving benefits.
The social network is also focused on empowering Facebook users to embrace energy efficient living and environmental responsibility by launching the Facebook.com/green Page as a resource for individuals and organizations. Facebook will be collaborating with environmental experts to administer the Page and share. DESC will be the first co-administrator”
Does this technology motivate us to be more involved? Has technology changed our attitude about what it means to be an activist? Perhaps Facebook as created a new generation of slack-tivists – people who care about issues but are too busy or lazy to contribute real manpower to the cause.
Either way you look at the issue, there are more people now than ever before who can learn about these issues and contribute to the transnational activist movement.
Facebook Green: http://www.facebook.com/green?v=wall
PR Newswire article: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/facebook-joins-the-digital-energy-solutions-campaign-desc-106686373.html
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