WORDS Fatima Measham    PHOTO  Krystelle Dumesny

Earlier this year, a small event for friends to show solidarity for victims of violence became a global phenomenon involving tens of thousands of people. Fatima Measham asks online activists how the web is changing the way we campaign for justice.

When Mia Northrop sent a message out to her friends in Facebook about a quirky campaign to show support for the Indian community early this year, she had not really counted on it becoming a major media event. Dubbed ‘Vindaloo Against Violence,’ it was a simple invitation to dine at an Indian restaurant or get a takeaway meal as a sign of protest against assaults on Indian nationals.

‘I thought we might pack out one of the big restaurants’, Mia replies when asked about her initial expectations. In fact, based on participant registration, Vindaloo Against Violence drew 17,000 participants to 400 restaurants around the country and overseas.

Quite aptly, the campaign website borrows a line from the iconic Paul Kelly song: ‘From little things big things grow’. Mia first had the sense that the idea that she had tossed around with her husband and friends was growing unexpectedly when mainstream news services carried it within days after publication.

The Facebook page, Twitter account and Wordpress website for the event had been set up on the Sunday before Australia Day, a month before the big dine-out. A friend immediately ‘retweeted’ the message, which got the attention of an SBS journalist on her ‘followers’ list. The article was published online the following day. The story was picked up by The Age and ABC News that week, followed by various radio talk shows. By the time protestors took a bite of their pappadum in late February, international news organisations including the BBC had also reported on the campaign.

‘I started to freak out’, says Mia, when asked about the media attention. ‘I was not an activist. I wasn’t the kind of person who joined marches.’ Yet, after being deeply disturbed by the spate of attacks against Indian nationals in Melbourne, she felt she had nothing to lose if she did something. ‘I felt I could stand up and be a voice. You don’t need special permission for that.’

Mia says all the things she used for her campaign are freely available online. ‘If you’ve got something that is meaningful and resonates with other people, then it can spread like wildfire.’

The web is proving a perfect networking tool for social justice causes.

Emma Rainbow, website master for Caritas Australia, says rather than being engineered by organisations, online communities have their own way of growing. In Caritas’ case, content for its different online platforms is generated by members themselves. The Community Blog, for example, is updated by Caritas workers around Australia, creating a repository of stories from the field. Its YouTube channel contains clips made by people who have benefited from or are involved in overseas development programs.

‘They get to tell their own stories’, Emma emphasises. ‘It puts human faces on what we do and helps to connect communities.’

Angela Ford, Caritas’ social media editor, affirms that internet-based technology has made it easier to gauge public interest in topics related to their work. The use of hashtags (topic filters) on Twitter, for example, has been useful in this respect. ‘It is not always about broadcasting, but listening and engaging with people’, she says.

Whether it’s signing petitions, emailing your local MP, making an online donation or blogging about an issue, doing something about what you care about has never been easier.

According to Emma, ‘In the past, you might have had to join an organisation in order to be part of a social activity. [Now] you can do something to make a difference from your own lounge room.’

The success of Vindaloo Against Violence underlines the idea that technology has enhanced the way individuals are able to participate in or even facilitate social change.

For Mia, it turned out to only be the beginning. She has since attended a cyber-racism summit organised by the Australian Human Rights Commission and Internet Industry Association. She was also invited to run a workshop titled ‘Social Media for Social Change’ as part of the annual Diversity Forum in New Zealand in August.

Looking back, she says that the Vindaloo Against Violence campaign gave her the confidence to pursue ‘crazy ideas.’

‘If one thing that came out of it is that other people feel encouraged to be more vocal, then that would be awesome’, she says.

Comment  on this article