Flipping through the channels today, I saw a story on Channel 7 News, entitled "Cuffed on Campus." The story was about the students at Cape Cod Technical High School who organized a sit-in in protest of a speech given to them by their new dean during a lunch period when the students were served only cheese sandwiches as punishment for not cleaning up the day before. In the speech, the dean reportedly referred to the students in a derogatory manner, calling them "pigs" among other things. In response to their punishment and the speech from the new dean, some of the students created a Facebook group which eventually led to a school-wide organized sit-in, which resulted in the arrest of two students.
Click
HERE for the Channel 7 News article and video
When the newscaster mentioned that the sit-in was organized through a Facebook group, I couldn't help but think of click-through activism. Unlike most groups on Facebook that promote a cause, this group led to fast, highly organized action. Although this is a reatively small scale example of click-through activism having real world effects, it is a demonstration of the potential of Facebook groups to organize an actual movement, when all of the members are emotionally invested in the cause.
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