Doubts about e-petitions (and petitions in general)
Michael Geist picked up on an article which argues for e-petitions to have more weight in politics. And although I have signed a few e-petitions and joined many Facebook groups, I still have misgivings about the nature of click votes and petitions in general.
Matthew Ingram has reflected upon the usefulness of click votes in response to the CBC’s Great Canadian Wish List which was generated on Facebook. Even today, I marvelled at the fact that one of my friends on Facebook joined 45,853 other fans (as of the writing of this post) of the Heath Ledger Memorial page, while Geist’s heavily advertised Fair Copyright for Canada group sits at 39,470 members (and Facebook tells me that there are 374 new members…and I have yet to figure out the time span used to calculate a “new” member), and my little
Canada needs a public inquiry into copyright! group reports 1 fewer member, totalling at 114 members. Does this really mean that more people care about Ledger’s tragic death than fair copyright for Canada? Or that 39,356 people who think we should have fair copyright in Canada don’t think Canada needs a public inquiry for copyright? I certainly wouldn’t use the numbers from a Facebook group or page as the source of statistics for any real purpose.
I don’t think the issue is with fraudulent votes or signatures. Like traditional petitions, fraudulent signatures are a problem, but so is the value of the petition itself. As I have stated before, it is entirely too easy to sign something. I really do believe that, unless someone is actively against something, when asked to show support by doing something easy like signing a petition, they are likely to do so. That does not necessarily mean they understand the issues enough to be making a real decision, or that they truly care enough to do something real about it.
Tags: facebook, internet, petitions, politicalRelated posts
By Julianna Yau
On January 25, 2008
At 7:39 pm
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