Amy Bruckman responds to Kevin Kelly

Kevin Kelly wrote:

It would be great to have some data.

Amen. The truth is always more complicated and more interesting than you expect.

I'm definitely irked by "slacktivism." Um, do people think changing your icon green on Twitter is really a form of political action? The point is well taken that the impact of other forms of political action like letter writing or marching are not always obvious either. But still... do people who join a Facebook protest group or change an icon color feel that they've done something, and hence are excused from further action?

On the other side of the coin, folks like Andy Carvin at NPR are doing some absolutely brilliant work on using social media for really meaningful action in the area of disaster response. A group of volunteers made a Haitian Creole translator for smart phones within days after the quake. Volunteers made the 'people finder' application to help people find loved ones, and it's now set up after any major disaster. Stuff that's indisputably real in positive impact and absolutely impossible without the Internet. (Andy's TEDxNYED talk about this was great--video should be online soon.)