Sue H--G-20 activists and Twitter

Political activists have long been early adopters of the newest technology---and the latest must have gadgets for the group include Facebook & Twitter. Since the dawn of the printing press--where activists used print to quickly spread their message and unite en masse--to the recent Obama campaign, technology has always played a key role in social activism. Clay Shirky, author of "Here Comes Everybody" and an expert on the social and ecomomic effects of Internet technologies, states that the groundbreaking event for online campaigning was the 1999 WTO protest in Seattle, where tens of thousands of activists descended on the city. Internet advances ---particularly mobile technologies--have made it dramatically easier to organize large groups of people in protest. These types of technology allow instant, on-the-ground, mass communication. This was blatantly apparent @ the G-8 protests in 2007, in Germany, where large groups of people identified a security breach in the police blockade and relayed the information within seconds to protesters, enabling them to outmanuever police. Far more people today are digitally connected, making it easier for groups to assemble and dissipate quickly. For the most part large-scale protests organized online have been peaceful--but the WTO, and G-20 protests do have a history of turing violent--something that worries some activists as the week unfolds.