On January 18, 2012, it was hard to get online without pages being
blacked out or censored, signs of panic and outrage preventing each consumer
from going about their day on the Internet regularly. Those previously unfamiliar
with the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) quickly
learned that this legislation was driving Silicon Valley to flex its political
muscles. Wikipedia shut down all of its content
for the entire day, only
showing the message “Imagine a world without free knowledge” and a way to
contact one's representatives. Blogging site Tumblr harshly censored its
content and encouraged users to take action. The resulting failure of the bills
was no doubt hurried by the highly effective ways Millennials mobilized on the
issue.
Brian Knappenberger (2014) discussed the
Millennial link to the SOPA protests, “I think SOPA shows that a generation
felt very personally about the Internet as something they really cared about
and that they didn't want to see changed. They wanted to maintain the freedoms
of the Internet.”
Since Millennials grew up with the Internet and it has been an
integral part of their formative lives, organizations protesting SOPA had to
tap into Millennial civic energy to mobilize their voices. They found success
in three vital ways. First, the blackouts certainly found Millennials where
they were. Affecting their favorite sites in a noticeable way and immediately
providing an action call was highly effective. As a result, three million
people contacted Congress on Blackout Day. Over 115,000 websites participated
to varying degrees (Wortham, January 20, 2012).
Next, this event proved that there is power in social media shares.
As the Electronic Frontier Foundation
explained the day after the blackout, “Wednesday’s blackout day signifies a new
era for the global digital civil liberties movement. Through
blogs, tweets, and
posts, thousands of organizations, activists, and individuals truly made it the
success that it was. This has only been a sample of the great advocacy work
that took place yesterday (Rodriquez and Sutton, 2012).” Social media was a
natural format to vent frustrations, as this was a web-based mobilizing effort,
but this netroots organizing soon became a face-to-face showdown. Meetup.com is
a social media platform that helps people find groups that meet in person in
their areas that have shared interests. The NYC Tech Meetup staged an emergency
protest in Manhattan at Senators Gillibrand and Schumer's offices on the day of
the vote. This event reached thousands and physically mobilized hundreds in less
than a day (NY Tech Meetup, 2012).
Third, this movement spurred one of the
most successful boycotts in recent history, providing Millennials a quick and
relatively painless way to use their buying power to fight for a cause.
After the domain provider GoDaddy.com demonstrated their support for SOPA, a
coalition of organizations speaking against the bill called for people to
boycott GoDaddy by transferring to other hosts. This boycott was massively
successful and nearly bankrupted GoDaddy, and pulling domain names continued even
after the site changed its stance (Masnick, 2011). According to
GoDaddyBoycott.org, 22,000 people signed the pledge to pull their domain names,
which totaled over 82,000.
This movement's ability to reach Millennials where they were- on the Internet, effectively use social media and translate it into physical action, and spur conscientious consumerism shows us just how powerful tapping into Millennial civic energy can be. Though we cannot say that all of the participants were, in fact, Millennials, we can see that these methods are very powerful catalysts for Millennials in particular since they are the most tech-saturated generation.
Nonprofits can learn a lot from the
success of the SOPA and PIPA protests. See my whitepaper, Twenty-SomethingCitizen: Keys to Reaching and Keeping Millennials for Your Organization for a comprehensive guide.
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