Computers, Society and Nature

The social and philosophical aspects of online petitioning have rarely been explored. A Blog about Gopetiton.com's "Virtual Activism" comments, "You would think that absent a connection to a major group (e.g., clicking through the Greenpeace site to their petition), no one would want to sign these petitions or even create them. But maybe that’s the point. The creators of petitions may want the immediacy of action; maybe they’ve been alienated from major organizations. Maybe the users of this site just represent the fragmentation and isolation of the modern world, that is, they eschew the face-to-face connection of organizations in favour of the more anonymous activism of the net. The same can be said for the signers: they want to DO SOMETHING but they just don’t know how or don’t want to physically interact with others to find out."