Rahul Mehta Gandhinagar LsCandidate
Which one is better for activism -- WhatApp or FB?
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Many activists say that WhatApp is better for activism than FB. for activism. I have opposite view --- IMO, the senior / junior activists MUST use FB to communicate with fellow senior / junior activists. And WhatsApp become must for junior activists to inform those voters who dont want to spend time on FB.
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What is you opinion? Which do you think is better and why?
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My answer --- writen after 4 days
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Say an activist-A is working to inform voters about law-drafts. Say he has made say 100-200 posts on various law-dafts. Now say a new activist-B comes in his contact. And activist-B is willing to read 100s of pages to get information. And activist-A is willing to give all pages.
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Now on FB, if activist-A keeps all his posts organized and cross-linked, then activist-B can come on wall of activist-A and see all his posts and get information. Whereas in WhatApp , activist-A will have to send all 100s of posts again !!!
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So if 1000 new activist-B1, activist-B2 ... activist-B1000 come, then on whatapp, activist-A will have to send 1000s of messages 1000 times !!! And in FB, all activist-A needs to do is to keep his posts indexed by topic, and cross linked, and all 1000 activist_b need to be given only link to index, which can be in cover page
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Now FB has so called Chat Groups, where new joinee gets all old posts. But in Chat Group, say there are 100 persons and one 2 persons start some discussion. Then their posts will disturn all. And sometimes, 1 person may be too involved on one issue and will repeated ly post on that issue and other 99 will find his post disturbance. And so they will quit the group. IOW, WhatsApp chat group are good for small groups like partners, family members, class friends etc. But not good for 100-200 activists to share views.
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And lastly, posts on whatapp cant be cross linked and indexed !! eg say you have made a WhatApp post on say "repatriation crisis" and in your later post on FDI, you want to put link to that post on Repatriation Crisi. Then in FB it is possible. In WhatApp , it is simply NOT possible. Now activism involves giving and taking information on complex topics in politics, economics etc. And so cross linking is necessary. So IMO, FB is better than WA for activism
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So IMO, activists should use FB to communicate amongst themselves. And at the same time, some activists should use WA to send information to ordinary voters. Because most voters dont want to spend time in unfollowing their nuisance contacts on FB, and so they find their newsfeed dirty and so they stop coming to FB !!! So activists need to use FB to communicate with each other and will need to use WA to communicate with voters.