It’s Your World, So Change It: Using the Power of the Internet to Create Social Change

1. Online Activism 101

“New technological environments are commonly cast in the molds of the preceding technology out of the sheer unawareness of their designers.”—Marshall McLuhan

I was standing in front of an easel in the middle of the windowless sanctuary of the Unitarian-Universalist Church of Jackson in June 1997, leading a forum discussion on the importance of online organizing for churches, and I looked like I was trying to sell something—and doing a terrible job of it.

“So why do we need a website?” one of the parishioners asked. It was a good question. I had no good answer because in 1997 only 22.1% of the U.S. population used the Internet—and Mississippi, America’s poorest state and among its most rural, wasn’t exactly leading the ...