What Can The Mass ‘Check-In’ At Standing Rock Tell Us About Online Advocacy?

‘On Oct. 31, more than a million Facebook users “checked in” at Standing Rock Reservation, on the border between North and South Dakota. Since last March, the Standing Rock Sioux and other tribal communities and activists have been blocking the construction of a crude oil pipeline, which threatens sacred sites and the tribe’s water supply.
All those users who checked in had not actually traveled to the encampment. Rather, they’d been prompted by a post that went viral, claiming that the local sheriff’s department was monitoring online check-ins. It asked people to “overwhelm and confuse” this surveillance effort by using a Facebook feature to signal their presence at the protest.
This was the first time this check-in strategy appears to have been so successful. But as has happened other times online advocacy has gone viral, skepticism and derision followed.’
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