When it comes to internet usage people would argue that a place like Austria simply isn't ready for digital campaigns yet. After reading lots of messages and updates on Facebook yesterday I decided to join the protest last night to show some support for the students. Since I was half an hour late I didn't eve get to see the university building because the crowd between me and the starting point of the protest was about 15.000 people strong.
As if that wouldn't be surprising enough today was the first time I really followed some conversations on Twitter of people who life here. Pretty close to information overload I followed the hashtag #unibrennt(which means “univerity on fire”). From that point onwards I realised that you could follow several live video streams to see the squatted rooms and you could even take part in discussions through twitter. Aside that several Facebook groups got more than 1000 members just over night, the trade unions declared their support for the students and the blogosphere will be stuffed with blogs on this topic by now.
I really had to think about “the wisdom of crowds”-theory because I haven't seen such amazing online campaigns happening here in Vienna before. The PR work is great, you can fill newspapers for several weeks with images that are available and if you want to be up to date all you have to do is go online. This student movement really has everything – online petitions, blogs, websites, twitter accounts, twitter hashtags, facebook groups, facebook fanpages, live video streams, photo-groups, online interviews, spontaneous online stunts, other videos, and on and on.
So do you really think this campaigns needs billboards or TV ads? Or probably a leaflet? I don't think so. If received so many text messages yesterday personally inviting me to the protest that this should be considered as the beginning of internet power in this tiny country.
By the way, the traditional media is struggling to keep pace with the online crowd.
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