Does the Internet and social media make the boycott a more effective weapon?

[FarCenter]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott

The boycott has been long used to exert economic or social pressure on businesses and institutions. However, its effectiveness is limited unless the advocates of a boycott can both reach a large number of willing participants and can gain their agreement that a boycott is justified and likely effective.

In the past, the control exerted by the mainstream media made it difficult to reach the large number of willing participants. The one-way broadcast nature of mainstream media also made it difficult to either gain agreement from potential participants or to coordinate their participation in the boycott.

However, internet social media would appear to remove both these impediments to effective boycotts.

The various urgings to move accounts from Bank of America during the past days has been interesting, although it is not clear how many account have actually been moved. But is this a first movement toward using the boycott as an effective organizing and pressure tool on businesses?

Would a boycott of Chinese toys this Christmas, for example, be an effective tool for pressuring importers? Would it succeed across the board, or could it be done on the largest importers, such as Mattel and Hasbro, for a more targeted effect?

[nichomachus]

1. Name five successful national boycotts

And grapes and Coors beer don't count.

[FarCenter]

3. I'm not claiming that they have been particularly successful in the past

Just that in the world of facebook and twitter they can be better organized and more effective in the future.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_boycotts

[nichomachus]

4. I disagree

Successful boycotts have always relied on unions and people in the middle getting onboard -- not on a lot of people knowing about it.

With both grapes and the gay community boycott against Coors, the unions were heavily involved. Also, the organizers got to store owners in the case of grapes and bar owners in the case of Coors and pressured them not to carry the products. Neither was a bottom-up movement. Had grapes been in the stores and had the bars stocked Coors beer, the people would still have bought them.

This is why things like the Christians' attempts to boycott Disneyland or certain television shows always fall flat on their faces.

[SlimJimmy]

2. Answer, yes and no.

Yes, boycotts are more effective because of the internet and social media. But, no, they are still not a truly effective way to change corporate behavior because, as earlier stated, it is very difficult to organize a *national* boycott.