For online petitions to have any effect, they must reach the right decision-makers, writes FIONOLA MEREDITH

A FEW MONTHS ago, as Israeli bombs rained down on Gaza, many people found their e-mail inboxes filling up with impassioned requests urging them to add their names to online petitions demanding a ceasefire.

Cyber appeals are nothing new. In recent times, there have been online petitions from a trade union protesting against the discriminatory sacking of a pregnant shop worker, an appeal against the forced deportation of asylum seekers and an invitation to join a campaign against the removal of pictures of breastfeeding mothers on Facebook.

Last year, almost 50,000 people signed a petition calling for Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson to be British prime minister, on the rationale that “Jezza is legend and deserves a chance to run the country”.

Like many people, I add my signature to online petitions promoting causes I care about. Yet the question is – does it make one iota of difference to the outcome? In the case of a situation like Gaza, was it likely that any petition, however large or well-meaning, could have an impact? Are child rapes in Ethiopia going to stop because 10,000 horrified Europeans sign a petition insisting action be taken?

Veteran human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell believes that online petitions are often well-intentioned but he is very doubtful about their impact and effectiveness.

“It is mostly a form of conscience-easing; a rather modest extension of armchair activism,” he says. “Petitions that get a million-plus signatures can have an effect and prompt decision-makers to think twice. But the smaller ones, with under 100,000 signatures, rarely dent the consciousness of people in power.”

Tatchell insists that “nothing beats direct action protests: blockades, sit ins, roof-top demos and boycotts. These grab the headlines, raise awareness, provoke debate and put the authorities on the spot in way that online activism hardly ever succeeds in doing.”

Yet Fionna Smyth from Amnesty International thinks that internet campaigning can be a powerful tool for engaging new audiences.

For an online petition to have any hope of achieving its aims, it must be carefully collated, clearly define in its objective and – most importantly – be sent to the right decision-makers. “We at Amnesty . . . because of our years of experience . . . can get access to governments to deliver the petitions,” says Smyth.

Caitlín Nic Íomhair is a young anti-deportation campaigner from Co Down who, in 2007, led a successful campaign against the attempted removal of Cameroonian asylum seeker Lordorice Djountso and her little girl Imelda from their home in Belfast. She acknowledges that online petitions can be formulaic and easily disregarded.

“Having said that it is the internet which brings small, local campaigns, like those I fight, into the wider world, which is vital. Internationalising campaigns is particularly important in anti-deportation work as governments are frequently working together.”

She says every signature is pressure. “A particularly popular group I work with in France can post an alert at 8am and know that by 8pm thousands of supporters will have seen it and responded.”

Amnesty says it had a global day of action to mark the sixth anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo Bay. In London hundreds of protesters turned out in wet weather to demonstrate outside the US embassy. “We managed to move people from clicking a mouse to real action. It now seems that this action has been listened to with [Barack] Obama having signed executive orders to shut Guantánamo, ban torture and ensure the rule of law,” says Fionna Smyth.

Caitlín Nic Íomhair, too, has seen situations where online petitioning played a big role: “One anti-deportation campaign virtually exploded overnight when school friends of a family in detention set up a Facebook page calling for their release. 10,000 people joined and the family are still here,” she says.

Many activists admit that large numbers of petitions simply fizzle out in cyberspace. But feminist activist Ailbhe Smyth believes that even if it doesn’t make any practical difference, it’s still important to take a stand: “I sign scads of petitions every year and the truth is, I think they rarely have much direct impact on the causes they support. But I go ahead anyway because it feels as if there’s nothing else I can do. And I want to register my disgust at an appalling, brutal, illegal, or undemocratic action. All the same, there is some benefit, I think, in this act of registering refusal. It’s a kind of bearing witness: I do not accept this, this does not happen in my name; I do not support this, I refuse.

In themselves, online petitions may not be the razor-sharp instruments of social change that determined cyber-activists would like them to be. It seems that exercising the power of our right forefingers only makes sense as a prelude to taking real – rather then virtual – action.