Boycott of the Premier League
Posted by Brian Kelly on 11 Feb 2008
“Supporters threaten boycott of Permier League spnsors over foreign fixture plans” read a headline on the front page of the Guardian’s Sport section on Monday 11th Febuary 2008.
I can sympathise with those views, but if I wanted to support such a boycott where would I go? Well a search for “boycott premier league” in Facebook found the group on “SAVE THE PREMIER LEAGUE – PETITION AND BOYCOTT” which was set up on 9th February and already has 242 members.
Last August the BBC described how Facebook had been used to force the HSBC to make a U-turn on its plans to introduce student charges, a story which was picked up my many newspapers and bloggers.
Is, then, Facebook turning out to be the channel for mass protests, with only the hardline marxists arguing for a more politically correct channel? OK, a tongue-in-cheek suggestion – but where else would you go to set up a mass campaign? I have discovered the Football Supporter’s Federation petition, but only through the Facebook group.
UK Web Focus (Brian Kelly) 
Janet McKnight said
where else would you go to set up a mass campaign?
If it was relevant I’d go straight to http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/ ! (Not that they’re all relevant on there — the petitions with the fewest signatures are often good for a laugh.)
Plenty of online petition sites out there, though: ipetitions briefly got a high profile with the ‘more than 400 linux users read the BBC site petition, & there are loads more that do the same sort of thing.
Also, not quite the same thing but PledgeBank seemed to serve No2ID‘s cause fairly well.
And of course once you’ve got a petition hosted somewhere else, you can create a facebook group (or two, or twenty…) to advertise it, as the bbc-on-linux petitioners did, without excluding non-facebook users.
Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) said
Hi Janet – thanks for the suggestions. As one of the top ipetitions today is WE WANT TOKIO HOTEL IN UKRAINE!!! I suspect that a petition saying keep English club matches in England would be better hosted on a UK service (don’t know what Scottish fans may think, I must admit). As you suggest, the http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/ site is, er, interesting – Make Jeremy Clarkson Prime Minister has 44719 signatures.
But I would agree with you about making petitions available on the more open Web available, and complementing that with discussions within a Facebook environment.
Paul Walk said
Of course Facebook also has a ‘Jeremy Clarkson should be Prime Minister’ group, with 293,656 members…..
askmetoo said
yes Of course Facebook also has a ‘Jeremy Clarkson should be Prime Minister’ group!
Ask Me Too about Anything
consequencing said
Is there a facebook campaign to boycott those it services who don’t provide a blog viewable on an iphone?
Cloudcrafter said
One day all democratic elections will be held via Facebook. There will no fixing of the results what so ever. Honest. :-)
Want to set up a mass campaign? Contact a professional campaigner – probably working for a charity closely aligned with what you are trying to achieve. PM petitions seem to have achieved very little other than to make a minority feel like government cares, though there is little, if any, action. (Of course, the former is more important than the latter, or so it would seem).
As for football, well, it is just a game. :-)
Pete Johnston said
I don’t really bother with Facebook any more, not because I’m a hardline Marxist (though it’s true that after the Beacon farce I don’t trust Fb an inch with my personal data), but mostly because I found the endless Fb app spam too irritating.
Once I gave up on the Warbook Fb app (because it was so unreliable) the cons outweighed the pros and I’ve rather lost the incentive to look at my Fb page more than once a week.
I knew about the FSF and their petition from reading football message boards. I doubt very much fit they into the category of “more politically correct channels”(!), but if I want to find news of football and my team, I’m more likely to look there than at Facebook! :-)