Bob Dylan wrote the song "Hurricane" to get Rubin Carter out of prison. John Steinbeck hoped that "The Grapes of Wrath" would draw attention to the plight of poor farmers during the Great Depression. Michael Moore makes scathing documentaries to spawn debate and raise awareness.
Music, books and film have always been a means of promoting activism. But as college students react to the recent "Jena Six" controversy - which revolves around allegations that a group of black teenagers from the racially tense town of Jena, La. were unfairly persecuted - a new medium for protest has taken hold: the Internet.
According to the New York Times, a volatile chain of events started in Jena when a black student sat underneath a tree in the town known as the "White Tree," because it was typically a hangout for white students.
The next day, three nooses were found hanging from the tree, and not long thereafter, the students soon to be known as the Jena Six were involved in a fight with a white student. The six were initially charged with attempted murder rather than assault - though the charges have steadily been reduced under pressure from activists - while the white student was not charged.
Protest against accused racism is not a new phenomenon. But unlike the protests of the 1960s and '70s, activism relating to the Jena Six incident has organized almost completely online.
A group of over 10,000 protesters held a public march on the town Sept. 20 to draw attention to the issue. The event was planned mainly "through Web sites, bulk e-mail and instant messages, black radio stations and YouTube," according to the New York Times .
At Tufts, some students have used Facebook.com to spread awareness of the issue.
Sophomore Constance Mourning first learned of the Jena Six case when she was invited to join the Facebook group, "Black Nooses Hanging from the 'White' Tree."
"Facebook was my first source," Mourning said. "Then I did research."
Mourning found that Facebook exposed her to the issue in a way that traditional media outlets failed to do.
"Over the last four weeks, I found out so much more through Facebook than though the media," Mourning said, explaining that the group "summarized the story and it gave links to other media things."
While Mourning used Facebook to find out about a story that she felt was underreported, junior Kimberly Dello Russo thinks Facebook is perhaps the best way to raise awareness among people uninterested in current events.
"If it makes people more aware of some things, then that's a good thing," Dello Russo said. "Web sites like that can be a way of conveying information to people who otherwise wouldn't find out about things."
But Dello Russo said Internet groups are not reliable as a sole news source; they are simply a place to start.
"I didn't use the Internet [to find out about the Jena Six incident]," Dello Russo said. "I just saw an article on TV ... Facebook has never been my first source of information."
Senior Dave Sorensen agreed that social networks are a good way to spread awareness of a cause.
"I feel like a lot of us check e-mail or Facebook more than a typical news site." Sorensen added that Facebook especially might be "a quick way to garner support for a cause."
Professor of Political Science Jeffrey Berry said that the Internet is an ideal means of making people aware of social movements.
"I think that the Internet is a powerful tool for communication. It's difficult for it to create a social movement, but it facilitates it," Berry said. "It also quickens the pace of what kind of protests or activities you have planned. You don't need as long a lead time to get things going."
But for Mourning, talk - at least over the Internet - can be cheap. He said a movement by students to protest the Jena Six incident by wearing black on Sept. 20, which he learned about on Facebook, had mixed success, if any.
"I saw people wearing black," Mourning said. "[But] because there wasn't a rally, it was kind of hard to notice."
Mourning also noted that, even when she saw people wearing black, it was "hard to say they were wearing it for the Jena Six."
Despite the middling results of the Jena Six protests at Tufts, though, Mourning remains confident of her peers' commitment to activism - just not when it happens online.
"In general, I think our generation is very active," Mourning said. "I think that our generation does ... do things to combat what they see as wrong."
Dello Russo said that on Sept. 20 she "didn't see much of anything" in terms of protests on the Tufts campus. Facebook, however, did make Dello Russo aware of other protest events that occurred.
"I didn't know that Tufts students were [protesting]," Dello Russo said. "But I knew Museum School students were, and I found out through Facebook."
Using the Internet to promote activism can be a double-edged sword for precisely those reasons.
"[Internet activism] allows people to feel they're doing something when really all they're doing is signing an online petition or e-mailing people, and it's really symbolic," Berry said.
According to Sorensen, Facebook can provide an unwarranted sense of accomplishment for people who are doing tangible work toward a cause.
"I feel like some people would definitely feel like they were doing something by inviting friends to a Facebook group," he said.
Sorensen said that he thinks the extent to which a generation is socially engaged "depends on what's going on in the world." Overall, he said, this generation is among "the most active" in recent times.
But to Berry, the jury's still out on whether or not the Internet will tend to push more students towards activism.
"We don't know if [the Internet] is going to be producing a generation of activists or a generation of couch potatoes," he said.
