Virtual direct action hits Eon
They say knowledge is power. Last week, a spoof New York Times posited a hypothetical utopian future, and now even direct action is going virtual.
This is the latest chapter of the long running campaign against Eon, the energy company who, in the face of global scientific knowledge on climate change, are pushing on with plans to build a hugely polluting coal fired power station at Kingsnorth in Kent.
Misguided journalist Mark Townsend wound up with egg on his face from his own paper when he lapped up unquestioningly a press release from the National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit – the supposedly unbiased police force’s political wing – and penned an article in the Observer suggesting UK climate activists would employ terrorist tactics in their campaign for action on climate change.
Bombing is, however, on the agenda. But, and pay attention to this bit please Mark, it’ll be bombing of the peaceful variety. Googlebombing last hit the mainstream press when the term ‘miserable failure’ returned George Bush’s Whitehouse profile as the first, and therefore most relevant, result. Today, energy giant Eon is facing the same tactics.
At the time of writing, a search for Eon on Google’s UK pages returns the protest website No New Coal in the sixth spot – up from number seven only a couple of days ago. In a statement, campaigners said that their goal was to get it to the top, and so spread the word against Eon’s plans.
Google’s PageRank system is what allows this to happen – and it’s all to do with links. The more links a phrase has to a page, the more that page is prioritised when the phrase is entered into Google.
Googlebombing is a controversial tactic. An anti-semitic group got its sympathisers to link the word ‘Jew’ to their site, making it the first item in the results list and prompting Google to issue an explanation of the situation under the banner “We’re disturbed about these results as well.”
Arguably, though, countering what some might suggest is a campaign of misinformation from an energy giant with an alternative viewpoint is very different to furthering the cause of racial hatred. If you have a blog or website, and you want to help push Eon’s actions further into the public eye, consider inserting your own piece of creative linking.
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Virtual direct action hits Eon (text) by Olly Zanetti is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK License.
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