The Check-In's of the North Dakota Pipeline

The North Dakota pipeline movement have been shaking social media these past few months. And their impact on sites such as Facebook are spreading throughout the world. This article states how people are somewhat ‘checking in’ on Facebook to show that they’re going to Standing Rock, ND to protest against the pipeline. There was a post on Facebook, saying that the sheriff department checks on Facebook to see how many people are going to protest and who exactly are they.  A post came in, though the article doesn’t state the identity of the person who posted it. Many people have ‘checked in’ on Facebook, claiming that they are protesting on the North Dakota pipelines. It’s to trick the police and try to find a way to help the protesters of the pipeline.

Though I don’t have the identity of the one individual who posted the comment but their actions did help the protesters, in a way. People were ‘participating’ through the screen of their phone or laptops. They had an impact on the pipeline protest, finding a way to help the people and try to confuse the police but they didn’t have that big of a effect. On the article, say of the actual protesters said that it would have been nice if the people who claimed they were at Standing Rock, North Dakota could actually be there. Their participation on the protest didn’t really have as much as a positive effect as they were suppose it. Instead they might have just confused and annoyed the police. Plus, the article says that the sheriff department actually doesn’t monitor Facebook feeds or comments about people protesting the North Dakota pipeline. They say it’s completely false.

Immediacy plays into this. Everyone saw the post and since they felt bad for the people protesting the pipeline being arrested and they’re not able to help them, they decided to believe into this ‘check in’ on Facebook and participate in that. The post has an positive impact on the people in Facebook. It rallied some up to post that they were going to North Dakota to protest against the pipeline and as more people were posting, it eventually had articles on it and gaining some popularity. Maybe teenagers and students on Facebook see this posts and think to try to do something for the community. My advice would be next time, instead of just saying something on the Internet, go and try to make a positive impact on your own. If you can’t physically go, maybe donate and speak out for the cause. Try to inform everybody about it and how it’s bad for people who are protesting against it and are being arrested for something they believe in.

I think the motives of this whole ‘check in’ thing was good. They had good intentions but if they really wanted to play a role in this, try to actually go to North Dakota and participate in the protests. The post was claimed to be false in information and just confused the department. They did have some form of support for the protesters of the North Dakota pipeline but one of them did say, “It would have nice to have those 550,000 people really here.”