the organization provides the citizen with escalating steps of involvement (Vitak et al., 2011). The issue of the mass media's centrality has been highly contested, with some people arguing that it promoted the voices of marginalized groups while others believe it sends forth the messages of the majority alone, leaving minority groups to have their voices robbed. Examples of early activism One case that has to do with the history of online activism is the one of Lotus MarketPlace. On April 10, 1990, Lotus announced a direct-mail marketing database product that was to contain name, address, and spending habit information on 120 million individual U.S. citizens. While much of the same data was already available, privacy advocates worried about the availability of this data within one database. Furthermore, the data would be on CD-ROM, and so would remain fixed until a new CD-ROM was issued. In response, a mass e-mail and E-bulletin-board campaign was started, which included information on contacting Lotus and form letters. Larry Seiler, a New England-based computer professional, posted a message that was widely reposted on newsgroups and via e-mail: "It will contain a LOT of personal information about YOU, which anyone in the country can access by just buying the discs. It seems to me (and to a lot of other people, too) that this will be a little too much like big brother, and it seems like a good idea to get out while there is still time." Over 30,000 people contacted Lotus and asked for their names to be removed from the database. On January 23, 1991, Lotus announced that it had cancelled MarketPlace. In 1998 Dr. Daniel Mengara, a Gabonese scholar and activist living New Jersey, created a website called Bongo Doit Partir (Bongo Must Go) to encourage a revolution against the regime of Omar Bongo in Gabon. In July 2003, Amnesty International reported the arrest of five Gabonese known to be members of Bongo Doit Partir. The members were detained for three months. Another well-known example of early Internet activism took place in 1998, when the Mexican rebel group EZLN used decentralized communications, such as cell phones, to network with developed world activists and help create the anti-globalization group Peoples Global Action (PGA) to protest the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva. The PGA continued to call for "global days of action" and rally support of other anti-globalization groups in this way.