Online Actions and Social Change Principles

Social Change and Social Media

Community Organizing Online

facilitated by Ivan Boothe

What are some principles we can determine from successful social change campaigns using social media?

Campaigns that bridge existing divides
Should allow discussion
Should not inhibit discussion
- (i.e. how much nuance is lost in online discussion)
Create safe spaces
Role of memes online
- how small idea snippets can spread very fast to huge number of ideas
- brevity makes them both powerful and trivial
Power of story-telling
Narrative shaping
Listen to what people are talking about
Timing: connected to external event / advocacy hook
Small initial ask, measured frequency
Feedback, transparency about action's progress
Amplifying people's own stories rather than trying to speak for them
Not everyone is online
Media kits: offline actions and materials distributed online
Go where the people are
One campaign, not divided between online and offline
Connected to specific, clear action and clear impact
Theory of change
Tap into existing online and offline networks
Faster organizational response to conditions
Strong emotion: humor / outrage

Unplanned aspects can make things spread faster
- i.e. opponent reaction can make things spread
- See "Streisand Effect"
- Making repression / reaction visible

Online organizing forces reevaluation of "what is a win?"
- small successes amplify aspects of campaign

Ladder of Engagement
- ask people to do small tasks, and then increasingly greater asks and engagement
- clicktivism can be gateway to broader actions

Upwell.us has interesting analysis of the life-cycle of an online campaign
- offers issue space analysis for other orgs

Having institutional infrastructure in place can help when unexpected event catalyzes online campaign
- Orgs can use their position to amplify them online
- Orgs don't have to wait, orgs can find events to amplify

Theory of power
- Conventional idea: power is at the top of the pyramid and to depose it, you must do so at the top
- vs community organizing: power is at the bottom and can topple top though action

Critique: Image of delivery of box of printed Facebook thumbs with "Likes" in Philippines

San Francisco eviction defense
- very moving story from individual, broadcast widely
- distilled simmering anger at growing gentrification

Creating a safe space can become insular.
- Discussion of messaging disconnected from their target audiences
- For marginalized communities, social media provide opportunity to reach broader audiences

Rainforest Action Network had been working on palm oil for a long time
- When Girl Scouts connected rainforest destruction to cookie ingredients issue blew up big

Twitter stories from advocate about how US work on trafficking is having consequences on treatment of sex workers
- results in journalists contacting advocate