· OzPoliCon 2008 ·
Australia's first politico bloggers and online activists conference, OzPoliCon will be held on October 18.
The purpose of the conference is to share information, experiences and knowledge about online activism, campaigning methods and techniques; which of course involves politics organised and unorganised. It is also an opportunity to discuss current trends in technology use and online issue-based and election campaigning, electronic civil disobedience and Australia's Internet and communications laws.
In the interests of environmental sustainability and because we're all connected, this conference will be streamed live in real time. So although the conference is being organised in Melbourne, you don't need to travel further than your own desk to take part.
What do you reckon? Leave a comment »
Monday July 7, 2008
Categories: Event
· Interview by Maxine of Web Directions ·
This week it's NAIDOC week, so Maxine of Web Directions interviewed me about ANTaR's online advocacy work. This interview is cross-posted on the Web Directions blog.
Did you start at ANTaR in your current role, or did you morph into it from a more traditional web role? I’m interested to know how much awareness there is in the non-profit sector of the potential in online campaigning, in going well beyond simply having a web site and maybe accepting donations online.
I started at ANTaR in my current role. ANTaR’s approach to the web is pretty unique for a nonprofit, in that the organisation employs a full-time staff member (me!) to manage online campaigns. Apart from the large activist organisations like Greenpeace, or those that focus specifically on web campaigns like GetUp!, online campaigners are pretty rare in Australia. It’s more common for somebody in a web manager or community campaigner role to do some online campaigning work as part of their role.
One of the primary roles of a campaigner, regardless of whether you campaign online or offline, is to raise awareness in the community about an issue. But awareness-raising isn’t enough: we also need to build relationships with people and encourage them to effect change where they can. Often this means we’re asking people to put pressure where it is needed (e.g. by getting in touch with their local MP) in order to get something to change for the better.
Generally, youth-run organisations, and those that focus on the environment and/or human rights seem to use the web more effectively for campaigning than other nonprofits. There are exceptions of course, such as Movember, and the Raise The Bar campaign in NSW.
My guess is that some organisations don’t use the web for campaigning because they don’t have much time or money, and so they put all their resources into providing core services in the organisation’s area of expertise. On the other hand, there are some organisations with plenty of resources, but conservative marketing policies mean that they hesitate to get involved in online campaigning because it might damage the organisation’s brand, or because they can’t see how they will get an adequate return on their investment. But as we all know, these problems aren’t unique to the non-profit sector :)
Which social networking platforms do you focus your energies on at ANTaR and how did you choose them?
Our main focus is on Facebook and MySpace at the moment, and we also use Flickr and YouTube a little. We use platforms that will enable us to reach a lot of people and build relationships with them. Tools have to be fairly mainstream among our target audience before we go there, so unfortunately Twitter hasn’t made it onto the list yet but we’re keeping a close eye on it :)
Last year I came up with a formula to help an organisation decide which online tools to use, based on how much time, money and knowledge is required. It’s meant to help an organisation decide whether the amount of effort they put into using a particular platform is worth the effect they’re likely to see, and the results are different for every organisation. You can see how it works in this blog post
How do you actually work these platforms?
In the early days, I was scanning blogs through Technorati to find people who were writing well-considered blog posts on MySpace about Indigenous issues, and then “friending” them. After a while, people started finding us because they were stumbling across our bulletin posts or comments on other friends’ pages, so we didn’t need to use Technorati any more to reach out to new people. Now my focus is on building relationships with our current friends. I find that if you have an ongoing friendship with people who are sympathetic to your cause, they are more likely to offer help than if you approach somebody from out of the blue. I put this theory to the test on MySpace a couple of months ago, and it worked because ANTaR won a MySpace Impact Award worth $10,000. We would not have won that award if our strategy had been different.
Facebook is completely different to MySpace. The ANTaR Facebook group is focussed on the Sea of Hands because I felt that people would be more likely to join a campaign than an organisation on Facebook. That group has grown partly by telling everyone I know about the group, and then those people forwarding it on to their friends. I also participate in discussions on related Facebook groups such as the Close the Gap campaign group (closing the life expectancy between Indigneous and non-Indigenous Australians), which leads some people to the Sea of Hands group too.
Check out ANTaR on MySpace and Facebook.
Any tips you’ve learned for working more efficiently and getting the best returns for time spent?
Yeah - don’t visit Facebook or MySpace more than twice a day!
What sort of returns can a non-profit expect to see from employing someone like you to engage with online communities in this way? Where can they expect to have successes? How long will it take?
This is still a reasonably new area, we’re working it out as we go along, same as everybody else. There’s a few of us who blog about online campaigning methods, return on investment, that kind of thing, so we share what we learn on our blogs and there’s a group of non-profit web people in Sydney and Melbourne (called Social Tech) that meets up once a month to chat about this kind of stuff.
I guess organisations can expect to have success if they are dedicated to building relationships with people. People are more likely to give your organisation favours, to get more involved, to donate, to want to find out more if they have a good relationship with somebody in the organisation. Relationship building takes a long time, and it doesn’t always translate into measurable returns, but it really is absolutely necessary, otherwise your efforts to get people involved are pretty random.
How long does it take? It’s a long-term thing! You should only campaign online because you’re passionate about an issue and enjoy talking to people about it … generally, most people have a pretty good bullshit meter so you have to be sincere. You also have to be patient … bringing about social change can and does take years, so don’t expect to see big results within the first six months (or maybe even the first six years)!
In your experience, what type of non-profit will a foray into online campaigning work best for?
Any non-profit that needs public support for an issue should consider campaigning online. It works best for campaigns that have a clear message, know where their target demographic is hanging out online, and has the resources not only to do the online work, but follow up with supporters that want to get more involved.
How can you evaluate the success of a project and when should you start doing it?
One of the most common ways of evaluating a campaign is counting the number of people who have taken action. This is a pretty good indication of whether (a) the public is interested in an issue and (b) enough pressure is being applied in the right places (i.e. on the person or group that has the power to change things).
Another way we can evaluate a campaign is to see what effect we’ve had in changing government policy. A good example of this is the Close The Gap campaign - made up of a coalition of organisations including ANTaR - which resulted in positive changes to government policy. There were several elements that made up this campaign, the primary public action was for people to sign a Close The Gap pledge on some of the coalition partners’ websites including ANTaR, Oxfam, GetUp and HREOC. ANTaR also asked supporters to email personalised letters to their state and federal politicians (through our online Sea of Hands) and we have had informal feedback from MPs and their staff that these emails contributed to the successful outcome of the campaign. If politicians feel they have the support of the community, they will take action.
We also monitor our website analytics pretty closely, looking for trends and working out why particular campaigns, media releases or search terms are more popular than others.
However there are some things that are very difficult to measure. If a person changes their attitude towards Indigenous Australians, how does ANTaR find out? And how do we know that it’s as a direct result of something that we have told them online, or as a result of something else?
We recently ran a campaign “Racism Makes Me Sick”, which focussed on the effects of racism on the health of Indigenous Australians. When the life expectancy for Indigenous Australians improves (currently an Indigenous Australian will live for 17 years less than a non-Indigenous Australian), then we’ll know that our work has been a success. In fact, when there is a fair representation of Indigenous Australians in parliament, and when 5% of attendees at Web Directions are Indigenous Australians, then we’ll know that our work has been a success.
What do you reckon? Leave a comment »
Monday July 7, 2008
Categories: General
· Carnival of nonprofit consultants, 6 July 08 ·
Solidariti is hosting the carnival of nonprofit consultants this week. We didn't have many entries this week due to Independence Day in the US, but here's two really interesting submissions that both feature mobile communications for non-profits:
- The Government’s A-Twitter: Comprehensive List of Government Twitter Feeds on Alexandra Rampy's Social Butterfly blog
- Cell Phone Fundraising in Action on Paul Jones's Cause-Related Marketing blog
What do you reckon? Leave a comment »
Sunday July 6, 2008
Categories: Nonprofit-Carnival
· The road to e-democracy (and other tales) ·
In April, The Economist published a special report, The Electronic Bureaucrat.
The report is mostly about providing government services online (yikes, what a scary project that would be) but there were a few things I took from it that were relevant to online democracy and online activism.
On the government and public service's adoption of technology:
"The benefits will be biggest in countries where officials and politicians are open to pressure and where the citizens are public-spirited to start with. E-government is no magic bullet, but it gives citizens and lobby groups more power to scrutinise government and highlight waste and dishonesty."
On providing e-government to communities that do not have access to the internet:
The hardest question for government is how to deal with the part of the population that will not or cannot go online. Glyn Evans, who runs the e-government effort in Britain's second-biggest city, Birmingham, says he has to deal with a portion of households that are "transient and chaotic", whereas central government in Whitehall imagines a world of "middle-class nuclear families" who move as a single unit. One possible solution would be to give up on this section of the population. If e-government enables the most articulate and productive members of society to save time and money and enjoy better public services, that may be worth having. It may even free officials' energies to take more trouble over the rest. Many governments have adopted that approach by default, although few would admit it.
A second possibility is to try harder to harness technology. Even the poorest of the poor may be able to use a smart card or a mobile phone, giving them a louder voice and a fairer deal. Some time this year the world will pass the point where more than half its population will have a mobile phone. Although mobiles are used mainly as phones and for text messages between customers, they are also powerful computers, offering the previously dispossessed a way into business and finance—and into interacting with public services. M-government (the latest buzzword, now that e-government has lost some of its lustre) allows citizens and the state to deal with each other through pared-down web pages, barcodes sent as pictures and simple text messages.
In some countries digital television offers another way of reaching the computer have-nots. So far, digital-television applications have involved things like voting in game shows or calling up information about a programme. But in principle there is no reason why the same mechanism could not be used by citizens to interact with their governments.
On online consultation with the public:
As you might expect, the place that makes the most advanced use of technology in promoting public participation is America, where officials now invite online comments from outsiders when they draw up legislation on subjects like environmental protection. A Department of Agriculture draft on organic-food standards, for example, prompted more than 250,000 comments. Yet the expertise mostly comes from a narrow range of specialists.
According to Cary Coglianese, an American e-government expert, imagining that online consultation will breathe new life into democracy "is a bit like imagining that giving automobile owners the ability to download technical manuals and order car parts online would turn a great number of them into do-it-yourself mechanics". Greater involvement by experts may make for more sensible rules, but it will not turn the system of public administration on its head.
The final paragraph is a hard point for me to take on board, because I believe that online consultation between government and citizens will help rather than hinder this country. Don't show those figures (250,000 comments) to the politicians or they will freak out as they build a mental picture of their workload skyrocketing (or, rather, the workload of their aides and government departments). Perhaps I'm being naive here, but considering the level of citizen participation in the parliamentary process today (i.e. very low), surely a large and diverse pool of opinions can only be an improvement for democracy in this country?
Hat tip: eGov AU
What do you reckon? Leave a comment »
Friday June 27, 2008
Categories: Technology
· Weekly activist inspiration ·
- OpenAustralia - access Hansard easily, and keep track of what your federal pollie is up to in parliament via email.
- Integrating Social Media into a Web Content Strategy - Digital Web Magazine - "The primary goal of using social media has to be communication, not technology and not viral marketing." Sounds perfect for campaigning, then ;)
What do you reckon? Leave a comment »
Friday June 27, 2008
Categories: Weekly-activist-links
· Are you a democratic revolutionary? ·
This week, the Personal Democracy Forum (PdF) was held in the US. There is plenty of news online about what was discussed so I'm not going to cover old ground ... except to point this out: An Open Letter to PdF Participants by Matt Leighninger, on techPresident. I'm just publishing what I think are the most salient points (apologies Matt):
...local officials and other kinds of leaders (including online organizers and activists) are attempting many different civic experiments ... to help their communities function more democratically and more effectively.
The best examples of these efforts employ four successful principles:
- They recruit people by reaching out through the various groups and organizations to which they belong, in order to assemble a large and diverse "critical mass" of citizens.
- They involve those citizens in a combination of small- and large-group discussions: structured, facilitated small groups (either online or face-to-face or both) for informed, deliberative dialogue; and large forums for amplifying shared conclusions and moving from talk to action.
- They give the people who participate the opportunity to compare values and experiences, and to consider a range of views and policy options.
- They effect change in a number of ways: by applying citizen input to policy and planning decisions; by encouraging change within organizations and institutions; by creating teams to work on particular action ideas; by inspiring and connecting individual volunteers; or all of the above.
...simply making more information available online, and providing more arenas for people to comment on it, is unlikely to produce changes ...
Online commentators could simply become another chattering class, another set of voices trying to pressure public officials and dig out damning details. Without attending to the other elements of successful democratic governance – recruitment, deliberation, facilitation, action planning, etc. – the democratic impact of the new technology may be positive but limited.
Making politics more "open" is a terrific priority – but if that’s all you do, then you’ll just be making a space for yourselves at the political table and not welcoming in the people with less time, less education, less confidence, less faith in government and community, and/or a lower level of technological skills.
Your response to this may be: "So what! We’re opening things up – if people don’t care enough to participate, we’ll govern without them!" If so, it would be helpful to say this now; it would clarify that online commentators and activists constitute a powerful new interest group in politics.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think that’s what you want. The alternative – clarifying the role you want to play as democratic revolutionaries – will require more attention to what is happening on the ground in local politics, not just what is happening in the ether of the presidential campaign.
I've heard a lot of winging about politicians not engaging the public online. I even do it myself occasionally. But recently I've realised that we practitioners need to take a leadership role and get politicians thinking about how they might engage the public in the way that suits all: politicians and their staffers, government departments and citizens. Otherwise it may be a very long time until we see a participatory democracy in this country. So ... are you going to be a democratic revolutionary and join me on this journey?
What do you reckon? Leave a comment »
Thursday June 26, 2008
Categories: Campaigning Leadership
· Politics and Technology forum ·
Today I attended a forum in Canberra, “Politics and Technology”. It was the most inspiring event I have been to this year on the topic of politics and online engagement because we were able to hear so many different points of view in one morning on this important topic.
The keynote speaker was Matt Bai, author and writer for the NY Times. Matt provided a US viewpoint with interesting facts. Did you know the primary demographic for MoveOn is middle-aged (I wonder if it’s the same for GetUp)? Did you know DailyKos has more readers than most US newspapers (I wonder if Crikey will become this popular)? Did you know more people watch YouTube political ads than official broadcasts (I wonder if we will see an Obama Girl in Aus)?
The keynote was followed by two panels; the first panel discussed blogging, social networks, political movements and the media, although the debate really centered around blogging and the media. Some interesting comments from this session came from Prof Peter Black from QUT who summed up what he sees as the four key players in the online politics discussion. My summary:
Bloggers – healthy but small in number, diverse, less partisan than US, focused on policy rather than machinery, struggling to gain mainstream respect from politicians or media because don’t report “breaking news” … focus on commentary.
Politicians – ignorant of new technology, aren’t keen to engage in new technology, ceased to use Facebook once election was over, lots of potential for participatory democracy.
Media – keen to jump on bandwagon, but don’t respect independent bloggers.
Public – apathetic, unengaged generally with politics. This might be changing … we hadn’t seen political alignment in Australia for a long time until the Kevin Rudd stickers on Facebook profiles.
The second panel discussed IT and the future of political campaigning. This session was awesome. While partisan discussion got in the way of the debate about politics and technology somewhat, it was a fantastic opportunity to hear from politicians about how and why they are (or aren’t) engaging constituents online.
We heard from Andrew Bartlett, Kate Lundy and Joe Hockey. Kate and Joe both made it quite clear that politicians are very busy. I have heard from other sources that ALL parliamentary staff work very long hours, and particularly the spokespeople, who are expected to take media calls at all hours of the day and night in addition to their other duties. How do they find time among the phone calls, letters, emails, public meetings and policy work to participate in online conversations? Particularly given that politicians are expected to talk to *all* their constituents, yet not all constituents have access to the internet (and many of those that do have the internet do not participate in politics online). It’s not that I’m excusing politicians for not participating online, I think that as bloggers we have to try to understand *why* they’re not participating so we can find ways to get everybody talking together.
Joe Hockey said the big challenge for politicians is that participating online appears “hugely time-intensive for the reach that you get”. Of course we bloggers would argue that there is a greater possibility to engage with *more* people online. If politicians were to do this, it would be a win-win situation: the public would feel satisfied that their ideas and concerns were being listened to, and the politicians would (hopefully) be confident that they are getting opinions from a cross-section of society.
As Matt Bai said, people will increasingly “expect to be heard and expect to get answers”. He’s right of course … I really think politicians need to move now to engage people online, otherwise they risk being seen as unwilling to listen and irrelevant.
Matt finished his keynote by saying that when leaders lead, the internet will become the central point to organise from. I like this statement, but possibly because it’s something that I want to hear rather than something that’s accurate.
Kudos to Microsoft for holding the event, for making it free so more people could attend, and for presenting it without a big promo. I’m genuinely impressed … more please :)
What do you reckon? Leave a comment »
Wednesday June 25, 2008
Categories: Event Technology
· 22% would not be as involved if it weren't for the internet ·
The Pew Internet & American Life Project has released a new report, The internet and the 2008 election.
The report "documents the rise of political videos, social networking activity related to politics, the growth of online campaign donations, and the general views of internet users about the impact of the internet on politics."
The research found that 22% of Americans would not be as involved with the current campaign if it weren't for the internet.
The chart below, taken from the report, is a nice follow-on from my previous post about "supporters":
In the report, there is a further chart accompanying the one above which averages these statistics out across all age groups. 22% of people said they had "Gotten any campaign or candidate information" from the internet, yet only 10% said they "Signed up as a friend of any candidates".
Even fewer supporters are taking what would be seen as more dedicated actions, as you can see from the chart below:
This demonstrates the importance of online campaigns providing a variety of ways that people can get involved online, from finding out more to doing something active.
What do you reckon? Leave a comment »
Sunday June 22, 2008
Categories: Campaigning
· how to win campaigns ·
Photo: Cover of "how to win campaigns".
Although I've occasionally dipped into the book How to win campaigns: 100 steps to success (by Chris Rose), I'd not read the book cover-to-cover. Until now.
This is an excellent resource for all campaigners. Here's a taster of some of the many gems I took from it:
- Campaigning is the art of the impossible.
- Effective campaign planners ... spend much more time thinking through the dynamics - the buck-passing and interests at play.
- Ask who's responsible for not implementing the solution, rather than just who's responsible for causing the problem. Whether it's through suppressing a solution or denying a problem, any party with the power to solve this is the problem-holder or problem-owner.
- ... you cannot campaign 'on an issue' or 'about an issue', only to change the issue.
- Don't assume we need to change minds.
There's also an excellent section on understanding support. The example given is Greenpeace UK: 0.5% joined Greenpeace, 5% said they would take action in a campaign, 30% said they took personal action in their [daily] lives, but 60% said they supported Greenpeace's aims and objectives. There's a lesson there for all of us ... how do we engage those that "support" us but don't join or donate or take action?
There's also a brief section on new media. The book was published in 2005 ... I suspect that if the author published this book today this section would be much larger.
Go get this book. I promise you will underline text and fold corners all the way through.
What do you reckon? Leave a comment »
Friday June 20, 2008
Categories: Book-Review Campaigning
· Weekly activist inspiration ·
- Online Politics 101 - e.politics - Colin Delany has released an updated version of his useful booklet
- Responsible shopper - Co-op America - Find out how ethical your favourite brands are, including Google
- Lords of the blog - an "experimental project to encourage direct dialogue between web users across the world and members of the House of Lords [in the UK]". Wow, imagine if our Senate did the same :)
- Winning Young Voters: new media tactics (PDF) - Rock The Vote - "New Media Tactics, the second in Rock the Vote's series of “Winning Young Voters” handbooks, shows you the basics of how to use new media – email, the Internet, social networks, and mobile phones – to register young voters and get them to the polls."
- Using Sprout to get your nonprofit's message out - NTEN - offers ideas to non-profits on using widgets (see presentation below)
What do you reckon? Leave a comment »
Friday June 20, 2008
Categories: Weekly-activist-links