· 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
· 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
· Gen Y: raising social awareness through Facebook ·
There's an interesting article on ReadWriteWeb about Generation Y. It mentions that this group is using the internet to do many things, of which one is raising social awareness.
In 2006, the top 10 advocacy groups on Facebook were:
- Reduce the Drinking Age to 18! - 111,275
- Legalize Same-Sex Marriage - 80,458
- Americans for Alternative Energy - 69,465
- Support a Woman's Right to Choose - 66,806
- Support Stem Cell Research - 55,219
- Abolish Abstinence Only Sex Education - 54,712
- Government + Religion = Disaster - 47,949
- AIDS / HIV research - 24,789
- Equal Rights for Gays - 24,013
- Pro-Life - 22,409
The article claims that "Gen Y is taking technology and advocacy to another level." I'm not so sure about this ... online advocacy is only really effective when combined with offline advocacy. But yes, online advocacy is a good start. Also, don't be fooled into thinking that it's just the Gen Y's who are using technology for advocacy, the Gen X's and Baby Boomers are having a good go of it, too :)
What do you reckon? Leave a comment »
Monday June 9, 2008
Categories: Campaigning
· Free online event - Online Activism: Social Media Tools for Social Change ·
Today (Canadian time, so probably Thursday Australian time) TechSoup is running a free day-long online forum on online activism. See TechSoup's website for details.
What do you reckon? Leave a comment »
Wednesday May 14, 2008
Categories: Campaigning
· racism makes me sick - quiz ·
Today ANTaR launched the racism makes me sick campaign.
There were two technically tricky bits for the campaign. First, we wanted a pledge that people could fill in to make a personal commitment to eradicating racism. I outsourced this to Hugeobject who have been campaign partners with ANTaR in the past. The pledge looks great and even comes with a graphic designed by Joni (a hand - to go with our Sea of Hands branding) that will fill up as we get more people to sign the pledge.
The other tricky thing we decided to do was to make an interactive quiz that would encourage people to challenge their own assumptions about Indigenous people. Part of our work is public education so this was to be an important part of the campaign. I wanted to make the quiz a widget so that people could add it onto their own websites if they wanted to promote it for us. As I was already familiar with Widgetbox, and I knew that Widgetbox supports Flash apps, I decided to make the quiz in Flash.
I was surprised to find a Flash quiz template on the Adobe website, that also comes with a tutorial, so really it couldn't have been easier to build the quiz. It took me about three days to create it, including the images (I'm not a Flash pro, but I haven't had *much* experience, so complete beginners may need longer). That doesn't include the storyboarding, which probably took another day once I discussed it with my team and we got the text just right.
The final step was to add the quiz to Widgetbox. Once the quiz was set up in Widgetbox, I made it into a Facebook application using Widgetbox's plugin. Widgetbox takes you through (most of) the steps to set up a Facebook app so it doesn't take long. Setting up the widget probably took a couple of hours at most.
What do you reckon? Leave a comment »
Monday April 21, 2008
Categories: Campaigning Technology
· Who keeps supporter details in a campaign coalition ?? ·
Many of us have worked as part of a coalition in our campaigning activities, right? I think coalitions are great and can be very powerful when all of the members are willing to listen to each other and project a cohesive message to the public.
So, when supporters sign up to a campaign that is being managed by a coalition, who is responsible for the privacy of those supporters' details ... and which campaign partners can use the contact details to promote different campaigns in the future?
The answer seems to be "it depends". If it is clear to the supporter that they are signing up to receive information from both "X organisation" and "Y organisation" (or better still - given a choice as to whether they want to receive information from none, both or one of them), then it seems organisations are able to share supporters' details. Or at least that's what it seems. I am not a lawyer, so don't take my word for it.
Anyway, is seems wise to work out which organisation/s bear the responsibility of keeping supporters' details private, and which organisation/s are legally allowed to use the supporters' details for future campaigns *before* the campaign is launched. In particular, smaller campaign partners need to be aware of this, as they are often the organisations that don't have the resources or infrastructure to collect supporters' details online, and so they are often dependant on better-resourced counterparts to provide infrastructure for them.
Somebody (Kathleen via Gary?) bought this interesting interview from The ABC's The Law Report to my attention. The focus of this case study is on the joint campaign that Reproductive Choice Australia (RCA) and GetUp ran on the abortion drug RU486. In short, RCA found themselves unable to get supporters' details that were collected on the GetUp website during the campaign. Read the transcript with Dr Leslie Cunnold, President Reproductive Choice Australia; Brett Solomon, Executive Director, GetUp; and Professor Graham Greenleaf, Co-Director Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre, UNSW.
What do you reckon? Leave a comment »
Friday April 4, 2008
Categories: Campaigning
· set Magenta free ·
I couldn't resist reposting this story from Mashable! - The campaign to set Magenta free ...
If you, like me, are an avid reader of Engadget Mobile, you may have noticed that T-Mobile had sent them a nasty notice demanding that they stop using the color magenta in the part of their logo. Because, you know, magenta is taken, and you can’t use it unless your company’s name starts with T.
What boggles me here is this: how, exactly, did the T’s lawyers and PR folks think Engadget will react? Humbly remove all traces of magenta from their site, issuing a big ole apology? If they did, they were wrong. See exhibit A: old logo vs. the new logo of Engadget Mobile:
On top of that, Engadget Mobile changed their entire background to magenta, but more importantly, they managed to start a fire. Now, other blogs are joining the campaign to set magenta free, and T-Mobile now has a nice little PR disaster on their hands ...
What do you reckon? Leave a comment »
Friday April 4, 2008
Categories: Campaigning
· Uncensor (by Amnesty Australia) ·
This one's so good I can't not blog about it. Amnesty Australia launched Uncensor today - "a place where you can take action against Chinese Internet Censorship...".
Where do I start? Will you allow me to get away with a bunch of bullet points?
- One of the bloggers is Antony Loewenstein. I read his personal blog. He rocks. Great choice, guys.
- The site looks fab. Not too much of that nasty yellow that Amnesty International uses.
- Totally *love* the search for freedom. By doing a Search you can send an anti-censorship message to search engine companies in China and experience internet censorship for yourself.
- Nu Wa, my new best friend on Facebook (and campaign mascot).
- But what's with the .com.au domain?
There's real information on this site too, it's not just all gimmicks. The "Who is affected by internet censorship?" (in China) section is pretty scary: "Internet censorship affects everyone. Environmental activists, HIV lobbyists, human rights supporters, bloggers with opinions." Errr ... that would be me then. And you too.
What do you reckon? Leave a comment »
Wednesday April 2, 2008
Categories: Campaigning
· the cute cat theory of digital activism ·
Notes from Ethan Zuckerman's speech at the ETech conference have been reposted on WorldChanging.
Ethan has made an observation about web 2.0 tools, that:
If there's no porn, the tool doesn't work.
If there are no activists, it doesn't work well.
He goes into fascinating details about how read/write applications have been used by activists around the world. I don't want to spoil it for you, so go read his article, alright!
If there’s a single message to the talk, it is that activists are going to use your tools if your tools are any good - watch them, pay attention to them, protect them and learn from them. They’ll make tour tools better, and they’re one of the reasons to make social software in the first place.
Hat tip: Glenn Todd.
What do you reckon? Leave a comment »
Tuesday March 25, 2008
Categories: Campaigning