Strategy dreams

A very useful on-point conversation: asking the vaulable question about twitter and social change.

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 10:00:15 +1000

January #4Change Chat Topic: Campaigning

The January #4Change Twitter Chat will focus on the use of Twitter and other social media tools in campaigning.

About the Topic

Campaigning can mean many different things and we want to keep the definition of the topic fairly open for this chat, in order to keep insights, resources and conversation in the Q/A format as open to valuable input as possible. Here are some ways that campaigning can be framed for the purpose of this chat:

moving canvassing door to door to online networks
political action
local community building
tying communications, partners, and actions together via social media
social change projects or programs locally or globally

The way we examine the use of social media in campaigning can be further framed in some of these ways:

change campaigns (internal vs external), also organization type variations
social media change campaigns (specific nuances)
change campaigns vs political campaigns (similarities vs differences)
educational campaigns (organizational / institutional / internet) riffing off of last month’s topic
building campaign coalitions & recruiting campaign champions

How to Participate

Share your ideas now:

You can share your ideas about the topic as well as any resources, case studies, examples, research etc. by leaving a comment on this blog post. Or, you can tag your resources or posts using Delicious with the tag “4change” and we’ll pick it up for you.

Join the Twitter chat:

If you want to contribute to the conversation, you’ll need to have a twitter account (it’s free).
To follow the conversation (whether you are planning to contribute or not), use http://search.twitter.com or another application to search on Twitter for #4Change
Jump in to the conversation by adding #4Change to your Twitter message
Feeling brave? Check out TweetChat – it’s a great application that integrates with your Twitter account and makes chats more fun! You can turn it off after the chat.

Rules for #4Change Chat

#4Change will be structured around a series of questions which all participants can respond to. Send your questions to @memeshift to have them considered.
Introduce yourself in 1 tweet at the start or when you join.
Stay on topic!
Be cool.

Details

Date: January, 14th 2010
When: 2 – 4 pm US Pacific Time, 5 – 7 pm US Eastern Time, 10pm – 12am London, UK (Late!)
Where: Twitter (search for #4Change)
Topic: Campaigning: How is social/new media affecting the the way we build and conduct campaigns? and more!

We’ll update this post with specific questions to be asked during the chat and will capture resources and conversations from the chat, too. Send us your ideas!

Published on January 3, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

Maldives ministers prepare for underwater cabinet...

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:35:36 +1000

Maldives ministers prepare for underwater cabinet meeting

‘President hopes stunt will draw attention to climate change’

- At first it struck me as odd that a country going underwater needed a stunt to draw attention. But then it got me to thinking..

This is obviously some very creative diplomacy and a good example for other low lying states. Not just because the message is clear, embodied in the image and as a result the issue is covered internationally. More than that, its a brilliant use of public-fueled soft power.

When traditional avenues (the UN, G20 etc) fail to deliver most countries just keep on keeping on. But not this time and not the Maldives.

Although this is just a stunt, perhaps it spells the beginning of more countries adopting a broader range of modern (and classic) advocacy tools. It’s not just causes and brands that can build movements behind their causes - countries can do it too.

We know this already i.e. socialism vs capitalism, but as with everything - the internet is lowering the barrier to entry. Countries like the Maldives could really benefit from building constituencies beyond their borders. Stunts will help, but larger scale campaigns and a personal social media presence from a country would set their cause on fire (at least for the first few..).

If you can convince a country to do it let me know, i’d love to help!

Check out the article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/07/maldives-underwater-cabinet-meetin

Canberra politics every morning

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:44:37 +1000

Canberra politics every morning

I’m way too cynical for this. Plus i dont really like...

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:34:00 +1000

I’m way too cynical for this. Plus i dont really like music (GASP!).

Facebook trumps email campaigning?

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 20:24:00 +1000

Me: “Yeah i think the next big question is going to be about how we can harvest emails from Facebook communities’”

Friend: “But do you even need to? Why not just use Facebook to communicate with your supporters. I pay more attention to my Facebook messages than email.”

Facebook has 300 million members globally, nearly 7 million in Australia - and - get this, over 51% of those check it daily and spend and average of 21 minutes on the site.

It is the stickiest site on the internet. It’s where Australians are spending most of their time on the net and yet online campaigners are still in an email collecting frenzy. Facebook campaign attempts have been pithy at best - except by a few corporates.

The usual reprieve is that users don’t value their Facebook messages as much as they do email. But then again, now days an organisation is VERY lucky if 20% of their database even open their emails. I wonder what the Facebook stats would be… especially given most people will get it twice: once in their email inbox and another time through Facebook mail.

The other great (and obvious) benefits of Facebook are that users can take action without ever leaving the system, all their friends will also find out and you can advertise to people based on everything they do on Facebook - (namely their interests, groups they are in, age and location) which can guarantee you a lead community if you have an inkling of knowledge about your audience.

And how about acquiring that priority relationship? It can be challenging at best to acquire a large email list, but to get the rights to email a Facebook’er and have your comments turn up in their feed they just need to ‘fan’ you.

But what about the people, who is even on Facebook? Isn’t it mostly young people?

Well yeah somewhat - but not really. In Australia there are 6.9 million users with a slight skew to females across all ages. Breaking it down with ages:

13-19: 1.4 million

20-29: 2.6 million

30-39: 1.5 million

40-49: 770 000

50-59: 430 000

60-64: 100 000

Rumor (and basic logic) has it that the fastest growing ages are 30 and above, but there are already enough people in all age ranges to comprise major campaigns (even middle age women who make up most of online NGO donor bases).

Seems to me that Facebook is where it’s at and we all need to catch up…. (Ok, i am way over selling this - all i’m saying is that i’m going to spend more time thinking about ways to campaign within Facebook and i hope you will too.)

HAARM.org - by SEIU

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 18:58:22 +1000

HAARM.org - by SEIU:

I accidentally (in retrospect) told an Australian Unionist that the SEIU would run a series of great online campaigns. I was wrong again.

monkeytypist:

The SEIU have set up a parody anti-Health care reform site. I see what they’re trying to do here, but geez.

Star Wars - The Environmentalists Version

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 18:37:03 +1000

Star Wars - The Environmentalists Version:

Biting and hilarious commentary on the methods of environmentalists.

The substance is more of a tactics analysis and stick poking of infighthing than enlightening commentary. Still, the production is great and ultimately it warns that steps in the campaign should not become your end goal.

"If you don’t change course, you’ll end up where you’re heading."

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:13:41 +1000

““If you don’t change course, you’ll end up where you’re heading.””

Social Movement Educator’s Workshop

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:53:26 +1000

Sydney, Friday 6th to Sunday 8th November, 2009

The role of education and facilitation in building and supporting movements is vital… but opportunities for us to develop and extend these skills can be rare. Join us for three solid days to:
* Reflect on our experiences and challenges as educators and facilitators
* Extend and develop our facilitation skills and strengthen our confidence to deal with challenging situations
* Understand and apply principles of popular and experiential education and learning
* Develop a ‘toolbox’ of education and facilitation techniques
* Build capacity to support activists, organisations, communities and movements to make change happen.

A significant component of the workshop will be practice facilitation. Come prepared to show your stuff, share tools, and stretch! Together we’ll create a supportive space for experimentation and growth, with considered critical feedback from peers.

This workshops will benefit people engaged in education and facilitation with a community and social change perspective: such as union educators, community organisers, non-violence practitioners, peer educators, and grassroots activists.

The Change Agency is a not-for-profit collective of activist educators. We’ve run hundreds of workshops for thousands of people engaged in action for social and environmental justice. Through the Social Movement Ed2 we aim to build and strengthen a community of activist educators throughout Australia and the Pacific. The workshop facilitators are James Whelan, Holly Hammond and Sam La Rocca. The registration fee is $250 - $600. ‘Pay the rent’ registration is available free to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants.

For full details, flier and registration form, check out > http://www.thechangeagency.org/02_cal/details.asp?ID=197

~ courteousy of James Whelan (www.thechangeagency.org) ~

Facebook is slimming down..

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 09:55:00 +1000

Facebook is slimming down..:

Apparently, well so say the advertising team at Facebook Australia - Facebook lite has been developed for countries with poor bandwidth. It will ‘give facebook where there otherwise would be no facebook’.

I was of the assumption that it was a further push to compete with the ultra-lite twitter. Meh.

"…if you like importing oil from Saudi Arabia, you’re going to love importing solar panels from..."

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 09:55:20 +1000

““…if you like importing oil from Saudi Arabia, you’re going to love importing solar panels from China.””

- Thomas Friedman on American skeptics and the energy independence movement.

Something we need to be mindful of, well - American climate activists in particular.

The Guardian: Pared-down UN summit will force heads of rich states to listen to those of third world in hope of kickstarting radical action

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 09:10:55 +1000

The Guardian: Pared-down UN summit will force heads of rich states to listen to those of third world in hope of kickstarting radical action:

I agree this is good planning and it’s nice to see that the UN has thought critically about how to run the event, but this article is overblown.

The Guardian: Airlines vow to halve carbon emissions by 2050

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 08:44:37 +1000

The Guardian: Airlines vow to halve carbon emissions by 2050 :

‘Exclusive: Industry will offer cut at climate change summit to avoid tougher action’ (psssst: they are afraid of taxes emerging from Copenhagen)

The most beautiful poem…. Shadia Wood described it...

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 17:56:18 +1000

The most beautiful poem…. Shadia Wood described it better:

“What else is there to say to this, other than I feel completely inspired and full when I listen to this. I want to embody this very poem because this poem embodies so much of how I feel and what I believe in. I hope you enjoy it. I hope it rejuvinates your day, or night, or week, or year. I hope you find hope in it.”

Decent task management via Gmail?

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 17:31:00 +1000

Decent task management via Gmail? :

Not really. But it’s a good integration attempt by ‘remember the milk’. If i was looking for task management software this would push me over the edge.

Unfortunately i already purchased (GASP!) ‘Things’, which i love.

"Rat Bites Baby" - a lesson in framing

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 08:34:00 +1000

Imagine this headline in the metro section of a major urban daily:

Headline 1. “Rat bites baby”
The story is set in a housing project in the black inner-city community of a large city. It involves a single mother who left her baby in the crib while she went down to the corner to cash her welfare check. The door was left open so her neighbors could hear. While she was gone, the baby was bitten repeatedly by rats. A neighbor responded to the cries of the infant and brought the child to the Central Hospital where he was treated and released in his mother’s custody.

How is this story being framed? Who are the bad guys?

•    Bad guys: Not the city. Not the owner of the project. It is the mother who left her baby alone to go and cash her welfare check. The bad guys are all welfare recipients and unwed mothers – especially people of color.

•    Good guys: upstanding citizens who work or get off welfare, as well as politicians who advocate for welfare reform.

•    Images: the images that communicate this frame are the photos of people hanging around the local check cashing business, abandoned children playing in the project and politicians calling for welfare reform.

Headline 2. “Rat bites infant: Landlord, tenants dispute blame”
Suddenly, the frame has changed considerably. Now it is a 60 minutes-style story: the slumlord hounded by cameras in his wealthy neighborhood, his jacket over his head, surrounded by lawyers, jumping into his Mercedes and driving away. This version of the story includes information about other tenants who claim that their repeated requests for rodent extermination had been ignored by the landlord. An image that communicates the frame is one of angry and concerned residents of the project coming together to protest. Though the landlord tries to blame the tenants of improperly disposing of their garbage, the frame has been expanded. The facts will now be selected and ordered differently, guided by a different set of values and responsibilities. Still something is missing. Consider this:

Headline 3. “Rat bites rising in city’s ‘Zone of Death’”
The frame has changed again. Now City Hall is implicated: Elected officials, urban policy, economic empowerment zones and affordable housing become part of the story. The whole inner-city context is under fire. According to this version of the story, the woman’s baby is only the latest victim of a ‘rat epidemic’ plaguing inner city neighborhoods in the ‘Zone of Death.’ The good guys and bad guys have changed places. The mother, criticized in the first “rat bites baby” story has now become a spokesperson for families victimized in the urban “Zone of Death.” She becomes the emblem of the story. The frame of the story – its focus, boundaries & underlying values—has changed. Meanwhile, the story has moved from page 5C to page 1A of the local paper and is the lead TV story.

The importance of framing

This is what you must do for your news: you can set the frame. You can create the messages, the images and the significance of the story in a way that puts you on the offense. You can shape public opinion by strategically framing the story and communicating messages: this is the most empowering thing you can communicate with the media.

With strong messages, we can:
•    Change the terms of debate
•    Change public opinion
•    Change perspectives, views, beliefs

This example taken from the SPIN Project’s “SPIN Works: A Media Guidebook for Communicating Values and Shaping Opinion,” pages 22-23, by Robert Bray (2000).

On happiness and beauty

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 16:59:47 +1000

(…a response to a post on the need to make a better world)

I’m not sure beauty can ever be found outside of ourselves. Whether we are conscious of it or not we govern, through our interpretation, how beautiful the world is. How beautiful our thoughts are is precisely how beautiful the world appears. Which means that to live in a blissful world we need to master inner bliss.

Of course we could remake the world to suit one persons tastes - but that would not please everyone and nor would it deliver reliable happiness to that person - unless it could be sustained inevitably.

For global happiness there can be only one path, summed up as ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’.

It looks like the climate spoof of our beloved Qantas ad is here...

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 15:14:00 +1000

It looks like the climate spoof of our beloved Qantas ad is here to stay, at least for now - despite fears it would be taken down after its showing on ninemsn.

Perhaps the Qantas PR crew are yet to monitor social media (or online traditional media) - as unlikely as that sounds

"The message, so firmly, is – don’t give up. Don’t hang with the cynics, the angry-hearted, the..."

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 12:31:00 +1000

“The message, so firmly, is – don’t give up. Don’t hang with the cynics, the angry-hearted, the whiners, the blamers, the negative minded. Hang with those who believe in love, hope, and beauty – and then work with them to make this a reality. This is our planet. This is our time. This is our call to action.”

- Guy Dauncey

"It’s not too late at all. You just don’t yet know what you are capable of."

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 12:12:00 +1000

““It’s not too late at all. You just don’t yet know what you are capable of.””

- Mahatma Gandhi