Online Activism 101

online activism 101:A Crash course in internet campaigning
Jason Brown, Little Known Skeptic

Activism?
The practice of using action to achieve a result, such as political demonstration or a strike in support of or in opposition to an issue.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/activism

Three Levels
Strategic
Long term objectives
Tactical
Short term gain
Skirmishing
Harrying the opposition

Three Toolsets
Research
Getting your ducks in a row
Collaboration
Rallying the troops
Outreach
Spreading the message

Is this still just slacktivism?
Slacktivism (sometimes slactivism) is a portmanteau formed out of the words slacker and activism. The word is considered a pejorative term that describes "feel-good" measures, in support of an issue or social cause, that have little or no practical effect other than to make the person doing it feel satisfaction. The acts also tend to require little personal effort from the slacktivist.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacktivism
If you do it wrong: yes.
But there are ways of doing it right.

First, some fundamentals
1. Choose your target wisely
2. Know your enemy
3. Determine your goal
4. Get others on side
5. Do not start a campaign without knowing what you’re letting yourself in for
6. School yourself on the basics: good logic, research, scientific sources. Know your fallacies. Know your bible/koran/dianetics/whatever
KNOW YOUR ENEMY

B is For Blogs
Blogs are easy, versatile and a largely unrestricted platform
Building readership can be hard, but communities exist
Specialised blogs may see more success than general in activism terms

Wikipedia
Excellent for basic research, but follow citations
Make sure the Wikipedia articles in your chosen area are fully updated
“controversy” sections
Specialised variants: SkepticWiki.org, RationalWiki.com, Ironchariots.org

Podcasts: Radio 2.0
Preaching to the choir is good to rally support
It’s good for morale
Not, however, an ideal platform to speak to fence-sitters or the opposition
Definitely worth using to rally the troops

Youtube and vodcasting
Huge user base
Easily embedded elsewhere
Usually best suited to short videos
You can get started now. All you need is a webcam, a mic and something to say

Facebook
Phenomenal, highly populated social media site
Groups, Pages and Causes all allow for activism to flourish
API means savvy programmers can innovate
Censorship is rife

Atheist Nexus & Think Atheist
Specialised social networking sites for atheists
Many very active groups, Atheist News and Aussie, Kiwi and South Pacific Atheists
Collaboration, not outreach!

Twitter
Direct engagement
Immediacy – realtime web
Group discussion via #hashtags
Individual engagement via @replies
Can be tricky to get a point across in 140 chars
Great medium for promoting other efforts

Sidewiki * (and its brethren)
Hitting them where they live
Countering misinformation at its source
Can be flooded out if the “enemy” are numerous
Audience penetration isn’t too high

Geotagging
Props to Tim Farley for this one
Tag your posts and tweets with the location of a target
Even FourSquare can be used for activism

Email Campaigns and petitions
Are these as effective as traditional letter campaigns?
Not really, however in cases such as StopAVN, we’ve been able to use email channels to “add value” to our paper-based complaint
Petitions: OK if you have a very large support base >10,000
Reason Makes a Difference

Organising Supporters
Google Groups
Mailing lists
Meetup.com
Your skeptical group may already be using some of these channels
Remember: link them to your other channels, Facebook and Twitter

Miscellaneous others
Web forums, IRC and usenet are still very much alive
Great research tools such as skepticsannotatedbible.com
Search tools – oh so obvious, but do you use scholar.google.com? What about Google Alerts? Custom Search? Yahoo Pipes?
Skeptical Speakers Bureau
SEO & googlebombing
New tools are constantly coming online – watch this space!

Free your data!
Web 2.0 is all about programmability
Allow clever third parties to expand upon your work by syndicating your content
Example: Skepticator

Don’t neglect IRL!
The real world still matters
Old Media still dominates
Letters are still better than emails
In-person events are great for morale

Some “Success” Stories
Stop The AVN
10:23
#voterachie
Chanology

Getting More Info
Several skeptics worldwide can help
@Sc00ter
@krelnik
@drunkenmadmanaka @theskepticator
And a growing list of others…

Closing tips
Screenshots, screenshots, screenshots.
Be prepared to back down if necessary.
Make it fun.
Always be better people than “them”.
The internet is not your private army.
Ultimately, though, you don’t have to be a full-time activist to help

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Online Activism 101

by Jason Brown on Aug 09, 2010

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Online Activism 101 — Presentation Transcript

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