ONLINE ACTIVISM AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Jason Brown

Why Twitter, Facebook and their compatriots have changed the game

First Things First

• Who am I?• What do we mean by “Social Media”?• What defines “Activism”?• What’s in this talk for you?

How It Was

• Organisation – meetings, phone calls• Creating collateral• Writing copy• Obtaining permits• Printing flyers and posters• Letter writing• Slow, laborious and frustrating• But occasionally rewarding…

The Engine Rooms

• • • The best of the rest– YouTube and other video services– Flickr and other image services– AudioBoo and other audio channels– Blogs and other text channels– Foursquare and other location channels

Facebook – Key Elements

• Pages• Events• Groups• Status Updates• Ads

Twitter – Key Elements

• Hashtags• Retweets• Dedicated accounts• Trends• Heavy influencers

#adshel#ripnroll#leadstosexWendy FrancisACLRip & Roll

Two Clicks

• The big two are right there• Sends a tweet to:– @PGarrettMP– @JuliaGillard– @SUQLD– #stopNSCP– #NSCP

• And links back to the site

The Message

I say NO to chaplains! #NSCP @JuliaGillard

@PGarrettMP @suqld #StopNSCP

http://t.co/qdNS3C4

And of course, there’s a trick here

• Note that NTC.org sends to the #NSCP hashtag. This was, at one point, a pro-chaplaincy tag

• Tagjacking is entirely legal, moral and, debatably, ethical.

• #SaveOurChaplains• #HelpAVN

There’s more

Takeaways

• If you see yourself as an activist and aren’t a social media user, you might be doing it wrong.

• If you are a social media user and haven’t engaged in any activism, you might be doing it wrong

• If you are a social media user and you are an activist, friend me up.

Some open questions

• Is the power of social media a symptom of corporate and government organisations’ inability to adapt to a new media form?

• If so, will we see the influence wane?• What about the other guys? Can’t they do

what we do?• Is there an element of Tyranny of the Majority

here?

I AM AT• http://twitter.com/drunkenmadman• http://facebook.com/stopthatastronaut• http://mycolleaguesareidiots.com• http://youtube.com/stopthatastronaut• http://soundcloud.com/stopthatastronaut

• #followactivistmonday

• And many other places• If you can’t remember,

someone you know will know.That’s what Social Media is all about

I AM ALSO AT

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