Pros and Cons of Facebook Activism

Several months ago my colleague Mary Joyce (who I met at the Global Voices Summit in London in 2005) and who is now at the Berkman Center pinged me and asked if I knew any digital activists in Southeast Asia.  I joined the various Burma Facebook groups early on because my colleagues in Cambodia were involved from the beginning and documented some of the activism taking place across various social media sites, including Facebook.

I helped her  track down the people behind the Support the monks Campaign and Facebook Burma Group, an unofficial representative in the UK named Imran Jamal, Burma Global Action Network.  She was looking for presenters for a conference and she just pointed me over to Ethan Zuckerman's insightful analysis of Facebook activism.

Ethan's notes points to the long-term benefits (and challenges) of converting some of the people involved into long term supporters. 

The people who got involved weren’t dedicated activists, for the most part. They were bored students, clicking on their friend’s links, possibly being drawn in by some of the striking images of monks marching in the streets. The hope is that some percentage of the people involved with these groups could turn into long-term advocates, but Jamal characterizes many of the users as “serial activists”, moving from Darfur to Burma to whatever cause is next.

I also think some of the problems with the interaction and feature design of Facebook Groups also makes it challenging to help these activists climb the ladder of engagement.  (I've written about this here)  It also makes me curious about the concept of "serial activists" and whether this is a by-product of rapid attention shifting.

Ethan points out some other benefits and other challenges:

There were clear upsides to the Burma Fcebook group. At the very least, it worked as an intermediary between the different Burma activist groups, some of which don’t communicate well with one another, and many of which are poor at communicating with the wider world. But there were a lot of downsides as well. The organizers found themselves characterized as spammers by the Facebook operators because they were sending too many messages a day.

 

The quote from Jamal identifies some of the problems with Facebook:

Jamal wonders whether Facebook is simply a glorified petition. “It’s very easy for peopl to join, but there’s no guarantee they come back, and it’s not neccesarily the tool for building an activist base.” One of the major things the BGAN group tried to do is move dedicated users to their website, in the hopes they would get more engaged with the effort, and that communication could be organized outside the Facebook structure.

See also:

• Is Facebook interaction design a one-night stand, with no flirting?
• How do Facebook applications incorporate the ladder of engagement?

 

Comments

[Amy Sample Ward]

I've been thinking a lot about person-to-person fundraising in light of the Giving Challenge and other holiday campaigns. The 3 most important things to remember, in my opinion, when designing, starting and carrying out a peer-peer fundraising campaign are:

1. Other people are not you but they are LIKE you - you know what kind of stories resonate with yourself and what motivates you, so go with what you know.

2. People WANT to give but need you to make it as easy as possible - give them the direct link to donate, ask for a doable amount for donations, provide other ways to support if they can't/don't want to give money (like a simple message they can copy with a link to ask their networks to donate).

3. Peer-peer means that these people are your FRIENDS, so treat them that way - ask for support (forwarding, donating, linking, etc.) in a personal way, thank people for supporting the campaign in a personal way. Like in #1, remember how you would feel as a participant and not just leader in the campaign, you would want to be personally included, too!

Looking forward to reading all of the great ideas for peer-peer fundraising; it's an exciting field!

[Amy Sample Ward]

Sorry, Beth - too many tabs open! Posted comment on wrong tab :)

[Holly]

Jamal's comment about FB serving as a glorified petition really resonates with me. I actually see much more potential for FaceBbok, but I also see that lots of orgs are treating this web 2.0 tool in a web 1.0 way. I.E. - here's my message, tell a friend! What they need to do is find ways to let people create their own messages by interacting more deeply with the org and its causes. This will mean using Facebook as PART of a larger social media strategy. If you're only using Facebook, you're pretty limited as to what you can do.

[Caitlin Ochs]

An excellent subject that demands more scrutiny. Yes, Facebook is great for organizing and connecting people for specific events but, for long-term activism, it is not the best tool. A group with tons of members is notable but what does it mean? It's easy to join a group, but much harder to make real change. The concept of "serial causes" is one well worth exploring because it brings up possible limits of Facebook, or perhaps as mentioned the need to use it as a compliment not as a focus to your cause. It's easy to join a group, especially one that is popular. I think an interesting follow up and compliment to this article would be to interview other leaders of successful causes to document their experience with keeping interest alive after their events ended. The recent international protest against the FARC in Columbia would be a good case to examine. Launched and organized on Facebook less than a month it drew hundreds of thousands of participants, but what was the follow up, what resulted? These are the important questions to ask.

[Beth Kanter]

Is a limit of Facebook or is it a different human behavior?
Also, it might be interesting to interview some cause joiners or some of the serial activists themselves. I have a video interview that I need to post ...