Activists around the world are using social media tools to make change. A
new 50- minute documentary film called "10 Tactics for Turning Information into Action" is a guide to how best to use take advantage of the power of these tools and avoid hidden dangers. The site and film include inspiring info-activism stories from around the world, a set of cards with tool tips and advice. The project comes from Tactical Technology, inspired their info-activism camp in India.
The film is being shown in 35 countries, showcasing the experiences of 25 human rights advocates from around the globe who have masterfully incorporated tools like Twitter and Facebook to take on governments and corporations. The film also covers the security and privacy issues faced by human rights activists.
The Ten Tactics
1. Mobilise People
2. Witness and Record
3. Visualise Your Message
4. Amplify Personal Stories
5. Just Add Humour
6. Investigate and Expose
7. How to Use Complex Data
8. Use Collective Intelligence 9. Let People Ask the Questions 10. Manage Your Contacts
It's great to see and hear some familiar voices, including Sam Gregory from Witness, Dina Mehta, and Marek Tuszynski. Not to mention the excellent resource. It's a must see, must read, must download.
Yesterday, the first ever hashtag made it into the center of the UN climate negotiations, #WeStandwithTuvalu (a Pacific island nation) -- an action that was coordinated by SMS inside the conference in Copenhagen. The 350.org Facebook community has thrown their weight behind the Maldives President by leaving comments on his Facebook page.
This wasn't just an online petition, it was a new form of solidarity.
Last week, a young climate leader inspired real people to light real
candles of hope through a YouTube video.
Joe wants us all to show world leaders that the wired world means one that is more educated, connected, and actionable. The call to action:
Will you spread this Facebook postcard by clicking here -- and then click "Share."
Note from Beth: As visiting scholar at the Packard Foundation, I'm connecting with other people who are studying and learning about how networks work. A lot of the ideas resonate with using online social networks and social media effectively for nonprofits, especially in the larger frame of movement building. This week at the Packard Foundation, I had the opportunity to meet Steve Waddell whose research focuses on Global Action Networks.
One of the tools for better understanding networks are visual diagnostics and mapping techniques. This another area of Steve's interest and expertise. He co-authored a paper called "Visual Diagnostics and Mapping for Scaling Change" and we had an opportunity to discuss it. He agreed to write a four-part primer on a visual diagnostics, mapping, and social networking analysis primer and how nonprofits might use these tools for social change.
We can easily be overwhelmed by the complexity of our work. Every non-profit works with “systems” – internal ones relating to how work gets done, issue systems relating to the topic that the NGO is working to address, and mental model systems about strategy. Clearly “seeing” those systems is important for success. There are new forms of “mapping”, including social network analysis, which can vastly enhance and speed understanding of the systems. They are diagrams of arrows and nodes that can communicate tremendous amounts of information visually much more easily than volumes of text.
Within a system are stakeholders that can include individuals, organizations, networks of organizations, the range of their actions, their ways of thinking vis-à-vis the issue, and the natural and man-created environmental factors that influence the system. Stakeholders may or may not identify themselves as participants in the system. One of the challenges of developing an issue system is to build participants’ identity with it; this is critical to creating effective action to realize opportunities, address needs and respond to challenges.
A core concept in systems mapping is “purpose”. Generally there are three types of purposes that are priorities for non-profits to understand.
Production System: The purpose here is the non-profit’s itself, and the maps describe
relationships and roles in realizing the purpose; this commonly models
how the organization does its work.
Issue System: This system is where the non-profit is one of many entities that are working to
address an issue such as health care, deforestation, peace, and
community development.
Mental Models: These visuals describe how people (individuals, groups) think the world works, such as theories of change, power structures, and cause-effect models in general.
Each type of mapping has specific benefits. The production system maps aid an organization to understand how work actually gets done, in comparison to formal org charts. This analysis can assist in bringing greater alignment between the two, which in turn reduces conflict and enhances productivity.
Issue mapping allows a non-profit to understand key leverage points in the bigger system it is trying to influence. These are points that, when focused upon, have a large ratio of amount-of-effort to desired-change. The focus can involve application of resources, or actually reducing resources.
The mental model mapping can uncover conflict, make it discussable, and enhance effectiveness. People can understand why someone else is doing what they are doing. Often this helps people understand that their mental model may be important, but incomplete vis-à-vis the change goal – and therefore help people’s respective efforts connect much more effectively.
These maps can include literally hundreds of nodes and arrows, or very few. Experience working with people around the world proves that even relatively complex systems with even a couple of hundred nodes can be understood by people with very limited education. Key is a participatory development process. The map illustrating this post was developed by a couple of dozen people in Guatemala from their mental models, to support CARE to vastly enhance its impact. An evaluation a year later showed that the process was transformational from two perspectives: people had significantly changed their relationships (who they were working with), and they had significantly changed how they understood their work vis-à-vis others’.
This is part 1 of a series of social networking analysis techniques. The next installment will explain two types of social networking analysis techniques, web crawling and inter-personal/inter-organizational ties.
What are your questions about system mapping and how you might use this in organization's strategy for movement building?
As Principal of Networking Action, Steve Waddell applies his 20+ years of experience in multi-stakeholder network development to address complex issues regionally and globally.
Blog Action Day is an annual event held every October 15 that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. I've been participating in this event for the past few years and I just registered my blog to the almost 10,000 participating blogs from 150 countries. British PM Gordon Brown unexpectedly kicked off the event with a blog post himself earlier this morning and the event was just covered by CNN.
Dozens of nonprofits are also involved, including the UN Foundation, Oxfam, World Wildlife Fund, CARE, 350.org, 1Sky, and The Nature Conservancy.
To participate, write
a single post about the event or the topic of climate change sometime
today, and it will appear in the live feed on the www.blogactionday.org homepage with thousands of others around the globe.
If you have a blog, I hope you will participate this year too. If you don't have a blog, you can participate by adding your name to this petition about taking action on climate change.
Peter Plastrik and Madeleine Taylor co-wrote "Net Gains," one of the first practical handbooks on building and working in networks for social change. Whether it is a network of organizations or individuals, this handbook provides a wealth of theory and practice on build, manage, and fine tune a network.
Peter is a president and co-founder of nuPOLIS is the Internet presence of the Innovation Network for Communities (INC), a national non-profit helping to develop and spread scalable innovations that transform the performance of community systems such as education, energy, land use, transportation and workforce development.
Madeleine is co-founder and principal of Arbor Consulting Partners, a research and consulting group led by senior social scientists.
We talked a lot about network practices. It was a fantastic opportunity to identify similarities and differences between building networks of organizations as well as individuals - and of course how to weave together the two. There are many parallels to the use of social networks like Facebook.
I was particularly interested in hearing their views on how to ignite a network - how it to get it started. For those who are working on social networks and looking at how to catalyze their crowds on places like Facebook or Twitter - the advice resonated. Do you know what the group's value proposition is? Do you know what the individual value propositions are? (What's the pork chop factor?) It's all about building trust and relationships. It reminds me of Eugene Eric Kim's point about networks - everybody is people.
Peter and Madeleine describe networks as "platforms for relationships." And the goal of those relationships can be learning, collaboration, policy, service delivery, advocacy, mobilizing or action. Peter is one of those people who likes to draw his ideas and at one point he got up and drew a grid on the whiteboard about the different types of networks and what interventions are needed for success. Later, I found the chart in Net Gains.
We also discussed the whole issue of network evaluation and the difficulty of measuring those relationships versus a specific impact. Also, the idea of faster tools like social network analysis that give us real time information and the need for someone who is embedded in the network as a real time evaluator. And, of course, what metrics to use.
Madeleine shared a copy of the network health scorecard, a diagnostic tool that networks can use to reflect on how to improve. She also discusses it in the video above.
During lunch, we discussed the field of network building for social change - what's needed to build this field? This is the drawing on the napkin that is described by Peter in the video.
Peter and Madeleine raised some interesting questions about the use of social media and support of network's work in a brief outline and I've pulled a couple of questions to chew on:
What are the hypotheses about the differences social media can make for achieving a network's goals - learning goals, policy advocacy goals, innovation goals, and others?
What patterns can social media use reveal that provide strategic insight for network?
How can social media be used to build high-quality connections, a motivating relationship between members and build trust and reciprocity?
One of the topics we discussed was about the skills and practices of
network weavers - whether they are working with networks of
organizations or supporting an organization's network of supporters on
Facebook. As Madeleine points out in the video above, a network weaver is looking at how people are connected and what value they are getting from being connected. A key skill of the network weaver is to pull out threads and pull people together.
As Madeleine notes, "it isn't about everyone being connected to everybody all the time."
A big part of the network weaver's job is pattern recognition and that requires a sort of scanning and watching - that takes time. I also pointed out that it uses a different part of your brain and there is a need to shift mindsets to get other types of work done.
I tend to map my "working the clouds" work in short, time boxed bursts. I tend to do it when my concentration is at a lower point. But, when I have to write or blog or think about something, I find more and more that I need to stop being social - not do Twitter, Facebook, or email. I also need to put classical music on my Ipod and concentrate in a different way. I've also found that I need to do something physical to transition between the two - like take a walk or simply walk around my desk.
Peter described an interesting framework for thinking about this use of time:
Activities that can be done while doing multiple tasks
Activities that require quiet and doing that one task
Activities that require several days of concentrating, creative immersion, and laser focus on that task
Today I attended an informative lunchtime presentation by Chad Nelsen who is the Environmental Director at the Surfrider Foundation where he has worked since 1998. (He's currently getting his Ph.D in surf economics!) He gave a presentation about how Surfrider Foundation is striving to make its grassroots network more effective. He touched on how they are using social networks/media in this effort.
One of the slides that struck me was a map that look at the full range of their activities offline and online (including social media) using two data points (numbers of people and ladder of engagement). The levels of engagement included: stranger, friend, supporter, member, activist and leader. The challenge is how they move people through these different stages. Chad did a video clip explaining the slide. (He also said he'd upload his slides on slideshare.)
Some takeaways related to network effectiveness and use of social media and technology:
The most important metric they use for network effectiveness is "Coast Victories." It's a very tangible measure and they have a goal for victories.
While he didn't touch on it in-depth, I'm sure they have a system or framework for measuring what is working and what isn't working along the way, in real time and especially for their use of social media. In other words, I'm curious what their process or system is for "listen, learn, and adapt." The above map that Chad explains gets at it.
Learning across the network, particularly across chapters is important. Their chapters grow faster than internal staff can support them. There is constant churn of activists and a deep learning curve. They use Internet tools and regional trainings to support learning across the network. This is a community of practice that is most likely using social media/networks to accomplish this.
If you search for surfrider foundation on Facebook, you will find several hundred groups/pages for the chapters - many using their own variation of the organization's logo. They also have many high school groups on Facebook. I asked how they work effectively with chapters when they can't "control" the message or groups necessarily. Chad pointed out that they rarely police what chapters are doing and while it might annoy the lawyers, they rarely have to intervene. I wonder, though, what the coordination role across Facebook groups or other social media outposts might like look? How do you facilitate the hive?
Surfrider's CEO, Jim Moriarty, commented that it was a function of their organization's culture - that everyone is focused on the mission and principles and they have a DIY culture. "We're more focused on the our mission than our brand and so we're open to letting others shape our brand." It reminded me of the talk that Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO, gave about how the culture of happiness enabled his company to scale.
He also mentioned that their organization lean and agile and there is a culture of a willingness to experiment and learn from it.
He talked about the balance between "atom-based" work -- staffing, offline activities, showing up at hearings, etc and "bit-based work" their work online - Facebook pages, etc. How to weave the two in order to scale.
How do you analyze the use of social networks/social media in the context of online/offline activism? If your organization has discovered many Facebook pages/groups set up by activists or fans outside of your organization, what are your best practices for supporting and facilitating this activism? Or do you just step away and let it roll?
Ben Rattray, Change.Org's founder, describes it as - "to create an open-sourced advocacy platform that identifies and then mobilizes resources around the best ideas for how to change the country." It works like many of the competitions that have been launched recently by nonprofits and foundations. Anyone can post an idea and then it is the wisdom crowds to vote. But it doesn't end with the top ten ideas - they will select a nonprofit sponsor to help create nationwide movement to push the idea forward. More details on the FAQ.
I was going to submit an idea, but decided to browse through what was there to see if it was there already and I found a better articulation of the idea and decided to vote for that. It was posted by Jay Rosen and in a nutshell the idea is:
The Obama White House should make some smart, strategic choices to
carefully frame and highlight one or two (no more than three!) such
initiatives for a limited period of time to see if this method
generates alternatives that may not have come to light through other
means. You can read the details at the site.
What's your big idea for change? Go submit it. Don't have an idea, then browse through the ideas and vote for the ones you think have promise.
Blog Action Day is an annual nonprofit event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day. This year's focus is on poverty. Anyone can participate. I have a blog post planned and we be doing a panel on blog talk radio along with one of my favorite bloggers, Liz Strauss. (Be sure to read "Kindness in Action" a guest post by Mark Hayward)
Get the scoop about BlogAction day here from Vicky.
My colleague, Liz Henry, pinged this morning asked me to take a photo of myself the above sign. It's part of a protest against Telecom Immunity. EFF and partner organizations will be bringing these photos to lawmakers,
reminding them that Americans demand their privacy rights and deserve
their day in court against lawbreaking telecoms. You can get more background about the issue and how to participate at the site, Stop the Spying. My photo isn't quite as creative as some of these others in the flickr stream, but wanted to do my part.
Most of the calls for action are to do something with social media. There is also a way to protest the "old fashioned" way - email your senator.
I would love to know how they will measure what was effectiveness or not with their social media strategy.
What do you think of the strategy so far? If you were responsible for the social media strategy for this campaign, what would you do?
Katya Andresen, Nonprofit Marketing Blog, pointed me to this site focused on getting the political candidates to pay more attention to the needs of the nonprofit sector. She writes:
All of us nonprofit folks, standing together, are a force to be reckoned with—bigger than any union or corporation or other entity grabbing headlines for its influence. There are 14 million nonprofits employees out there and 60 million volunteers. We generate billions in revenue and put billions more into county and state coffers through payroll taxes. So let’s get the candidates - and the next president - to take our sector—and ourselves and our issue—seriously. We can do it.
And the V3 site is the tool to help accomplish it. Katya notes:
Robert Egger,
one of the great leaders in our sector and a wonderful friend and
colleague, has been at this for quite some time. Robert is Founder and
President of the DC Central Kitchen, the Co-Convener of the first
Nonprofit Congress and, most recently, the Founder and Director of the
Nonprofit Primary Project, which developed presidential candidate
forums in New Hampshire. And today, he has created an easy way for this
to happen in every election, national or local. V3 is
his new website that shows how we can get all of this to happen. Check
out V3, which he funded with money from his speaking engagements. It’s
great to see such a beautiful piece of marketing for a such a great
cause: us. (Full disclosure: In addition to knowing/admiring Robert
and weighing in on the V3 site, I know and have in the past hired the
creative folks behind the site design - I think their work is
excellent.) Finally - an easy way for us to do something tangible to
advance our cause and our sector as part of the political process.
Robert got me very charged up about this effort when I saw him last
week to discuss his message, and I hope he’ll get you charged up, too.
(Read this.)
Go to the V3 and sign up to ask any candidate what they’re
doing to commit to working with nonprofits. In just a few minutes, you
can feel you did something substantive to get seen and heard. If you
care about your cause and want it to get noticed by your government,
this is a great way to get started. Do it, and ask one other person to
do it, too.
I wrote the word "social graph" in a post, so I guess according to Dave Winer, I sound like a monkey. So, I couldn't resist finding out what kind of monkey I am and all for a good cause. The HSUS newest campaign is geared towards helping the 1,300 chimps still condemned to life in research labs across the country.
It's fun. You take a myer-briggs like chimp personality test to find out how much you have in common with the three chimpanzees of Cleveland Amory Black Beauty Ranch, an animal sanctuary operated by The Fund for Animals in partnership with The Humane Society of the United States. Each chimp has a distinct personality, with likes and dislikes and a unique communication style.
When you get your results, you get a badge and a write up. I'm most like LuLu.
On October 15th, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single
important issue on everyone’s mind - the environment. Every blogger
will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their
own topic. Our aim is to get everyone talking towards a better future.
In the interest of not data polluting or contributing to information smog, I'm pointing over Read/WriteWeb's excellent summary of the top 35 environment blogs. And because I know I have a few readers or two that read these blogs or perhaps write them, I'll ask folks to drop a line in the comments about which environmental blogs are their favorites or which ones aren't on the list.
In addition, if he isn't jet lagged or dipping latte in Italy, I wonder what Jon Stahl or J Coleman think of blogger action days? Do they have an impact? Is the idea just getting old? How do you measure the impact on your cause?
Here's another flash site that allows you to "adopt the sky" while signing a petition.
The EPA recently announced changes in ozone pollution standards that fall far short of what the scientific and health community recommends. To raise awareness and encourage action, they've launched a project with Earthjustice called Adopt the Sky (http://www.adoptthesky.org). This site offers everyone a chance to make their voice heard. Visitors can add their own personalized message about the issue and “adopt” a square mile of sky above the U.S. to pledge their support for cleaner air—it’s free. So far, more than 40,000 square miles of sky have been adopted. I adopted square mile 42,985.
