“The old model for coordination group action required convincing people who care a little to care more, so they would be roused to adt. What Hanni and Streeting did instead was to lower the hurdles to doing something in the first place, so that people who cared a little could participate a little, while being effective in the aggregate.” –Clay Shirky

How does the Internet change the way we cook up social change?

In Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, Clay Shirky describes the new recipe for community organizing.

Here’s an embellished version of the old recipe:

1. Take 1 organizer
2. Add to community of people who care a little
3. Agitate to make a few of the people care more
4. Get the people who care more to take a major action
5. Repeat as needed

And here’s an embellished version of the new recipe for social change, according to Shiky:

1. Take disaffected citizen
2. Create a social media platform to air grievence and identify other disaffected citizens who care a little
3. Get many of the people who care a little to take a little action
4. Repeat as needed

Okay, obviously these are both oversimplifications, but let’s run with them.

Strengths of the “old recipe”

• Process of education and agitation to “make people care more” builds political awareness and social conscience;
• Person-to-person contact builds community;
• Actively builds leadership;
• Big actions that require a major commitment can be transformational (e.g. the Selma to Montgomery marches).

Weaknesses of the “old recipe”

• reliance on highly-committed people leave out many people;
• requires a lot of work to pull off, so only a few people can initiate

Strengths of the “new recipe”

• includes people who have limited commitment or other factors that limit participation
• lowers barriers to initiate so more people can cook up the new recipe

Weaknesses of the “new recipe”

• How much to a million emails really mean?
• Do the low expectations limit political education?
• Forwarding to a friend is not leadership development

Toward an integration of the old and the new recipes for community organizing

As I’ve already said, both the “old” and the “new” recipes are over-simplifications. Both old-school and Internet-era community organizing educate participants and include people along a spectrum of involvement levels. Here are ways to make the most of both:

• Remember the “ladder of engagement“: This old-school concept applies as well in the Internet-age. Basically, you need people who will give a lot of time, talent, and treasure to your cause, and you find them by inviting them in with low-effort activities. The people who are really excited about your petition are people who are good candidates to help circulate that petition. (just be sure to identify easy-to-do first steps and make sure you follow through).
• Build political consciousness: This concept is out-of-favor with in the current “it’s the action that counts” focus in community organizing, but I believe that we plant the seed of opposing the next was in giving a sound anti-war analysis of the current war. Help people put their current actions in a context that will help set them up for a lifetime of positive social engagement.
• Identify meaningful actions: I talk to a lot of people who are burned out on emailing and writing their member of Congress because they feel they do not make a difference. I think these are worthwhile, but they are not sufficient. Whether your ask is big or small, make sure it is meaningful, and mix it up a bit to get the most out of it.

The mass-market broadcast model (How things were)

Synopsis: The established media market was a broadcast system. There were few players that had the resources to run large-scale newspapers, TV, and radio. Because there were few sources, it was harder to get any coverage, there was danger of bias of these sources. But, they did have resources for investigative journalism and if you got covered in these sources, you had a reasonable assurance that you would be noticed.

Strengths:

• Covers a broad range of topics (sports, business, community, etc)
• Both quick beat coverage and in-depth investigative coverage;
• Broad circulation–reaches most people who follow local issues;
• Accessible, you just need to be able to see and read
• Discussion of opinions (editorials, letters to editor, other voices)
• Analysis
• Provide some level or authoritative coverage

Weaknesses

• Gatekeeper keeps out some voices
• Bias to not aggravating advertisers
• Only so much space for coverage
• Resource intensive (a lot of trees cut and a lot of gas burned)
• Discussion through letters to the editor is slow and limited to just a few voices

The micro-media/social media model (How things are becoming)

Synopsis: In a world with hundreds of cable TV channels, satellite radio, blogs, podcasts, Internet video, Facebook, Twitter, and more, no one source has the same level of reach, influence, or market share that the major print and broadcast media had. This means that it is easier to get a message out; there are fewer corporate media filters. It also means there is much more competition to get your message listened to. Personal recommendations and word of mouth play a larger role in deciding what people pay attention to.

Strengths:

• Fewer barriers to entry, less gatekeeper/censor role for mass media
• More community based
• Increased opportunity for discussion
• Fewer dead trees
• More information is available and easier to retrieve
• Length of a story is not constrained by a limited number of space on the page

Weaknesses

• “Drinking through a fire hose” effect
• Self-selecting narrows range of opinions people are exposed to
• Online reading tends to be more superficial than print reading
• Limited accessibility
• Will there be funding for investigative journalism?
• Questions of reliability
• Fragmentation of media creates difficulty to create broad awareness of issues

Key challenges/opportunities

• Ensure access to information means for all residents, overcome the digital divide;
• Ensure that solid investigative journalism takes place
• Develop capacity of local groups to use new tools

Resources:

Local issues:

• AnnArborChronicle.com: Community news site with excellent coverage of City Council, County Commission, and AATA Board meetings.
• ArborUpdate.com: primarily a site for discussion of community issues.
• ypsiciti.com, the Ypsilanti Citizen: Local news site for Ypsilanti
• AnnArbor.com (when it starts up): Site of the Newhouse replacement for the Ann Arbor News.
• ArborWiki.org: community directory, think Wikipedia about all things Ann Arbor.
• Progressive Ann Arbor Web Calendar: listing of Washtenaw County progressive events

How to use new media:

• Social Media Marketing and Campaigning for Nonprofits:  Audio file from workshop at Craigslist Foundation Nonprofit Boot Camp
• Social Media Listening Literacy for Nonprofits:  Article by Beth Kanter

Recommendations:

• Personal: Learn to use RSS Reader like Google Reader or Bloglines to help you keep up with local news sites
• Organizational: Learn to use the tools out there (Facebook, blogs, twitter, etc); develop relationships with new media news sources;
• Movement: Expand the Progressive Ann Arbor calendar to a more comprehensive Progressive Ann Arbor/Washtenaw site;

Peter’s main recommendation was to create a cycle where we post videos of our events online and use a Facebook Page and email to create a feedback loop to announce the video and promote our next event.

As we’ve worked to implement this strategy, we’ve hit a few snags. Here are Peter’s recommendations to work them out.

PROBLEM 1. blip.tv is not working well for us due to problems converting longer videos to flash format.

RECOMMENDATION 1: Look into Vimeo (and also maybe DoGooder)

PROBLEM 2: quantity vs quality of videos, we will have a hard time getting videos up fast AND having high quality videos.

RECOMMENDATION 2: Also, after each event ask panelists or speakers for short clips, get those up fast as a teaser for the full video

PROBLEM 3: migrating our current Facebook group members over to our page.

RECOMMENDATION 3: Recruit a few leaders to the Facebook page, then message all Facebook group members. Message Facebook Group members every now and then to try to get them to move over.

PROBLEM 4: How to include branding and call to action overlays on online videos.

RECOMMENDATION 4: Use online video hosting tools (such as YouTubes) rather than desktop software.

PROBLEM 5: How to manage email segmentation/integration/double opt-ins.

RECOMMENDATION 5: This is a tough one. Check Salesforce and Vertical Response boards for conversations about this, as well as groups like idealist.com. Perhaps look into products such as Convio’s Common Ground. Perhaps try to get a volunteer to code this.

OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS:
Peter recommended to put a lot of website space into promoting Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube feeds. BeExtra.org and the Case Foundation websites are good examples.

He also mentioned Facebook Page applications to integrate our YouTube and Flickr postings into our Facebook Page.

He also recommended that I blog about this process to add to the converstion and get additional feedback (and that’s just what I’m doing!)