Social networking

Social networking sites are used for a wide range of reasons. They can be really useful for campaigners as a way of recruiting support, raising money, publicise events or actions.

Barack Obama’s election campaign’s use of the internet, and in particular, social networking sites to galvanise support and raise funding, demonstrates how valuable these merging tools can be. His campaign team raised $500,000 (£344m) in donations from 6.5million people, in part through sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

“Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not be president. Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not have been the nominee,”

Arianna Huffington, Editor-in-Chief of The Huffington Post

"When you are a housewife with five kids, a fulltime job, financial issues, and mismanaged stress, supporting Iran or Kyrgyzstan or China is not going to be your #1 priority. But you still care – so you RT a link. Or two. And then three. There is nothing wrong with that, it’s actually encouraged to get involved in every “little” way you can, and tweeting counts. This is the only way you can tap into audiences that would otherwise not be inspired to think and possibly act upon these global issues that affect us all."

Esra'a al Shafei of Mideast Youth

So how can campaigners make effective use of social networking sites?

Your use of social networking sites should relate directly back to your campaign strategy. If it doesn’t, and you are using Facebook, Twitter or other similar sites simply because you feel that you should, it probably won’t help you achieve your goals. Do you want to raise campaign funds? Is it to raise awareness? Is it to publicise events or actions?

'We won't ever stop protesting on the streets and outside embassies. But now social networks are where people are coming together to get fired up about issues and take action. The Unsubscribe campaign puts social media at the heart of human rights campaigning, bringing people together online and making our voice louder than ever.
'Online and on the streets, in social media and traditional media, Unsubscribe will engage with people who passionately believe in the right to a fair trial and the right not to be tortured.'

Kate Allen, Director, Amnesty International UK 

Twitter case study

In February 2009, The Woodland Trust used Twitter as part of their campaign against the Government’s plans for increased passenger numbers at Stansted. They thought it would be a good idea if a tree was actually sending out ‘tweets’ using Twitter. The tree also came to the High Court. The tweets were re-tweeted by followers of the campaign, helping to spread the message.

You can read more about the benefits that the Woodland Trust reaped from using Twitter by clicking here. 

Facebook

For an excellent guide on understanding how to use Facebook read DigiActive’s ‘Introduction to Facebook Activism’

Summary of Digiactive’s ‘Pros and Cons of Facebook as an activists tool

Pros:

1. Facebook has a massive user base, which easily enables ‘viral’ campaigning.
2. It’s free!
3. Members of a Facebook group can easily add multimedia content (pictures, videos and their own commentary) to a group page, making it a truly interactive tool.
4. People that you target can ‘opt-in’, which means that membership of your Facebook group are interested. But you do need to bear in mind that they may quickly leave if you don’t engage them.

Cons:

1. Facebook is saturated with content – you’ll possibly be competing with other groups. But if your group does become popular, you will need to manage and sift through a lot of uploaded content information and highlight the best of it.
2. There’s a ‘low barrier’ to entry so not everyone in your group is going to be a dedicated member. This makes it difficult to target those who will actually be active supporters.
3. Facebook isn’t actually designed for campaigning. So it won’t necessarily have the functionality you need. You should also think about creating your own website, linked to your Facebook group, which you can develop to do the things that Facebook might not be able to.

Another guide which offers advice on how to use Facebook effectively is John Hayden's Complete Guide to Facebook.

Case study

Over the space of a couple of months in 2011 there were over 1,000 cities across the world that were occupied in one way or another. This worldwide movement started in Spain followed shortly by Occupy Wall Street in New York. This movement has been undeniably helped by the use of social networking, not just to gain support and numbers but also to help find provisions for the occupation. The Occupy London group located outside St. Pauls Cathedral used twitter and Facebook to ask for donations from the public.