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It's Your World, So Change It: Using the Power of the Internet to Create Social Change Tom Head, 2011 --------------- The following is from the Introduction by the author: "This book is made up of ten chapters and five appendixes. Chapter l - 'Online Activism 101," is your introduction to the world of online activism. I'll explain how to persuade traditional activists to use (or let you use) online media and how to use online media to support a cause on your own if they won't. I'll introduce your eight-part online activism toolkit (explored step-by-step in Chapters 2-9) and profile an organization that has used e-activism as a way to expand its reach, as well as an individual activist who has done a great deal of good online without the support of traditional activist groups. Chapter 2,"How to Research Issues and Stay Informed," is all about using the Internet to gather information - part 1 of your eight-part online activism toolkit. I'll tell you how to use the Internet to research issues, monitor online newspapers and magazines to keep up w i th new developments on causes important to you, develop talking points, j o in relevant mailing lists and newsletters, avoid hoaxes and urban legends, f i nd books and articles you need, keep up with legislation, legal codes, and court rulings, and use the Internet to connect w i th traditional resources such as reference librarians and interlibrary loan departments. Chapter 3,"How to Build, Promote, and Maintain a Website," tells you how you can build and maintain a website - part 2 of your eight-part online activism toolkit. I'll explain how websites have traditionally been used to move activism forward and explain how you can tailor your website's content to meet the specific needs of local, non-local, and media readers. I'll also describe ways you can ethically promote your website and make it visible to the larger community, and share five tips on creating an activism website that's well worth having. Chapter 4,"How to Use Social Networking Sites as an Activism," focuses on social networking - part 3 of your eight-part online activism toolkit. I'll describe the history of social networking (which connects very closely w i th the history of progressive activism), explain the advantages of social networking for activists, compare Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking services, highlight common mistakes that activists make when they use social networking services, and profile a political campaign that made the most of new social networking technology. Chapter 5,"A Short Guide to the Ethics and Etiquette of Online Activism," deals with ethics and netiquette - part 4 of your eight-part online activism toolkit. I'll describe the 7 "deadly sins" of online activism, explain the difference between spam and legitimate site promotion, and tell you about the 10 most common types of offensively clueless online activists - and how to avoid becoming one of them. Chapter 6,"How to Raise Funds, Host Contests, and Build Membership Online,"deals with raising funds online - part 5 of your eight-part online activism toolkit. I'll talk about tools and services that nonprofits can use to process online donations, how to build up membership by offering members-only resources online, and how successful nonprofits have solicited funds online in the past. I'll profile an activist organization that has done very, very well with online donations. Chapter 7,"How to Use Multimedia Technology as an Activism Tool," deals with multimedia technology - part 6 of your eight-part online activism toolkit. I'll review YouTube, Flickr, and other multimedia websites that can be useful to your cause, explain how and why and when to embed visual and audio content into your online activism materials, how to find online content that is public domain or can be used for free by nonprofits, and explain why podcasting might be a good idea. I'll also describe 10 cases where online multimedia was central to an activism effort. Chapter 8,"How to Keep Allies Informed (Without Annoying Them Too Much)," deals with blogging and other technologies you can use to keep activists informe - part 7 of your eight-part online activism toolkit. I'll describe different blogging platforms and technologies, explain how RSS feeds work, go over the steps involved in creating an email newsletter or mailing list, describe how activists have used cell phone text messaging to organize volunteers and keep them informed, discuss online chat technologies, and review a wonderful little site called Twitter. I'll also describe five cases where blogging or other communication technologies were very helpful to an activism effort. Chapter 9,"How to Create Effective Action Alerts and Online Petitions,"deals with action alerts, online petitions, and other ways to use the Internet as a form of direct action.This is part 8 - the last part of your eight-part activism toolkit. I'll discuss how to set up good action alerts (and how often to send them), address the issue of whether online petitions are a waste of time (and explain how you can make the most of them), address the issue of online polls, and go over other ways that you can use the Internet to directly organize activists. I also describe a case where an online petition did some good and profile an organization that has used action alerts very effectively. Chapter 10,"How to Keep It Real,"summarizes your eight-part online activism toolkit and explains how you can implement these strategies in the service of your own cause. I'll also go over some future and not yet widely adopted technologies that could significantly change the way we do online activism, describe how 10 organizations have used online activism in their work, and try to answer the question my activism mentor, Shannan Reaze, asked me in 2007: Is online activism killing "real" face-to-face activism? How can we make sure the two coexist effectively? The appendixes are more important to this book, perhaps, than appendixes generally are. Appendix A sums up 10 common online activism mistakes and explains how to avoid them. Appendix B directs you to resources that you can use to find activism jobs and volunteer opportunities online. Appendix C is an illustrated timeline of online activism, from 125 BCE (yes, really) to mere days before this book went to press. Appendix D is a glossary of 100 common terms that online activists should know. And finally, Appendix E lists online degree programs that may be of interest to activists and those who work in the nonprofit sector." ----------------------- Excellent primer on on-line activism for would-be activists. I only wish the author had included chapters on the IRA, The Black Panthers, the SLA, and a few other groups that, "due to circumstances", have been forced by society to "fly under the radar" - this would have made the book somewhat more useful for us. ;) Note: This version of the publication has had the resolution of the images reduced to reduce the overall size of the book from about 5 megabytes to less than 2 megabytes. You may obtain the original publication to view "prettier pictures" of activists, web-page screen-shots, etc. No cute boys, though. Sorry. :( Notes: It is perfectly safe to download this (and any other files) using the Tor browser bundle. Click OK to the first security warning, then in the second window choose to SAVE (not OPEN) the file. I have also responded to a of the few responses to my previous post (including a little more on security issues when downloading files): How To Stay Out Of Prison, As A Boylover (link) - Randy 2013-June-5 16:30:07, Wednesday http://boychat.org/messages/1349497.htm -- Randy - still without Internet at home :( Link to direct-download the file: http://www.keepandshare.com/doc/view.php?id=6372205&da=y [@nonymouse] [Guardster] [Proxify] [Anonymisierungsdienst] |