Social Media 101 tips from the folks at Transmedia Activism

Social Media Won't Save the World... But It Might Make the Job Easier

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The medium’s message- article by Georgette Gouveia at Westchester Business Journal

The Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville has a new program for nonprofits in which the medium is, in a sense, the message.

In Reel Change for Nonprofits, teams from area organizations – consisting of staffers, volunteers and even board members – hone in on what they’d like to convey about their institutions and then craft those themes in videos they learn to make in the 12-week course.

“We enroll institutional teams of two: That’s the ideal,” said Theresa Dawson, curriculum designer and a faculty member at the Burns Center’s new green Media Arts Lab, where the program is held. “The reason we look for two is to build that institutional capacity and also, they can be a filmmaking team.”

Since the program began in April of last year, Reel Change has worked with 20 organizations in Westchester and Fairfield County, Conn., including the Greenwich Music Festival in Greenwich; My Sisters’ Place, a White Plains-based organization that aids victims of domestic abuse; and the Westpac Foundation in Pleasantville, which is committed to peace and justice.

“The first thing we start with is that this should be a piece of advocacy,” Dawson said of the videos. “It’s not a laundry list. We’ve all seen those films at the gala dinners. So we ask them, ‘What do you want to do and how could video craft that message?’”

Helping answer those questions is the ability to target an audience.

“Knowing the audience and what you want the audience to do is the most strategic journey I’ve taken these organizations on,” Dawson said.

As the teams identify their audiences and master video techniques, they also learn that not everyone longs to be in pictures.

“Most of the organizations have some issues of sensitivity,” Dawson said. “Some people are happy to tell their story, just not on camera.”

When My Sisters’ Place decided to make a video on human trafficking – an issue that sadly touches places like Westchester as well as a Mexico or a Thailand – the team realized it could not use real people. So it drew in part on archival footage of this criminal activity, said a member of the organization’s board of directors who participated in the program.

For the Westpac Foundation’s video on hydrofracking – a potentially toxic and thus controversial means of extracting natural gas from deep in the earth’s watershed – the organization decided to include American Indians’ views on the sacredness of the land.

“That’s what gave the piece wheels,” said Tracy Basile, a Westpac volunteer, who heads up the organization’s Friends of Turtle Island – non-Native Americans in support of this country’s indigenous peoples.

Both she and my sister's place have nothing but praise for Reel Change and curriculum designer Dawson.

“Theresa (and the Burns’ staff) were extremely helpful and supportive and continue to be so,” said Basile, whose organization’s video has gotten the attention of the Westchester County Board of Legislators and actress/activist Debra Winger.

As for My Sisters’ Place: “It opened our eyes to opportunities we weren’t taking advantage of. All of these nonprofits suffer from the same thing – not enough money, not enough people to do things.”

The idea of making a video that would raise an institution’s profile without hiring a professional filmmaker – something many nonprofits could not afford to do – was a great concept.

Now he and the other teams’ members are also learning what film students from NYU to UCLA have to figure out – that filmmaking is just part of the challenge. You have to distribute your product, whether by placing it on your website, getting it play on YouTube or holding screenings. Distribution isn’t easy.

To help program graduates weather their growing pains, Dawson said, the Burns Center has created a second program, Reel Exchange.

My Sister's Place for one would gladly sign up for it: “In today’s world, video is a great way to communicate.”

Digital natives

Information Activism: 10 Tactics for Real World Impact

Published in MediaRights.org on June 17, 2010

by Theresa Dawson

10 Tactics provides original and artful ways for rights advocates to capture attention and communicate a cause.
What is “information activism,” and what are the most effective strategies for putting it to work? This question was put to 130 activists from 35 countries at the 2009 Info Activism Camp, a seven-day intensive institute hosted in Bangalore, India by the Tactical Technology Collective, a global NGO created to help human rights advocates use information, communications and digital technologies to maximize the impact of their advocacy work.

The answers to those questions—along with inspiring stories of how information can be translated into action—are now contained in Tactical Tech’s indispensable resource 10 Tactics for Turning Information Into Action. Stephanie Hankey, a cofounder of Tactical Tech, says, “We knew [all the participants] had really interesting stories to tell about how they had turned information into action using digital technologies. We decided to document and explore people’s stories throughout the camp. When we had finished we knew that what we had collected was pretty remarkable.”

What is 10 Tactics?
10 Tactics is a 50-minute film anchored by stories from activists about how they have used digital technologies to instigate real world impact. Equally central to the project are the set of beautifully conceived tri-fold cards relaying tips and advice for planning info-activism campaigns based on examples from the film. While the examples explored are primarily applied to human rights causes, these strategies can be readily applied to any brand of social action activism. The 10 Tactics resources can be viewed and downloaded for free directly from the website, and activists are encouraged to use them to host their own screenings and use the cards as a teaching tool. (For a small fee, you can order a package including a DVD of the film and the full array of cards and support materials. I recommend this; not only will you be providing financial support for this groundbreaking project, but you will also value adding these potent tools to your resource library.)

Since its launch last December, the 10 Tactics film has screened at over 100 conferences and panel events worldwide, and volunteers have created subtitles for the 10 Tactics film in more than 20 languages; the support materials are available in three languages. “We hope these stories can be used to inspire others,” says project manager Tanya Notley. “The video and cards provide the sort of in-depth background information you usually don’t have access to. People have shared how much their digital activism campaign cost, what tools were used, what skills are needed, what the local context was, and exactly what happened. All of this information can be used by other people to develop their own ideas.”

So, what are the 10 Tactics for turning information into action?

1. Mobilize people
2. Witness and record
3. Visualize your message
4. Amplify personal stories
5. Add humor
6. Manage your contacts
7. Know how to use complex data
8. Use collective intelligence
9. Let people ask the questions
10. Investigate and expose

Taken individually, nothing on this list will likely surprise those of us working in social impact media. What is surprising, though, is the generosity of the activists who have shared the nuts and bolts of what they did, the resources they needed, the reach (and the pitfalls) of their campaign and—my personal favorite—the level of difficulty in planning an action of this kind, rated with a level of difficulty of 1 through to 5.

A Level 2 out of 5 Info Activism Campaign
Namita Singh of Video Volunteers offered a very simple, replicable tactic for mobilizing people. She shared an account of how a community-made video on land rights in Gujarat, India, was screened in 25 nearby villages. The result? More than 700 people rallied and filed applications with the local government to have land fairly distributed to them. In a YouTube world where we measure video impact based on the 100,000s or millions of views, it is sometimes forgotten that making an impact means more than collecting web analytics. A more telling barometer is whether a message is taken up as a call to action by those that are uniquely positioned to create change. Singh, who managed the land rights in Gujarat video project, says “Video is a good tool because I think a lot of communities do not have literacy and access to other forms of technology such as the Internet. In that sense, video is a very good medium to reach out to such communities because they see things right in front of their eyes and it really creates a lot of impact.”

A Level 4.5 out of 5 Info Activism Campaign
An example of one of the most difficult projects to replicate—with a level of difficulty rated at 4.5 out of 5—is offered in a detailed case study of how to use complex data to inspire action. Fair Play, Slovakia developed a website that gathers information on how the Slovakian government spends its money, to whom it awards contracts, and data on connections between the companies awarded contracts and the government officials. Zuzana Wienk from Fair Play says, “We learned that contracts were given to companies that are closely connected to the government’s leaders. Soon after doing this, NGOs, journalists, concerned citizens and academics started to analyze the data themselves and write about it. There were very active forums based on these articles. This made us feel it was important to include the public in these investigations.” Fair Play involved an intensive programming and technical phase that might be beyond the resources of many grassroots groups, but it had enormous reach. During the Slovakian funding scandal, the Fair Play website was one of the top three most visited in Slovakia. The Fair Play alliance now offers a unique opportunity for NGOs to receive free database software, provided they can cover translation, transfer and training costs.

These are just two examples from the many informative, illuminating and inspiring case studies presented within 10 Tactics.

A 10 Tactics Contributor’s View of the Project
Sam Gregory, program director at international human rights and video organization Witness, participated in the camp and is featured in the 10 Tactics video. I asked Gregory how he characterized the strength of the 10 Tactics approach. “Diversity,” he replied. “Participation at the camp was so varied, and it drew on local activism examples.” On his return to New York following the camp, he demonstrated his commitment to the movement by representing the film in three panel events at the Open Society Institute; Coup, a space for a coalition of activists and teachers, designers and technologists based in Brooklyn; and at The Tank performing arts space, hosted by Organizing 2.0 and Grass Roots Camp.

The panel screenings of 10 Tactics around the world are conceived to engage local activists and reground the project in local activist movements. Gregory cites the Coup screening as an example of this strategy. “The best part about this event was the 60-minute session after the film where we broke into small groups to discuss the examples in the film and how local social justice activists might apply them in their work.”

Gregory also describes how he is now using the 10 Tactics resources in his work. “It’s been really valuable in a teaching context; as well as using it in Witness trainings, I have also used it in a class that I teach at the Harvard Kennedy Carr Center for Human Rights. It gets a great response from students.”

I left Gregory with a question I had been itching to ask: Out of the ten, which is his favorite tactic? “Well, that’s tough!” he responded. “Obviously I advocate for video-based approaches, but I’d have to say that the mapping and visualization of complex data is powerful. Often in campaigns there is too much data, not too little, and mapping can be a very effective tactic.”

I am inspired by all that I’ve learned from this collective, and keen to start using the 10 Tactics material in my own work. I teach a class at The Jacob Burns Film Center Media Arts Lab called Reel Change for Nonprofits, a course that teaches nonprofit leaders, staff, board members, volunteers, and activists how to create their own advocacy videos. In the fall I will be enrolling a new group of activists for this class and I will also be offering a new class, Reel ExChange for Nonprofits. I can’t wait to start using 10 Tactics in my work, and I am confident that as soon as you see what this resource offers you will join the growing legions of film-for-change practitioners and educators to harness the power of info activism.

Theresa Dawson is a film-for-change practitioner and instructor as well as a faculty member at the Jacob Burns Film Center Media Arts Lab. The Media Arts lab is a 27,000 square feet facility based in Westchester, NY that houses a fully-equipped sound stage, recording studio, workshop space, screening room, and 16 editing suites. The Media Arts Lab mission is to transform what it is to be media literate in a world where digital media is increasingly the way we participate in community, and engage in democracy and the global economy.

Personal Democracy Forum: Rethinking Nonprofits

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Personal Democracy Forum: Rethinking Nonprofits

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How Many Free Agents Does It Take To Change A Nonprofit Fortress?

How Many Free Agents Does It Take To Change A Nonprofit Fortress?

Personal Democracy Forum 2010 presentation: Rethinking Nonprofits by Beth Kanter and Allison Fine
http://www.bethkanter.org/lightbulb-fortress-freeagent

Intro: Beth Kanter.
Allison Fine and I are honored to be delivering a conversational keynote at the Personal Democracy Forum today in New York City. Our session is part of a series brief talks that look at the future in a networked age. Our topic is rethinking nonprofits in a networked age. It just so happens that Allison Fine and I wrote a book together over the past year, The Networked Nonprofit, on that topic.

There has been an explosion in size of nonprofit sector over last twenty years, huge increases in donations and number of organizations, and yet needle hasn’t moved on any serious social issue. Growing individual institutions ever larger has failed to address complex social problems that outpace the capacity of any individual org. or institution to solve them.

That is why we feel passionately that nonprofits need to become more like networks and leverage the power of social media and connectedness. That was the inspiration for the book and the title, “The Networked Nonprofit.”

Making the shift from working as a single organization to one that works in a networked way both inside and outside of institutional walls is not a one-step process. Many organizations cannot just flip a switch. It isn’t as easy to change as changing a light blub. In the book, we offer a 12 step framework to guide nonprofits on how to embrace social media holistically. In our research, we found that some nonprofits are born as naturally networked nonprofits and have it in their DNA. While other nonprofits, institutions that have been working in a particular way for decades, have more challenges in making the change. Some will probably never change.

We believe that Networked Nonprofits first have to be, before they can do. The being includes:

Understanding social networks through social network analysis
Creating a social culture at your nonprofit
Listening, Engaging, and Valuing relationships
Becoming more transparent, less of a fortress
Simplicity, letting go, focusing on what you do best and network the rest
Once an organization has assumed this way of being, then comes the doing. Networked Nonprofits are masters at:

Working with “Free Agent” fundraisers
Working effectively with crowds
Rapid experimentation and learning
Friending and funding
Networked Governance
The framing our discussion is the question, “How Many Free Agents Does It Take To Change A Nonprofit Fortress?” is not just a play on those light blub jokes. We’d like to focus on the challenges that some nonprofits have working with free agents. But first, let’s define the terms “Free Agents” and “Fortress.”

A free agents are powerful social change players. A free agent, as we are defining it, is a person (many times a GenY, but not always) who is a passionate about a social cause, but is working outside of a nonprofit organization to organize, mobilize, raise money, and engage with others. Free agents are also fluent in social media and take advantage of the social media toolset to do everything organizations have always done, but outside of institutional walls. Some times they go on to form their own nonprofits like Amanda Rose and Manny Hernandez.


In the book, we talk about three different models for transparency and nonprofits. The least transparent is one that we’ve dubbed the Fortresses. These institutions work hard to keep their communities and constituents at a distance, pushing out messages and dictating strategy rather than listening or building relationships. Fortress organizations are losing ground today because they spend an extraordinary amount of energy fearing what might happen if they open themselves up to the world. These organizations are floundering in this set-me-free world powered by social media and free agents.



We’ve been witnessing Free Agents crash into nonprofit Fortresses – not even getting past the gate. We think this is a lost opportunity.

It happened in April at our NTEN/NTC session on the Networked Nonprofit right before our eyes in a room filled with people from nonprofits and Shawn, a passionate free agent fundraiser and video blogger. (You might know Shawn from his “Uncultured” project – I first encountered him in 2008 through Blog Action Day.)

Shawn’s frustration with traditional organizations spilled over. He grabbed the microphone to address the room full of nonprofit professionals and said, “the problem isn’t social media, the problem is that YOU are the fortress. Social media is not my problem: I have over a quarter million followers on Twitter, 10,800 subscribers on YouTube, and 2.1 million views. Yet, despite that, I have a hard time having you guys take me seriously.”

He turned and pointed a finger at Wendy Harman from the Red Cross who was also in the room and said, “When the Haiti earthquake struck, I contacted the Red Cross. I offered to connect the community supporting my work with your efforts in Haiti. But I was dismissed as ‘just a guy on YouTube.” A few hours later he wrote a blog post titled “You Are The Fortress!” to further vent.

Crash, Bam, Glass Smashing ….. but the story didn’t end here. Something amazing happened. Wendy Harman engaged with Shawn in the comments of his post and later by phone or email. Shawn wrote a second blog about his meeting with Red Cross and applauded them for taking the step to explore ways to work together. The title of this post is “Unfortress”


This morning Shawn shared some more thoughts about how to engage free agents from his perspective. So, I leave you with the questions we are posing to the audience at the PDF conference:

What is your experience turning Fortresses inside/out? What works?
Should we try to change free agents or just let them be?
Answer these questions in the form of a light bulb joke in comment (include your email address) and you’ll be entered into a raffle for a copy of the Networked Nonprofit.

Tags: crash, fortress, pdf2010, shawn admed, uncultured

lost

Latest from Lost blog:

This post first showed up on DarkUFO as someone claiming to be from Bad Robot. I don’t think that there is any credence to that claim, but his take how everything fits together is intriguing.

I don't think this guy worked on the show either -- a writer would presumably not spell blatant as 'blatent'!

This view is certainly less nihilistic than my take-- that the characters Jack encounters on the island are constructs / stand-ins for his own father issues --from Ben to Locke to Sawyer, Hurley, Sun etc and that the island adventures represent Jack working through his daddy issues as he himself is dying. This take makes a nonsense of the sideways-world church scene that many fans enjoyed because it gave the opportunity to say an emotional goodbye to the characters and it offered a redemptive message that in death you reconnect with those who are most important to you. In the nihilistic view, the sideways world church scene is meaningless because it represents Jack reconnecting with people who were fictions of his own imagination. This also means our emotional response to this scene is built on nothing –we are being called on to feel emotional about characters who are in fact constructs of Jack’s imagination, and this may represent the writers’ final joke on the audience – to buy off the Lost audience with a fake emotion for characters who had no existence other than in Jack’s head and to refuse to solve the 6 years of puzzles that the Lost world presented: which again had no meaning other than as a pre-death dream.


Good stuff on here! I can finally throw in my two cents! I’ve had to bite my tongue for far too long. Also, hopefully I can answer some of John’s questions about Dharma and the “pointless breadcrumbs” that really, weren’t so pointless …

First …
The Island:

It was real. Everything that happened on the island that we saw throughout the 6 seasons was real. Forget the final image of the plane crash, it was put in purposely to f*&k with people’s heads and show how far the show had come. They really crashed. They really survived. They really discovered Dharma and the Others. The Island keeps the balance of good and evil in the world. It always has and always will perform that role. And the Island will always need a “Protector”. Jacob wasn’t the first, Hurley won’t be the last. However, Jacob had to deal with a malevolent force (MIB) that his mother, nor Hurley had to deal with. He created the devil and had to find a way to kill him — even though the rules prevented him from actually doing so.

Thus began Jacob’s plan to bring candidates to the Island to do the one thing he couldn’t do. Kill the MIB. He had a huge list of candidates that spanned generations. Yet everytime he brought people there, the MIB corrupted them and caused them to kill one another. That was until Richard came along and helped Jacob understand that if he didn’t take a more active role, then his plan would never work.

Enter Dharma — which I’m not sure why John is having such a hard time grasping. Dharma, like the countless scores of people that were brought to the island before, were brought there by Jacob as part of his plan to kill the MIB. However, the MIB was aware of this plan and interferred by “corrupting” Ben. Making Ben believe he was doing the work of Jacob when in reality he was doing the work of the MIB. This carried over into all of Ben’s “off-island” activities. He was the leader. He spoke for Jacob as far as they were concerned. So the “Others” killed Dharma and later were actively trying to kill Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley and all the candidates because that’s what the MIB wanted. And what he couldn’t do for himself.

Dharma was originally brought in to be good. But was turned bad by MIB’s corruption and eventually destroyed by his pawn Ben. Now, was Dharma only brought there to help Jack and the other Canditates on their overall quest to kill Smokey? Or did Jacob have another list of Canidates from the Dharma group that we were never aware of? That’s a question that is purposley not answered because whatever answer the writers came up with would be worse than the one you come up with for yourself. Still … Dharma’s purpose is not “pointless” or even vague. Hell, it’s pretty blantent.

Still, despite his grand plan, Jacob wanted to give his “candidates” (our Lostaways) the one thing he, nor his brother, were ever afforded: free will. Hence him bringing a host of “candidates” through the decades and letting them “choose” which one would actually do the job in the end. Maybe he knew Jack would be the one to kill Flocke and that Hurley would be the protector in the end. Maybe he didn’t. But that was always the key question of the show: Fate vs Free-will. Science vs Faith. Personally I think Jacob knew from the beginning what was going to happen and that everyone played a part over 6 seasons in helping Jack get to the point where he needed to be to kill Smokey and make Hurley the protector — I know that’s how a lot of the writers viewed it. But again, they won’t answer that (nor should they) because that ruins the fun.

In the end, Jack got to do what he always wanted to do from the very first episode of the show: Save his fellow Lostaways. He got Kate and Sawyer off the island and he gave Hurley the purpose in life he’d always been missing. And, in Sideways world (which we’ll get to next) he in fact saved everyone by helping them all move on …

Now…

Sideways World:

Sideways world is where it gets really cool in terms of theology and metaphysical discussion (for me at least — because I love history/religion theories and loved all the talks in the writer’s room about it). Basically what the show is proposing is that we’re all linked to certain people during our lives. Call them soulmates (though it’s not exactly the best word). But these people we’re linked to are with us duing “the most important moments of our lives” as Christian said. These are the people we move through the universe with from lifetime to lifetime. It’s loosely based in Hinduisim with large doses of western religion thrown into the mix.

The conceit that the writers created, basing it off these religious philosophies, was that as a group, the Lostaways subconsciously created this “sideways” world where they exist in purgatory until they are “awakened” and find one another. Once they all find one another, they can then move on and move forward. In essence, this is the show’s concept of the afterlife. According to the show, everyone creates their own “Sideways” purgatory with their “soulmates” throughout their lives and exist there until they all move on together. That’s a beautiful notion. Even if you aren’t religious or even spirtual, the idea that we live AND die together is deeply profound and moving.

It’s a really cool and spirtual concept that fits the whole tone and subtext the show has had from the beginning. These people were SUPPOSED to be together on that plane. They were supposed to live through these events — not JUST because of Jacob. But because that’s what the universe or God (depending on how religious you wish to get) wanted to happen. The show was always about science vs faith — and it ultimately came down on the side of faith. It answered THE core question of the series. The one question that has been at the root of every island mystery, every character backstory, every plot twist. That, by itself, is quite an accomplishment.

How much you want to extrapolate from that is up to you as the viewer. Think about season 1 when we first found the Hatch. Everyone thought that’s THE answer! Whatever is down there is the answer! Then, as we discovered it was just one station of many. One link in a very long chain that kept revealing more, and more of a larger mosiac.

But the writer’s took it even further this season by contrasting this Sideways “purgatory” with the Island itself. Remember when Michael appeared to Hurley, he said he was not allowed to leave the Island. Just like the MIB. He wasn’t allowed into this sideways world and thus, was not afforded the opportunity to move on. Why? Because he had proven himself to be unworthy with his actions on the Island. He failed the test. The others, passed. They made it into Sideways world when they died — some before Jack, some years later. In Hurley’s case, maybe centuries later. They exist in this sideways world until they are “awakened” and they can only move on TOGETHER because they are linked. They are destined to be together for eternity. That was their destiny.

They were NOT linked to Anna Lucia, Daniel, Roussou, Alex, Miles, Lupidis, (and all the rest who weren’t in the chuch — basically everyone who wasn’t in season 1). Yet those people exist in Sideways world. Why? Well again, here’s where they leave it up to you to decide. The way I like to think about it, is that those people who were left behind in Sideways world have to find their own soulmates before they can wake up. It’s possible that those links aren’t people from the island but from their other life (Anna’s parnter, the guy she shot — Roussou’s husband, etc etc).

A lot of people have been talking about Ben and why he didn’t go into the Church. And if you think of Sideways world in this way, then it gives you the answer to that very question. Ben can’t move on yet because he hasn’t connected with the people he needs to. It’s going to be his job to awaken Roussou, Alex, Anna Lucia (maybe), Ethan, Goodspeed, his father and the rest. He has to attone for his sins more than he did by being Hurley’s number two. He has to do what Hurley and Desmond did for our Lostaways with his own people. He has to help them connect. And he can only move on when all the links in his chain are ready to. Same can be said for Faraday, Charlotte, Whidmore, Hawkins etc. It’s really a neat, and cool concept. At least to me.

But, from a more “behind the scenes” note: the reason Ben’s not in the church, and the reason no one is in the church but for Season 1 people is because they wrote the ending to the show after writing the pilot. And never changed it. The writers always said (and many didn’t believe them) that they knew their ending from the very first episode. I applaud them for that. It’s pretty fantastic. Originally Ben was supposed to have a 3 episode arc and be done. But he became a big part of the show. They could have easily changed their ending and put him in the church — but instead they problem solved it. Gave him a BRILLIANT moment with Locke outside the church … and then that was it. I loved that. For those that wonder — the original ending started the moment Jack walked into the church and touches the casket to Jack closing his eyes as the other plane flies away. That was always JJ’s ending. And they kept it.

For me the ending of this show means a lot. Not only because I worked on it, but because as a writer it inspired me in a way the medium had never done before. I’ve been inspired to write by great films. Maybe too many to count. And there have been amazing TV shows that I’ve loved (X-Files, 24, Sopranos, countless 1/2 hour shows). But none did what LOST did for me. None showed me that you could take huge risks (writing a show about faith for network TV) and stick to your creative guns and STILL please the audience. I learned a lot from the show as a writer. I learned even more from being around the incredible writers, producers, PAs, interns and everyone else who slaved on the show for 6 years.

In the end, for me, LOST was a touchstone show that dealt with faith, the afterlife, and all these big, spirtual questions that most shows don’t touch. And to me, they never once waivered from their core story — even with all the sci-fi elements they mixed in. To walk that long and daunting of a creative tightrope and survive is simply astounding.