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...World Pulse's recent Girls Transform the World campaign invited girls and women to identify, share and reflect on barriers to girls' education and to propose solutions. World Pulse received hundreds of responses from some 60 countries, including from repressive societies where girls’ stories often go untold.
The community shared stories about the effects of education policies, child marriage and pregnancy, security and school facilities. In addition to creating an active discussion inside the community, World Pulse aggregated and organized 350 stories and gave them to delegates of the G(irls)20 Summit, who then delivered the communiqué to the G20 summit.IJNet recently spoke with World Pulse Digital Action Campaign Manager Leana Mayzlina and Content Coordinator Kim Crane, and came away with these tips for engaging a community...
A study of the social network behind the Occupy movement shows that the most vocal participants were highly connected before the protests began but have now largely lost interest, say social network researchers....
The Occupy Wall Street movement began in September 2011 as a grass roots protest against the inequality, greed and corruption associated with the financial sector of the economy. The movement adopted the slogan: ”We are the 99%” which refers to the distribution of wealth in the US between the richest 1 per cent and the rest.
What was extraordinary about this movement was the speed with which it spread, passing rapidly between communities via social media and Twitter in particular.So an interesting question is how this movement became so big, so quickly and what has happened since to the most active participants....
An Exxon parody Twitter account is tweeting fake public relations updates about the oil company's ruptured Pegasus pipeline, which spilled at least 84,000 gallons of heavy crude oil into residential streets in Mayflower, Ark., last week. The account was inspired by @BPGlobalPR, a fake BP account that attracted tens of thousands of followers after the infamous Deepwater Horizon blowout. (The real BP Twitter account, @BP_America, has just 52,000 followers, compared with the parody account's 145,000.) Though it only began tweeting Tuesday, the parody Exxon account @ExxonCares has garnered more than 600 followers and has sent tweets mocking the company's response to the spill. ExxonMobil has more than 34,000 real Twitter followers....
Hacktivism, as practiced under the name Anonymous, is about public relations opportunism and any organisation could become a target if a political rationale can be retro-fitted to the attack, according to a leading web security researcher. "In hacktivism it's all about the PR impact," Tal Be'ery, web security research team leader at Imperva's Application Defense Center (ADC), told CSO Online. "It doesn't matter to the press whether a really significant site was taken down, DDoSed or whatever. It's all about being successful, no matter what." From a PR point of view, the specifics of how the hacktivist affects the target don't matter. Whatever happens, the hack will generate media coverage for the cause....
I've always been tempted to play with IABC's tagline, "Be Heard." Do we business communicators really want to be the noise makers and talking heads? Or do we rather want to be the 'inside voice' of business strategy? That’s why when I first began paying attention to the ’Occupy” movement (OWS and its franchises Occupy Oakland, Occupy Denver, Occupy Phoenix etc) I argued that we shouldn’t be too hasty to think of them as a fringe movement craving just to be heard. Hard to pigeon hole, it was too easy to dismiss them because they didn’t fit the model of activist movements. I was reminded of something innovators have reminded us from time to time. Disruptive ideas do not stem from existing templates. Marshall McLuhan put it well when he observed “I don’t know who discovered water, but it wasn’t a fish.” Watching OWS evolve, it is interesting to see how they are inventing a new template for being heard. Make that being taken seriously. They may be leaderless, but have found ways to have their own media team, financial system, and trademark bids. And I don’t mean media in the way we tend to think of it -the kind that come with a lens, a ‘like’ button, or segmented followers....
The Times and NPR distance themselves from freelancers accused of getting too close to protests. Conservatives looking to delegitimize the Occupy Wall Street protests have a new tactic — targeting journalists. The criticisms are a kind of conservative twofer, allowing them to hit old targets like NPR and The New York Times by raising questions about their objectivity, while at the same time undermining the grass-roots claims of the new protest movement by suggesting it has professional help — or at least professional cheerleaders....
‘Occupy Wall Street’ teaches PR lessons — and risks of rushing to judgment Walking past the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protest in New York City, as I did last week, it would be easy to dismiss its relatively small size, incoherent message, and messengers who (for the most part) don’t look and sound like mainstream America. To do so would be a mistake. There’s a level of public relations sophistication at work here that could have unpredictable consequences. Case in point: following the October 1st arrests of some 700 protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge, a PR battle ensued...
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Why are social networks powerful tools for causes and campaigns? Many times, people begin to engage in activism only after they’ve been attracted by the fun stuff in a campaign — connecting with old friends and sharing photos, for example. When they witness others participating, they’ll be more likely to join the cause. With socializing as the primary draw, it’s become easier for organizers to attract more and more unlikely activists through social media.
But once a campaign reaches its critical mass, activists might think about moving to other platforms made with their needs — especially digital security — in mind. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter will remain standard fare for online activism. But the time is right for niche-oriented startups to create tools that can supplement these platforms. Here are a few worth investigating....
... You may have heard of Matthew Keys. He’s a journalist who was indicted by the Department of Justice (DoJ) for allegedly “giving hackers access to the servers of his former employer, the Tribune Company. Tribune owns the Los Angeles Times, which the Anonymous hacker subsequently defaced.” Keys was also, until recently, the social media editor for Reuters. After being let go today, he shared the news organization’s Twitter guidelines – and they demonstrate the dangers of combining personal and professional tweets online. In a blog post, Keys shares reasons why Reuters was mad at him (and fired him) and that list includes the following: "Reuters said it had a problem with the perceived relationship between my Twitter account and their news organization. A Reuters manager said it was troublesome that several people associated my work on Twitter with the company, pointing to my Twitter bio that said I was a Reuters journalist. Reuters’ Twitter Guidelines, which you can read here, states that Reuters journalists are always expected to identify themselves as such"....
Never underestimate the influence of two Mommy bloggers and the power of online activism. A recent online petition at Change.org, has gathered more than 278,000 supporters protesting against food dyes added to several popular Kraft macaroni and cheese products....
Four possible futures for a movement built through successful public relations This week’s media stories are filled with speculation about the future of the international movement ignited by the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ demonstrations in September. The question is a compelling one: has the protest movement passed its peak, or does it have a ‘second act?’ It’s easy to see the media’s interest in this question; the narrative of rise, setback and either downfall or comeback is a familiar one — not just in news but also in literature and film. And setbacks often involve flashpoints — such as the tragic death of a Vancouver protestor last weekend. Such incidents, along with colder weather across the northern hemisphere, will give rise to debates about whether authorities should work toward an orderly shutdown....
Hacker group says in a new video it will take down the network's Web site on November 5 for what it calls biased coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protests. The group said it is targeting the network for what it called biased news coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protests occurring in cities across the country. The network's "continued right-wing, conservative propaganda against the occupations" is the group's catalyst for its intention of "destroying the Fox News Web site," a digitally generated voice on the video explains. "Since they will not stop belittling the occupiers, we will simply shut them down."...
I finally made it to Occupy Wall Street on Tuesday and had a chance to see for myself what's going on. My conclusion: almost everything the media told me about the protest is wrong. Based on my observations, here's what I consider the Top Ten Myths About Occupy Wall Street....
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Excellent case study in community engagement, nonprofit PR and activism...