Using technology to organise

Using Technology to Organise

A guide for trade union activists from Union Solidarity International

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Contents Introduction New Technology, politics and society 1. Some political and communications principles 2. The context: crisis of capitalism and attacks on workers 3. The need for alternate and social media to tell our story 4. Will the internet set us free? Myths and realities of the social media revolution 5. The rise of the Facebook disciplinary 6. Security, Surveillance and protecting yourself online Effective communications and campaigns 7. Theory of Change 8. Constructing a narrative 9. The viral effect 10. Winning the PR war 11. Designing a campaign Knowing your tools 12. Email 13. Text messaging and phone banking 14. Facebook 15. Twitter 16. Google+ 17. Other social networks 18. Building a website 19. Writing for the web 20. Using YouTube and video channels 21. Creating and distributing podcasts 3

22. Web conferencing and VoIP 23. Advertising 24. Using Free and Open Source Software Conclusion 25. Further reading

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Written for USi by Walton Pantland

1. Introduction

There is a lot of hype about new technology and social change. Facebook and Twitter were cited as being instrumental in the Arab Spring, as well as Occupy, the UK student protests, the Scottish independence referendum and a host of other movements – but how influential is this new technology? And what is the best way to use it?

Is it a game changer? Will it make a permanent difference to our activism? Will it tilt the balance of power in our favour, and allow us to make a lasting, positive change to the world? Or will it propel us into a nightmare world of total surveillance and control?

This guide will seek to answer these questions, as well as giving practical advice on the best way to use these technologies.

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Section 1 New Technology, politics and society

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Some political and communications principles This guide aims to empower trade union activists – whether reps or lay members – to use social media to campaign for change. The movement needs diverse voices and grassroots activism if it is to survive and grow. However, there is sometimes a clash between what your union has an official, democratic mandate to say, and what you would like to express from the heat of the picket line.

We encourage you to think carefully about how you use social media, to protect yourself and your union from people who would love a new angle of attack. Work as closely as possible with your union’s official structures, and don’t contradict the messages that come out – that will confuse and dishearten people. Your union has a communications department that has a democratic mandate to communicate policy, analysis and news to members, the media and the wider public.

The people working in this department are professionals, and the communications strategy is approved by the union’s democratic structures. As a union activist, it is not your role to challenge this, or attempt to replace it.

However, it is often difficult for union communicators to capture the full flavour of life at the workplace. Also, information coming directly from activists and not people in the union office has real credibility and authenticity.

People spend thousands paying PR companies to fake “authenticity”. You have a real, lived experience that money can’t buy. You are the expert at what is going on in your workplace, branch or community. It is important that you develop a way to communicate this effectively.

Workplace activists should develop media strategies too. Using the principles in this manual, you can develop and target messages that will make your campaigns more effective. This works best within a network of activists - including those in other unions and the community. You can reinforce each other’s campaigns and support each other. Ideally, every union branch should have a communications officer, trained in different forms of media and responsible for ecommunications.

When you establish an online presence, don’t expect the viral effect overnight. Be consistent and patient. It takes a while to establish a presence and credibility.

Being safe at work Trade unionists are seeing a growing trend in cases of people disciplined or dismissed for comments made on social media, typically Facebook or Twitter. We suggest that you are very careful about identifying your employer by name in any social media.

Also be aware that accessing social media from work, using your employers’ servers, is not secure, and may be a dismissible offence. Your employer can read any of the emails you send from your company email address.

Please take care!

The context – why we need to use social media The world faces a number of acute crises at the moment, intersectional and interlocking. These include the ongoing financial crisis (which is a system-wide crisis related to the floundering of 7

capitalism itself), environmental crisis, the crisis of political representation and fresh manifestations of war and terror.

The mainstream media is owned and controlled by big corporations and doesn’t provide an adequate view of what is happening in the world – much less what can be done about it. The voices of the rich and powerful dominate. The news cycle also means that actions are divorced from consequence, and little context is provided to explain why things are the way they are.

Social media allows a wider diversity of online voices. It gives us the space to tell our own stories in our own words, and also learn about other people’s struggles without the mediation of the mainstream media.

Crisis of capitalism It is clear that the system of capitalist accumulation is in crisis. Whether this crisis is terminal or can be reformed into something more sustainable depends on your political and economic views: Marxists like David Harvey1 see this crisis as final and permanent: we are witnessing the death throes of capitalism, and it is becoming increasingly unequal and authoritarian as it collapses; those in the Keynesian tradition, including Michael Hudson and James K Galbraith, argue that neoliberalism has derailed the system, and suggest ways to bring it back under control. This largely amounts to “recycling excess capital” – in other words, taking the obscene wealth generated by the elite and investing it back in communities and the lives of real people. The primary mechanisms for this are higher progressive taxes (those who earn more pay more), and higher wages.

Whatever your view, it is clear that a financial crisis has become a political crisis. As elites shore up the collapsing edifice of their system, the veneer of democracy is slipping from many societies.

Ordinary people are seeing their living standards decline and social services under attack as we are made to pay for this crisis.

The neoliberal assault Unions face unprecedented attacks from employers and right wing governments across the world.

We face our biggest challenge for a generation. There is a concerted assault on all the conditions we have won, especially the social democratic reforms won after the Second World War. The global financial crisis unleashed shock doctrine 2 capitalism that aims to fundamentally undermine the rights and conditions of working people, and oversee a massive transfer of wealth and power to the elite. There is an ideological attack on trade unions and the public sector. The right have managed to shift the blame for the financial crisis from the banks to public sector workers and welfare programmes. The result is that even people who are sympathetic to unions will often say we need to be “realistic” in the “current economic climate”.

To challenge this, we need to take the union narrative to the public, and tell our story in clear,

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See Harvey, David, The Enigma of Capital: And the Crises of Capitalism, Profile Books 2010

2 The Shock Doctrine is a term coined by Naomi Klein in her book by the same name. It refers to using crisis – wars, recessions and natural disasters – to force through extremist neoliberal policies that would not be accepted in normal times. She theorises that in crisis, the population is too bewildered to mount an effective opposition, and politicians take advantage of this.

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simple language.

Building an alternative narrative - the public relations war We are assailed from all directions with the view that austerity is necessary: the reason for the financial crisis is, we are told, excessive spending on public services. Nominally independent media sources such as the BBC, and even those that claim a progressive tradition, such as the Guardian, do little to challenge this view.

An anti-union editorial in The Guardian3. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

The right wing media – which dominates a lot of discourse – is worse. We are encouraged to focus on scapegoats: immigrants, “shirkers”, single mothers.

Most of us have a sense that this is false, but the relentless onslaught of this falsehood from all corners is difficult to resist. To challenge this, unions and progressive organisations need to develop an alternative narrative – a different story to tell about what is happening in the world. It isn’t enough to oppose this or that cut, or to express solidarity with a distant struggle. We need to tell the story of a complex and multifaceted international resistance movement that is comprehensible to ordinary people, and gives them easy ways to engage and get involved.

We don’t have the money, but we have the numbers. How do we mobilise? The elite have resources, but we have integrity and values.

The Resistance There is an alternative: in the post-war era, despite dire economic circumstances created by the destruction of warfare, Europe was able to create its welfare states, while the US entered its golden age. Newly independent former colonies in Africa and Asia saw strong economic growth in the decades before structural adjustment programmes decimated them. The issue facing us is ideological, not economic.

We are not going to let them get away with this; and across the world we are fighting back: through renewed and reinvigorated union structures, but also in new forms, such as Occupy, the 3

See http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/20/trade-unions-leading-nowhere

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Indignados4 and YoSoy1325. Around the world, the social democratic parties that provided reform through parliament are losing credibility, and working people are returning to the streets and shop floor to defend their conditions.

Much of the media is controlled or heavily influenced by right wing ideologies, and it is difficult to make our voices heard above the relentless calls for cuts. New technology, with its networking potential, can help us to bypass the traditional media and speak directly to people.

How can technology help us in this? How will it hinder us?

The right seems determined to finish what Thatcher and Reagan started, and to decimate the public sector and the unions. To survive in this climate, we need to build the broadest possible coalition against austerity and articulate a new vision for society. To do this, we need to communicate with each other, to share ideas and build alliances. We need to use every tool in our arsenal – and new media provides plenty of useful tools.

An few years ago, you needed a certain amount of technical expertise to use new technologies for instance, to create a website you needed to be able to code HTML, understand Internet infrastructure and so on. However, the development of web 2.0 has changed this. Easy to edit, dynamic and participative content can be created by just about anyone with a computer and Internet connection. This opens up a whole new world of communication for trade union activists for the first time, we can develop our own web presence and communicate directly with each other.

Smart phones, like iPhone, Android and BlackBerry mean we can have web 2.0 technology while we’re mobile, too.

All you need to mobilise is a mobile!

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The Indignados are a movement that started in Spain as a rejection of all political parties and organised groups YoSoy132 grew out of the Mexican student movement as a response to government corruption

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Will the internet set us free? Myths and realities of the social media revolution The idea that new communications technology could play a massive role in social revolution really captured the popular imagination during the Iranian uprising of 2009. Up until then, social media like Facebook and Twitter was seen as ephemeral and frivolous, something for teenagers, and people who wanted to tell the world what they’d had for breakfast.

Suddenly, Twitter became the best way to get the news out of Iran. Twitter users around the world changed their location details to Tehran in solidarity, and people waited with baited breath for news and images from the streets. Iranian activists used twitter to communicate with each other and with the outside world. Activists and allies around the world were glued to their computers and smart phones, following the blow-by-blow suppression of the uprising. Suddenly we realised that social media could track political change in a way that was direct and unmediated.

Activists could talk directly to each other, in real time. The possibilities for solidarity were astounding.

A similar process was observed during the Arab Spring: Wael Ghonim 6, for example writes about setting up the Facebook page for the 25 January movement that shook Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, and lead to the fall of Mubarak.

Technology was also used in the UK in 2011 by the students’ movement, as well as by Occupy, the Indignados and YoSoy132. Occupy still holds global meetings by online conference call using a service called Mumble7. Many activists communicate and plan action using IRC8.

One of the most encouraging developments has been the outbreak of solidarity. For instance, when union activists in Wisconsin in the US occupied the state senate to protest the removal of collective bargaining, activists in Egypt went online and ordered pizzas which were delivered to them. Small acts of solidarity like this are hugely encouraging to people in struggle.

Cyber-utopians vs Cyber-dystopians The important question this raises is whether technology caused these uprisings, or merely helped to publicise them.

There is no definitive answer to this. Techno-determinists argue that technology fundamentally shifts the balance of power, and that politics will never be the same again. Their opponents argue that digital activism is a thin veneer that masks older forms of power that remain unchallenged.

We will look at the essential arguments on both sides of the debate, and allow you to make up your own mind. By evaluating both sides, we can develop good practice and avoid common pitfalls.

In the cyber-utopian corner we have people like Clay Shirky, who argues in Here Comes Everybody that mass collaboration changes everything: we are able to crowdsource ideas, politics and solutions to problems. Peer to peer theorists take his ideas even further: they argue that peer

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Revolution 2.0, Wael Ghonim Mumble is free, open source software that allows users to participate in online teleconferences by logging in to a server.

IRC, or Internet Relay Chat, is a technology from the early days of the internet that is still widely used by hackers and technology activists.

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production, enabled by technology, is a new mode of production9 in the Marxist sense. They claim that new methods of working and interacting, facilitated by technology, give us the tools we need to build a better world.

On the other side we have Evgeny Morozov, who plays the role of a pessimistic Eeyore to the wild enthusiasm of the utopians. In The Net Delusion, he argues that technology allows the state and corporations to monitor and control us in an unprecedented way; our sense of freedom through technology is essentially a delusion.

So who is right?

Both sides make good points. The opportunities outlined by the utopians are worth understanding and aspiring too, but Morozov’s cautions are real and very valid. A good approach is probably cautious optimism: a realisation that technology provides lots of opportunities that must be embraced, but serious dangers too. If we know what the dangers are, we can do a lot to avoid them.

Science Fiction writer Cory Doctorow 10 does a good job of finding the middle ground. In his novel For the Win, he describes sweatshops in Asia where teenagers work to build up credit in online games which they can sell to players in the West. Fed up with being exploited, they form a union online and in the games they play. When local textile workers go on strike, they work together and form an alliance between the old and new proletariat. In Little Brother and Homeland, Doctorow deals specifically with security issues.

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In Marxist theory, a Mode of Production refers to the way wealth is created in society. It refers to a combination of people, tools and relationships, for instance who controls and owns factories, land and so on. For more info http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_of_production 10 Cory Doctorow’s novels are available to download free on his website: http://craphound.com/?cat=5

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The Rise of Clicktivism

A typical Avaaz petition A number of new organisations have embraced the power of social media for activism. The most famous of these are probably Avaaz, Change.org, 38 Degrees, and Sum of Us. Some sites allow you to create your own petitions and share them. Others are created by staff. When some one signs a petition, they are added to a database. The next time an issue comes up that needs support, everyone on the database is contacted and asked to sign the petition. Amnesty International does something similar by text message.

With more than 27 million participants, Avaaz is the most successful. These sites are successful because they make activism so easy: once you “join” Avaaz by creating an account, you can add your name to a petition, and share it on Twitter and Facebook with one click.

It’s wonderful that Avaaz has managed to engage so many people, but the jury is out on how successful this form of activism is. The most important criticism is probably that it’s not very deep: a click doesn’t require much commitment, so you are getting shallow engagement at best. Shallow engagement is not enough to seriously challenge power and change the world. At worst, it can cause people to disengage because they think they have “done their bit” by clicking, and therefore don’t have to join a picket line on a cold and rainy street.

A further criticism is that it is a passive exercise of power – by signing a petition, you are not taking action yourself, you are asking someone to do something for you.

Another problem is activist fatigue: getting three emails a week from Avaaz with titles like “48 hours to save the honey bee” and “24 hours to save the whale” can put off many less committed activists.

The limits of clicktivism •

Shallow engagement 13

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Passive – asking someone else to do something Not always effective Generates activist fatigue

LabourStart has been practising a form of this for years, by building an email database of trade union activists and inviting them to send protest letters off to companies that are misbehaving.

Generally, LabourStart has been highly successful at mobilising activists and achieving results. It differs from Avaaz in that it mobilise people who are already union activists, so it suffers less from the online/offline divide.

Clicktivism is a useful way of engaging new activists, spreading the word and putting public pressure on powerful figures. However, it is important that it is never seen as a substitute for a serious challenge to power.

Outrage fatigue Clicktivism can generate what we call “outrage fatigue”. A constant stream of daily emails seeking to provoke outrage and mobilise us to take action is exhausting and demoralising. Surely there is a better way to change the world that sitting at a computer screen and clicking?

A book by Evgeny Morozov that criticises shallow engagement

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Political hacking

Hacking is portrayed in the media as something malicious: hackers are people who steal identities and bank account details, breach secure websites and generally cause mayhem online. But what about hackers who specifically hack for political purposes? Anonymous is the most famous example of this, and organise anonymous online mass action. Anonymous’ most important cause is freedom of speech, and access to information. As an online tactic, anonymous action was originally started to challenge the Church of Scientology’s attempts to censor criticism. However, the movement has expanded dramatically since then, and supported activists during the Arab Spring by helping them The movement has moved offline too – Anonymous Guy Fawkes masks are now a common site at demonstrations. What, if anything, is their relationship to the structured campaigns of unions?

Anonymous is very difficult to engage with because it is not an organised group. It has no spokes people, and there is no centralised mechanism for making decisions, and no democratic accountability. However, Anonymous is able to mobilise a lot of people, for aims which are explicitly on the side of people and against structured power.

Anonymous is arguably a new organisational and tactical form, which some people have called swarm organising.

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Organising the swarm

A murmuration of starlings. ©Walter Baxter. Licensed for reuse under Creative Commons.

Swarm theory11 is an idea from biology that proposes that large groups can solve complex problems very efficiently. For instance, ant colonies can quickly find the richest food source, bees choose a new hive or starlings fly in exhilarating patterns.

Individual ants or starlings don’t understand the big picture, they follow simple instructions based on local information. And yet collectively, they are able to perform tasks of stunning complexity.

So what does this mean for our political organising? Can swarm theory be applied to human attempts to change the world? Humans are a lot more complex than ants, and we have competing stimuli pulling us in different directions. Yet when people act in unison, we’re capable of incredible creativity.

Swarm organising mobilises large numbers of people quickly around an issue, without attempting to build a long term structure. Examples include Anonymous, and also UK Uncut. This type of organising – facilitated by new technology – raises two immediate challenges to trade unionists: 1. How do we mobilise people around campaigns that are important to us?

2. How do we ensure that the dynamism of this form of organising isn’t lost?

11 For more information, see Applying Swarm Theory to Networked Union Organising at Cyberunions.org http://cyberunions.org/applying-swarm-theory-to-networked-union-organising/

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The rise of the Facebook disciplinary More and more union activists are finding themselves having to defend members against Facebook (or other social media) disciplinaries. Generally, the member has “brought the company into disrepute” by something they have posted on social media. This often increases during periods of industrial action, and union activists need to be prepared to defend people.

Workers have as much right to be online as anyone else, and it is only natural that people will want to vent some time. Managers often overreact to something quite minor, and it can help to put things in perspective.

Does the company have a clear internet and social media policy? Has this been clearly communicated to staff. In many instances, this is not the case, and the disciplinary can be used to highlight to an employer why having a clear and transparent policy is a good thing.

Employment relations mediation service ACAS provides some guidance here: http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=3375

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Advice to give members on using social media safely for union activism - Adapted from guidance issued by the FBU

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Assume what you write can be read by anyone. Even if your posts are written on private sites, they can be easily reposted elsewhere.

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Imagine saying the same thing to yourself. If you wouldn’t want the same thing said to you, it’s probably not a good idea to say it to others. Don’t swear, be polite, and your arguments will be strengthened.

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Imagine saying the same thing to your boss, friends, spouse or mum. The fact that you are not discussing something face-to-face won’t affect how offensive, unsuitable or unfair your comments will be interpreted.

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Take your time. You should never feel an obligation to respond immediately online.

Everyone balances time at their computer with other activities, so a delay for you to compose your thoughts, calm down and consider the right response is often a good idea.

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Don’t feel obliged to get involved/respond. You are under no obligation to respond to offensive, inaccurate or otherwise irritating claims online, and getting a rise out of you can often be the poster’s objective. Hardly any internet discussions finish with one side conceding they were wrong. Don’t feel obliged to have the last word.

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Ask for help. If something is in real need of correction — particularly if issued in an official capacity by government or other organisation — contact your union reps.

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Never consider yourself anonymous. It does not take a great deal of technical knowledge to trace internet activity back to particular computers, email addresses and ultimately people. If you wouldn’t say something if you could be identified, don’t say it at all.

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Discuss, don’t argue. It may be a fine line, but the aim should be to convince people, particularly third parties to the conversation — not to point score, undermine or otherwise detract from the issues.

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Don’t make enemies without reason. However great our grievances, we are not the only group under attack. It’s a mistake to let us be played off against each other.

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Assume your post will be visible forever. Although websites and social media may have ‘delete’ functions, it is impossible to truly remove the footprint left by a post, and in fact deleting a post can actually draw more attention to it.

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Never be defamatory. You should assume that you will be held legally accountable for anything said online in the same way as if you wrote it in print or said it publicly.

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Check your comments for spelling and grammar before you click send. No one is perfect, particularly online, where content is often submitted very quickly, but grammatical and spelling mistakes will detract from your argument, and will be picked up by those who disagree with you.

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Be particularly careful with photos. Never ever submit a photo online that you wouldn’t be comfortable being seen on the work notice board, in your Christmas card or on a t-shirt.

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Don’t post drunk. This may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how often this leads to trouble.

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Don’t quote people without permission. Your professional and social life may make you party to information that others would be uncomfortable being made public. Don’t quote it without permission.

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Hide unsuitable comments from friends. Social media can create a unique space where your friends, families and colleagues share a single space. Like it or not, you will be judged on posts by your associates. If your friends are being inappropriate, don’t hesitate to hide or remove their activity

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Only befriend or follow people you can trust. Again, you will be judged on the behaviour or your online associates, and your information on social media — such as phone numbers, email addresses and even financial details — can be used for nefarious purposes. Chose your company carefully.

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Familiarise yourself with privacy settings. Remember many social media and website providers allow you to change who has access to your information. Make sure you get to grips with the settings and use them appropriately.

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Don’t post links without reading them. If a post with a seemingly innocuous title turns out to be racist, pornographic or otherwise unpleasant or illegal after you’ve posted it you will be judged accordingly! It is also embarrassing to be told that a link you have posted doesn’t work, as it implies you’re trying to claim credit for finding/understanding it without actually reading it properly.

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Be accurate. There is no shortage of information online, and you can’t trust anything and regurgitate it without checking it’s true. Avoid the temptation to rely on rumour: the fact that your mum’s cousin’s dog’s vet’s sister’s social worker said that government pensions are growing faster than anyone else’s does not make it true. Be factual, concise and clear.

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Be particularly careful at work. The presence of IT at work and the ubiquity of smart phones now mean you can access social media and the full extremes of online content at work or anywhere else. Browser histories, the auto-complete function of web addresses and even calls from internet providers can lead to trouble, and posting while on duty will often be viewed as little different from mouthing off in uniform. If your workplace has an internet policy, read it and follow it, raising any problems or issues with a union rep.

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Surveillance and security

A screenshot from a (poorly designed) NSA PowerPoint on surveillance

Recent revelations that the US National Security Association and the UK GCHQ have been monitoring internet traffic through the PRISM program are worrying for activists. We are being spied on, with the complicity of the major internet companies: Apple, Facebook, Google and others.

Absolutely everything we do online is being monitored: by the security services on one hand, and by tech companies on the other. Tech companies monitor us so they can sell advertising to us, and increasingly work hand in hand with the security services.

This has really important implications for activists. It is not our intention to make you paranoid, because that can be really debilitating. However, we know that even before the rise of social media, companies were colluding with the police and hiring private detectives to create blacklists of union activists, particularly in the construction industry. It’s reasonable to assume some version of the same behaviour is happening now.

It is very difficult to entirely evade surveillance: we would need to keep all our cards, passports and so on in Faraday sleeves (a wallet that blocks RFID frequencies), opt out of all social media, and use encrypted, anonymous email for all communications.

This would make communication so complicated and slow that it would completely undermine our 20

activist work, and we’d still not have guaranteed security. The best way to approach this is to take some simple, reasonable precautions which dramatically increase the cost and difficulty of surveillance. If it takes five minutes to crack an encrypted message, for example, and if thousands of people use encryption, it’s a powerful disincentive, and it stops the security services from hoovering up and categorising data the way they do now.

Here are some useful security precautions you can take.

PGP encrypted emails PGP stands for pretty good privacy. You create a key, which you share with people you trust, and encrypt your emails. It takes a little while to set up, but once it’s done, it’s pretty easy to encrypt or digitally sign everything you send. You need a key management program (it stores the details of your contacts’ encryption keys), and an email program that works with it.

On a desktop computer, Thunderbird is an email program that manages encryption keys. On Android phones, K-9 mail works with APG to manage your keys, making it easy to send secure emails on the move.

TextSecure: install it NOW If you use an Android phone, a simple way to increase your security is to use TextSecure. It’s available on the Play Store, and will encrypt your text messages. It is extremely easy to do and will dramatically increase your security.

ChatSecure and Pidgin/Adium with OTR ChatSecure allows you to have encrypted chat (for instance, Google Chat) on Android and iPhone.

Pidgin or Adium will work on your PC or Mac. Tor browser You can use Tor to encrypt and redirect your browser traffic, making it extremely difficult to track your online activity. The downside of this is that Tor slows down your browsing, so it’s only appropriate for activist work.

Red Phone Red Phone replaces your default dialler on iPhone or Android and encrypts your calls.

Unfortunately it can also affect call quality!

Operating systems You have more security options on Android than on iPhone. If you’re particularly adventurous, you can root your phone and install Cyanogenmod, an open source version of Android that will give you more options to control your phone.

On a desktop, Linux gives more control and security options by default than Windows or Mac. The importance of metadata Metadata is information about information. Even if all your messages are encrypted, anyone monitoring your communications can still see who you are talking to, even if they can’t read the content. You can construct a really comprehensive picture of someone’s life just from building a picture of who they communicate with regularly. Bear this in mind when interacting with other activists.

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Anonymous accounts You can set up a Facebook account under an assumed name, using an anonymous email address – we use Luther Blisset – and use that account to create and manage activist pages. This helps disassociate individuals from pages, and at the very least introduces plausible deniability. You can create accounts on Twitter and many other social media without giving away much personal information.

Constructing an innocuous persona Since it is impossible to avoid leaving some digital footprint, one strategy could be to hide in plain sight by having a public social media profile that is clearly you, but is also innocuous and clearly within the bounds of “normal” – no algorithm will flag your posts about the Race for Life or Ice Bucket Challenge you did, the TV programme you watched, and the mainstream political opinions you express.

You can save your more important communications for the anonymous accounts.

Resources Reset The Net (https://pack.resetthenet.org/) has excellent, easy to use resources for helping keep you safe online Security in a Box (https://securityinabox.org/) has really comprehensive guides to making yourself as secure as possible. Many can be downloaded as PDF booklets.

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Section 2 Effective communications and campaigns

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Theory of Change Before engaging in any kind of political activity, we need to think through our Theory of Change.

How do we change the world? Through voting? Strike action? Civil disobedience? All of the above, acting together?

The term Theory of Change is used by activists and sociologists to understand how we see power dynamics in the world, and how we seek to influence them. We all have one, but we don’t always articulate it clearly.

This is really important in any political campaign: we need to start by identifying the end goal, and then work backwards, mapping all the steps we’ll need to take, the leverage we will need to use, and the networks we will have to build, to achieve that result.

Theory of Change is also really useful for analysing existing political campaigns, and judging whether they are worth investing energy in.

Theory of Change in unions The Theory of Change of many trade union leaders of the past generation, across the world, has been to elect sympathetic politicians. Whether Labour in the UK, Socialist or Social Democrat in continental Europe, ANC in South Africa or Democrat in the US, unions have focused on electoral politics: if we can mobilise our activists to get the right government in, we can change society from the top.

This has largely been a reflection of trade union weakness in the period of decline after the Thatcher-Reagan neoliberal assault, and the experience has been disappointing, to say the least.

Think back to the excitement that was generated around the election of Obama, compared to the disappointment that exists now. Elected leaders rarely live up to expectations.

Over the past decade, there has been a shift in union tactics – a new Theory of Change. While realising that electoral politics is still important for creating the best possible terrain to fight our battles, most unions now recognise the importance of building union power from the ground up.

There has been a new focus on organising, and on empowering activists to lead on campaigns.

Unions have sought to directly influence public opinion, and have a more visible presence, with a return to street politics. There has been a recognition that existing union laws are too restrictive to make industrial action very effective, and there has been tacit and sometimes even explicit recognition that for workers to win more power, the law will need to be broken. In some cases, such as the sparks’ dispute against the construction companies in the UK, workers have bypassed the official industrial relations mechanism, taken direct action, and won.

A model of trade unionism called Social Movement Unionism is in the ascendant, especially in the US, where communities have been mobilised effectively to fight for higher minimum wages. Faith and community organisations have joined unions in what is seen as a wider struggle for economic justice, rather than a narrow battle around terms and conditions.

Theory of Change in civil society This is an interesting contrast to the Theory of Change of the clicktivist websites, such as Avaaz and 38 Degrees. They are essentially asking someone powerful to do something. You send an email, or 24

sign a petition, asking a corporate CEO or politician to take action. These people are, or course, perfectly free to ignore you, and usually do.

Charities generally also seek to influence government policy and drive change from above, which has seen them attacked by British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne as “anti-business”.

On the other hand, new social movements like Occupy, and similar manifestations in other countries, have used direct action, and in particular the occupation of public space, to seek to influence society.

So what is your Theory of Change? There is no right or wrong answer, because if we’d found the perfect formula, we’d be living in paradise.

But when designing a campaign, it really helps to think through your fundamental ideas about how to bring about change in the world.

The power of narrative: telling our story An historic mistake of the Left has been to attempt to convince people through careful, reasoned argument. If we can just patiently explain our ideas clearly enough, surely everyone will join us in building a better world. This highlights an interesting conundrum: across the world, in survey after survey, when asked about specific policies – a health service free at the point of need, comprehensive education, transport and energy infrastructure in public hands – the vast majority of people clearly favour socialism. And yet right wing parties keep getting elected, and even the nominally left parties fail to implement progressive ideals.

What is happening here?

As human beings, we respond a lot more readily to narrative – story telling – than we do to reasoned argument. This has been thoroughly grasped by the advertising profession, which encourages us to tell the story of our lives, and seek validation from others, through the products we buy. It is also something the populist Right has been very good at: they tell a simple story of a once-proud nation (the formula works for any nation), now in decline, threatened by (usually) immigrants. UKIP in the UK is a prime example of this, but there are many manifestations across the world.

They have also reinforced the narrative that we are greedy, self-interested, have gold-plated pensions and so on.

No amount of pointing out the absolute nonsense of this story, and the general lack of policy coherence on the right, seems to make any difference. Once people identify emotionally with a story, it’s very hard to shift them from it.

And the time we spend attempting to debunk the right wing version of events is time not spent telling our own story. This is a shame, because we have a very compelling narrative: From the first recorded strike by tomb builders at Deir el-Medina in Ancient Egypt, in the reign of Ramses III in 1170 BCE, through to this week’s action by civil servants or teachers or train drivers, we have a dynamic, heroic, three thousand year long tale to tell of ordinary people standing up for themselves, standing together in solidarity, and working to create a world of fairness, equality, 25

justice and dignity.

This is a social struggle of an almost mythic scale, and encompasses many key narrative archetypes: good versus evil, David and Goliath and many other elements that make a gripping story. It’s complicated and intricate, but the popularity of Game of Thrones, The Wire and many other complex TV programmes shows people have a real appetite for this kind of story. And ours has two distinct advantages: 1. It’s true 2. Anyone can get involved and be part of it!

Isn’t that a much more exciting way of looking at things than another dry leaflet about spending, affordability and statistics?

We’re not suggesting that you use storytelling as a substitute to well-argued, fact-based campaigns: this is the fundamental, ethical difference between ourselves and our opponents. But we need to give people a reason to engage with our arguments, and a narrative framing really helps answer the question: “why should I care?”

How to tell a good story All good stories have certain elements that catch people’s attention.

1. Strong characters A good story needs to have strong, compelling and human characters. People identify with other people. So if you are campaigning about a union dispute somewhere, make it about real people. Asking people to show solidarity with Sarah and Jane and Andile is a lot easy than getting them to show solidarity with an anonymous group of workers in some city far away.

You don’t need to share people’s personal details to personalise the story.

2. Narrative structure and plot Any good story needs a compelling plot. There are many variations, but the most important elements are hero, villain and conflict. Does is help to think of our campaign in this way?

Identifying the villain is usually easy: it can be the government – the Tories readily provide pantomime villains - or a big company like G4S, Walmart or Amazon. People love a good villain, and the more villainous the company, the more they’ll be engaged in wanting to defeat it.

The conflict, of course, is the specific issue: the cuts, the strike, the lockout or the environmental poisoning.

And who is the hero in this case? It might well be the brave workers who are standing up to this villainous, bullying company, and who need all our help and support. But maybe the hero is missing! This is an opportunity to invite people to get involved: a big company is doing something terrible, and we need you to step in and do something about it. Invite people to participate, to be heroes in a crucial story.

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Designing a campaign There are three important steps to designing a campaign: -

Choosing a target Who are you campaigning against? It needs to be specific and focused, and it needs to be the right target. Identify the person or company most responsible for the wrong you want righted. Decide what you want to happen – vague appeals to the authorities along the lines of “someone should do something” are not enough: You need to have a clear idea of what should happen.

Make sure that you choose a realistic target. Assess your strength: how many supporters can you count on, what is your budget, what other resources do you have? Taking on a campaign on your own that is too big can be incredibly demoralising. Rather choose something you know you could win, and use that as a starting point to build more ambitious campaigns.

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Finding leverage or pressure points How do you influence your target? Chances are they are a big company or public figure with far more resources than you. Think about where you can bring pressure and influence them. For a company like Nestle it might be public opinion. For Walmart, it might be consumer groups, plus the unions organising Walmart workers around the world. For G4S, it might be government tenders. Use as many pressure points as you can find.

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Building networks Don’t try to do it alone! Find people trying to achieve similar aims and work with them.

How a campaign works. You’re much more vulnerable in the early days when you’re alone.

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The funnel of engagement The funnel of engagement is the term used to describe how you engage with people – to turn strangers who know nothing about what you do into engaged and committed activists. It starts by making them aware of your presence, and then drawing them into deeper engagement. Of course not all your users will follow this process, but here is an overview of what it looks like on social media: 1. Getting people to read your content 2. Getting people to like and share your content 3. Getting them to take a simple action: sign a petition, or send an email or tweet 4. Getting them to commit to something bigger: donating money, attending a meeting 5. Getting them to ‘join’ your cause, become an activist and take ownership of the issue Writing for the internet Whenever you write something for a campaign, there are certain things you should bear in mind: you should write as clearly as possible, not use jargon, and develop a clear narrative.

There are additional rules for writing for the internet: 1. Be succinct. The internet is full of information, and you are competing with hundreds of thousands of articles and images that are published every day. You have only a few seconds at most to capture a reader’s attention and encourage them to read further.

2. Use images. Always try to illustrate a story. Pictures communicate more quickly than words, and in the attention-deficit world of the internet, a strong image will encourage people to read on and find out more.

3. Use strong headlines. A provocative or captivating headline will encourage readers to click a link to find out more. Be positive, though – using controversy as “clickbait” will just annoy people.

4. Use a stand first or post excerpt. A stand first is a short description of an article that sums up what it is about, and why it is important. It comes just under the headline. Its purpose is to further engage the reader. It answers the question, “why should I read this?”

5. Write informally. Generally, writing conventions online are less formal than in print. If appropriate, adopt a friendly, engaging style to tell you story.

And our own rule: Stay positive! There is plenty of bad news out there to discourage activists. As much as possible, focus on positive stories of solidarity, of people standing up for themselves, and each other, and fighting back.

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The viral effect The viral effect is the holy grail of social media campaigning and it's what everyone is looking for. If we can make our content engaging, interesting and important enough, people will spread it widely and it will have a disproportionate impact. Every activist dreams of creating something online that captures the mood and becomes wildly popular. We all want our campaigns to “go viral”.

This is extremely difficult to achieve. For something to go viral, it needs to be catchy, interesting, creative and easy to share. It must also perfectly and succinctly capture a thought and idea that a lot of people are having, but haven’t been able to fully express.

Worrying too much about your campaign going viral is not helpful. It’s more important to be credible and consistent. You will not get your message across by spamming people.

It's almost impossible to manufacture something that goes viral - luck plays a big role. But there are things you can do to improve your chances.

Here is an example of a USi campaign that went viral: In February 2013, we were asked to promote a petition on water rights to the European Commission. We did, but it didn't get much traction because it was quite dry. We needed a hook.

Then we found some outrageous footage of Nestlé chairman Peter Brabeck saying that water isn’t a human right, and everything should be in the hands of corporations. The footage is actually from 2005, but almost no one has seen it because it's in German.

We used this information to post a short article that took about 45 minutes to write: http://usilive.org/nestle-ceo-says-water-isnt-a-human-right-tell-him-hes-wrong/ By midnight, we had almost 2,000 hits on the website. The article has now had tens of thousands of hits, and even months later it is a very active post.

It contains a link to the petition, as well as a button that sent a tweet to Nestlé.

Many people signed the petition, and hundreds of people tweeted at Nestlé. As activist Naomi Klein remarked:

Nestlé spent days replying to angry twitter users:

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The successful structure of the post was as follows: 1. Provoked outrage. We reported what he said without comment 2. Provided context. Without writing a lot, we linked to serious research on what privatisation does, so that there's intellectual backing for the conclusion we want people to draw 3. Reminded people of Nestlé's previous crimes 4. Gave them a very simple release - have your say by signing the petition or sending a tweet.

A lot of people signed the petition or sent a tweet, so we successfully mobilised them.

If we made this into a formula, it would be: Hook > Engage > Release.

It's worth bearing this in mind when you create activist content. You need a hook to get people interested (can be outrage, curiosity, anything), some quality engagement, and a release, something they can do - even if it is only to share the story.

This isn’t appropriate for everything you write. You need quality, in depth analysis to give you credibility too. If you can hook people through the activist stories, hopefully they will stay for the in depth pieces too.

What worked in this case was tying things together into an easy story .

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New technology and gender There is an argument that new technology helps women to participate politically. Women are often excluded from fully participating in political movements for a variety of reasons: men don't allow them to speak, men drown them out or dismiss them, there is a threat of physical violence (such as the attacks on politically active women in Egypt), political meetings ignore or sideline issues important to women, or because meetings and events are held at times that are inconvenient for women with caring and other responsibilities.

New technology can bypass a lot of these problems. Although there is a huge problem of misogyny online, because it is possible to be anonymous on the internet, you are more likely to be judged by what you say rather than your race or gender. There are also some excellent and supportive places online for women. UK Feminista12 does a good job of teaching social media activism to feminists.

The #EverdaySexism hashtag is used to highlight examples of sexism in everyday life 12 http://ukfeminista.org.uk/

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CASE STUDY Conegate: anatomy of a campaign The Case of the Conegate in Glasgow may seem like a frivolous example, but it has important lessons for activists.

The Conegate petition on change.org The city of Glasgow has a statue of the Duke of Wellington outside the Gallery of Modern Art. For decades, there has been a long tradition among local people – usually after a drink or two - of placing a traffic cone on its head. This is in keeping with the city’s egalitarian culture, good humour and distrust of authority.

The Keep the Cone campaign quickly got 95,000 likes on Facebook Then, in November 2013, the council announced it was planning to spend £65,000 to raise the plinth of the statue to stop people putting the cone on the statue. They claimed it created a negative image of the city.

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A petition was launched on change.org, and shared on social media. It soon got domestic and international news attention. Within 24 hours, more than 10,000 people had signed the petition, and the council withdrew its plans.

BBC news reports on Conegate So why was Conegate successful and what can we learn from it?

1. It was light-hearted, and had an angle that was attractive to the media 2. It was backed by serious work – one of the campaigners submitted a Freedom of Information Request to the council, and showed that their claims about the cost of removing the cone were false. Another campaigner had academic credentials in heritage, and was able to argue that the cone had significance to Glaswegians 3. It was easy to share on social media, with the #conegate hashtag 4. It engaged local people, who felt they should have a say in how the city represents itself, rather than leaving it to faceless bureaucrats 5. Ordinary people were invited to participate, either through social media, or in impromptu demonstrations at the statue. People made placards, and even knitted traffic cone woolly hats.

6. It used a simple narrative – out of touch, faceless bureaucrats versus a fun-loving city 7. The aims of the campaign were modest. The media attention embarrassed the council and they withdrew the plans.

The campaign was non-threatening, funny – maybe even a bit of a wind-up – but it worked! It was a huge amount of fun for all the participants – except for the council! There are so many serious issues in the world that sometimes activists get outrage fatigue: with so many campaigns aiming to stir up their indignation and get them to take action, many people just feel worn out.

Many of the issues we campaign on are serious, and demand serious work. But is there a way you can present your campaign that is interesting, engaging and even funny? You might be a lot more successful in attracting supporters.

Be cheeky!

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Section 3 An overview of the technologies – understanding your tools

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Email Email is still a killer app for trade unions - don’t neglect it in favour of more glamorous technologies. Most trade union activists have email access, and email lists are still the most effective way of reaching large numbers of people.

Email is beginning to lose some of its effectiveness because of the huge volume of messages that most of us get, but a well-organised and comprehensive email list is a fundamental tool in any union activist’s arsenal. Collecting emails is an important part of any activist's job, and you should do it constantly. Take sign up forms to all your meetings, and send out regular, informative and useful emails. Ask people to forward them.

You can build an email list using a number of free programmes, such as Google Groups. If you want to design attractive emails with graphics, use a program like Mail Chimp. It takes a while to learn how to use, but once you've created some templates you can build a sophisticated email delivery mechanism that will also give you feedback on how many emails are being opened, what links are being clicked and so on.

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Text messaging and phone banking Calling people on the phone might be old fashioned but it is proven to work and is one of the most effective ways to mobilise support.

1. Set aside time 2. develop a script 3. Follow up Here is an example of a phone bank script, used by USi to encourage branch affiliations: Phone Bank Script Hi my name is (x). I’m calling from Union Solidarity International.

You responded to a text message/email indicating that you would like further information on affiliating to USi and participating in our social media and online campaigning courses.

Have you got two minutes to chat?

Q1. Can I ask do you know if your branch has affiliated yet or is in the process of doing so? (Y, N or don't know) (Yes): Brilliant, that’s great and thank you for your support. Would members in your branch be interested in participating in our course?

•

Would you like information via the post or email about attending the course?

(No/Don’t know): We're trying to encourage branches to affiliate which can be done for a very small fee online at our website or via cheque. In return branch members would be invited to participate in our course •

Would you like information via the post or email about affiliating and attending the course?

For both of the above.

Thanks for speaking with us today.

Text messaging is also a good way of reaching people. You can send out mass texts by using online programs (you will probably have to pay for each text), or you can build a text tree, where you ask activists to forward texts to people in a structured way.

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Facebook Facebook has 500 million users, which makes it a good place to meet people. Facebook is also very good for sharing information with a lot of people very quickly, as you can easily post links, videos and more on your profile page.

It is a good idea to create a Facebook Page for your branch or campaign, and to keep it updated with relevant information. You can also use Events to invite people to meetings. Facebook should be used for publicising your campaigns and activities, not for organising.

If you’re using it for publicity, it’s also important to set up as a Page, and not a Person. Pages are visible to people who aren’t on Facebook as well, whereas if you set up as a Person only your “friends” will like it.

Remember that if necessary – for instance, for a campaign that is running in different regions – you can set up several separate pages. Later, you can merge these if you want to.

How to set up a Facebook page If you don’t already have one, create an account on Facebook. If you’re worried about security, use a unique email address and pseudonym.

In the sidebar on the left of the screen, there is an option to Create Page. Click this. It will ask you what kind of page you want to create. Unless you’re creating the official page for your union, we suggest you select Cause or Community.

Give your cause a name, and get started. Choose something clear, simple and spelled correctly that communicates what your campaign is about. It could be GMB Young Members, Unison NW International, Blacklist Support Group or whatever is appropriate. Once your certain you’re happy with the name, go to the Settings tab and choose a unique identifier. For instance, we are https://www.facebook.com/unionsolidarity. This makes it much easy for other people to find you and mention you in posts.

You will be invited to upload a logo or image – source something striking and eye catching, and that people will remember. This is your visual identity.

Publicise your page widely and encourage people to “like” it. If they like your page, your updates 37

will show up in their media stream.

Managing your page It’s important to keep your page updated. Post regularly, but not so often that you will bore or drive off users. Post useful and relevant information, and try posting at different times of the day.

People use Facebook more in the evenings, so post things then. Remember you can schedule posts to go live whenever you like – a great way to keep a page active over the weekend.

Use a banner, and change it regularly to reflect the issue that is most important. This helps to keep the page fresh, and to highlight important issues.

Banner on a USi Facebook page

How to post to Facebook This may seem obvious, but there are a lot of tips to posting on Facebook that many people miss.

Let’s go through the process: 1. Paste your link in the update box. In a few seconds, Facebook should load images and text from the article, like this:

2. Delete the link. This looks cleaner, and it won’t remove the article. Add some descriptive text, and mention relevant campaigns in the post. Do this by using the @ symbol in front of their Facebook name. Add hashtags like #FastFoodGlobal if there is one associate with the campaign.

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3. If the post has more than one image, you can click the arrows to choose the one you think looks best, or upload your own. Images work really well on Facebook – try to post content with a clear image and a message that is easy to get across quickly.

4. You can edit the headline and description text too, buy clicking on it:

5. Here is an example of what the finished post could look like. The organisations you have mentioned show up as links. Hovering on a link brings a pop up description, and in invitation to Like the page. This is a great way of building community.

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Here is another example of a post on the USi Facebook page. Note the important elements: 2.

3.

4.

5.

The removal of links and unsightly elements.

Use of an image A short description of the content, with a suggestion of action to take Mentioning people and linking to their Facebook page – this helps build community

Warnings You should not use Facebook as your primary organising tool. Here’s why: 1. Not everyone is on Facebook. You exclude people who don’t use it 2. Facebook use has peaked in most Western countries, and use has started to fall 3. There are major privacy concerns. You are leaving all your crucial organising contacts in the hands of a company that will be all too happy to hand them over.

Facebook has a number of serious pitfalls. The most important of these is privacy. Because Facebook’s privacy settings are complex and changing all the time, it is almost impossible to guarantee that messages will remain private, and there have been numerous cases of employers disciplining people for messages posted there. Facebook can also be very distracting, with constant requests to play Farmville, look at your friend’s holiday snaps or cyber-stalk some one you fancy.

Facebook makes its money from data mining user information and selling it to advertisers - it is not a very union friendly environment. Use with caution.

Also, Facebook is decreasing in usefulness as it prioritises paying advertisers over ordinary users.

At USi, we have seen a number of our stories “go viral” due to being shared on Facebook.

However, this is happening less and less, and our stories are reaching fewer people. Typically, only 40

about 5% of our fans see something we share. This is because Facebook has taken the decision to prioritise what it calls “high quality” content13, usually that from paying advertisers and mainstream media sources.

Resources Security in a Box guide to Facebook security: https://securityinabox.org/facebook_main

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Facebook Newsroom: News Feed FYI: Helping You Find More News to Talk About http://newsroom.fb.com/News/768/News-Feed-FYI-Helping-You-Find-More-News-to-Talk-About

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Twitter Twitter is a dynamic communications medium that has exploded in popularity. Its potential for campaigns has been evident ever since Iranian democracy activists used it to successfully publicise the events surrounding the contested election in 2009.

The @usilive twitter page, with banner related to relevant events

Twitter’s strength is its simplicity: there is very little to get in the way of effective communication.

Messages can be posted on the Internet, from a smart phone or even by text from a regular mobile phone: it’s like sending a text message to the world.

Its ability to include links, pictures and hashtags makes it a very powerful way to communicate.

Getting started on Twitter Go to twitter.com and sign up. Twitter is more anonymous than Facebook: you don’t need to use your real name. You will need to choose a twitter handle, like @usilive or @USiNewsUK. Think carefully about this as it can be challenging to change. This is your name on twitter, and people will use it to interact with you.

Upload an image – nothing shouts “beginner” like the default twitter egg – and find an attractive banner.

Follow people The best way to build a network and gain followers is to follow other accounts and interact with them. This is a great learning experience, because by watching the way other people interact, you can see what is effective. As you interact with people, some of them will start to follow you back, and you will start to build a following.

Organic versus paid growth If, for aesthetic reasons, you really need lots of twitter followers, it is possible to buy them. The way this works is that a software package will automatically follow lots of people in the hopes that some will follow back, and then unfollow those who don’t. While this method works, we discourage it. Twitter works best when human interaction builds community, not when machines follow each other.

Follow hashtags News events and campaigns quickly generate hashtags, which look like this: #bloodbricks. A hashtag categorises a subject on twitter, to make it easier to follow a conversation. Some hashtags 42

are developed organically by users, while others are chosen beforehand by campaigns. By clicking a hashtag, you can see all the tweets that are talking about that subject.

This is a good way to find and follow interesting twitter accounts: the people tweeting the best content on a subject you’re interested in are probably worth following.

Some hashtags to look out for Hashtags develop rapidly and change all the time – and you should get into the habit of creating snappy hashtags for your events and campaigns. Share these widely beforehand so that as many people as possible use them.

Here are some being used now: #1u - “one union” - to express solidarity between unions and campaigns. This is mostly used in the US. #1uwomen – Women’s issues in the union movement #vaw – Violence against women #canlab – the Canadian labour movement #ausunions – used by unions in Australia #UnionWin – to celebrate union victories Using twitter as a news source Twitter isn’t only about broadcasting – it’s a really good way to learn about the world. And it’s unmediated and uncensored, so you get the stories which don’t make it onto TV news. Once you find the best journalists and activists to follow, it becomes a really useful corrective and balance to the bias in the mainstream media.

Reading a twitter timeline for 10 minutes first thing in the morning can give a much more comprehensive picture of what’s happening in the world than watching breakfast television or reading a free Metro newspaper.

An overview of the syntax Twitter has a relatively simple syntax, which, once mastered, makes it easy to spread information quickly. The five most important elements are: • @replies - the symbol ‘@’ identifies a user, and allows you to address them or speak about them (useful for letting politicians know what you think - imagine a hustings with thousands of people contributing). For instance, if you send a tweet to @usilive, we will get it, and know that you’re sharing something with us.

• #hashtags allow you to search for information on a subject - for instance, users use the hash tag ‘#cuts’ to talk about the effect of the #tory spending cuts in #ukpolitics and #unions. Creating a hashtag for a campaign is very useful – for instance, USi uses #BloodBricks to talk about conditions in the brick kilns in India • • •

RT - means retweet, or forward a message DM - Direct Message. To send a private message to a user.

HT – Hat tip. An acknowledgement for a “heads up”

•

MT - modified tweet. If you are retweeting but changing a tweet, for some reason 43

• •

URL shorteners - to embed links in tweets, users use URL shortening services like s.coop and bt.ly to create short Internet addresses. Most Twitter applications do this automatically now.

If you decide to create a Twitter account, look for users who have similar interests to you, and follow them - there are already thousands of union and labour activists on Twitter. Interact with them and you will soon create a network that will provide you with relevant, up to date information. Twitter works best if you support each other and reinforce each other’s messages.

Twitter aesthetics and ethics Every social network has its own look, feel and culture. This is constantly evolving, so there are no hard and fast rules, but there are some general principles.

While images are very popular on Facebook, Twitter is primarily a text-based medium. Effective twitter users pride themselves in their ability to communicate clearly and succinctly within the 140 character limit. Recently, however, there has been some convergence between these media, with Twitter making images more prominent.

All rules are meant to be broken, but here are some general principles: •

Don't use txtspk. It's OK to shorten words sometimes, but your messages will be a lot more effective if you communicate in clear English. Rather shorten your message if possible.

•

Hashtags are important, but don't over do it. A message like this is unattractive and difficult to read: “Hi #Comrades support our #solidarity campaign with #unions in #Greece and #Italy”. Choose the most appropriate hashtag and use only one.

•

Don't overdo @replies either – rather send different messages if you want to contact a lot of people

•

DON'T USE BLOCK CAPS. It looks like shouting.

•

Do Retweet, and comment

•

When space allows, separate the main message from the hashtag, so it is easy to read. If you post an article and have space, comment on it too:

Trending topics Trending topics are the most spoken about subjects in the world at any time, usually based on hashtags. Most of the time, discussion of celebrities dominates trending topics, but sometimes activists are able to change this: on 15 May 2014, #FastFoodGlobal was the number one trending 44

topic in the world, as fast food workers in 32 countries took coordinated industrial action for decent wages and conditions. This is the first time a labour dispute has become the most discussed issue on social media.

It is impossible to “make” something trend, but you can certainly help it on its way by choosing a catchy hashtag, and encouraging as many people as possible to use it.

Thunderclap Thunderclap (thunderclap.it) is a way to amplify a message on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. Create a message – with hashtags, and a link to more information – and invite your followers and supporters to sign up and join your Thunderclap.

Once you reach the required amount of supporters – say 100 or 250 people – you can set a date and time for the same message to be sent from everyone’s social media accounts at once.

An ITUC Thunderclap

An effective campaign will suddenly fill news feeds with the same message, which can be very effective. For instance, recently there were Europe-wide demonstrations against the TTIP trade deal. Just as the demonstrations were peaking – and being reported on the news – a message about TTIP went out on social media to a quarter of a million people.

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Google+ Google+ is Google’s rival to Facebook, and it’s pretty effective. Its main advantage is that you’re able to divide your network into groups – for instance, friends, family, work, school mates, hobbies, political contacts – and only see or send updates from one group at a time. This means that, if you like, only your friends and family will see your holiday snaps, while you no longer need to bore them with the finer details of your hobbies.

The best feature of Google+ is probably Hangouts, which allows you to hold and record online web conferences.

Other social networks There are plenty of other social networks out there, serving niche communities. We can’t mention them all, but here are a few that you might come across.

•

UnionBook was created by LabourStart as a trade union alternative to Facebook. Unlike Facebook, UnionBook is a union-friendly environment where your privacy is respected, and you can network with trade union activists from around the world. Like Facebook, it allows you to share videos and other links, create groups and so on. It contains the latest union news, jobs and even music and podcasts.

•

Diaspora was created to deal with the privacy concerns of Facebook. Instead of hosting all information on one server controlled by a company, Diaspora is a federated service using peer to peer connections. This means, for example, that a union could install Diaspora on their servers and invite members to sign up. These members would still be able to interact with Diaspora users on other servers, but they would retain much more control over their data. See https://diasporafoundation.org/

•

USi Organising Network was created by USi. It functions like a social network – you can log in with a twitter account – but its purpose is for organising, rather than sharing information with friends.

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Organising network users can create groups. Groups can vote, set tasks, upload minutes and plan activities. This is useful for geographical dispersed activists, for instance an international company committee of union activists.

See on.usilive.org.

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Using images Images work really well online, and are an excellent way of capturing activist ideas. People respond best to images with other people in them. To keep people feeling encouraged, try to find positive, assertive pictures of people fighting back and standing up for themselves, rather than images that portray them as victims.

One of the simplest and most powerful things you can do is upload a picture of yourselves holding a sign, and publicise it on social media using the right hashtags.

Participants at a USi social media course express solidarity with Occupy Gezi

Unite and GMB members at a brick kiln in Peterborough, UK, express solidarity with India brick kiln workers 48

Graphic design Creating striking images is a really powerful way of communicating. If you have any artistic ability, or a flair for design, go ahead and create some images. These can be really simple – just an image with a caption you have added, or a more sophisticated design.

Image sharing sites Flickr is a photo sharing site that allows you to post high resolution photographs online and share them with other users. If you like taking pictures at marches and demonstrations, you can add them to the Industrial, Labour and Trade Unions group at http://www.flickr.com/groups/union/ - a resource bank with over 5,000 union photos.

If you use a Creative Commons license on your photos, other users will be able to use them. Flickr is useful if you need to illustrate a newsletter or website - there are loads of Creative Commons pictures you can use for free.

A page of trade union images on Flickr

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Pinterest works like an online pin board – if you see an image you like, you “pin” it to a board. It’s a quick and easy way of sharing powerful activist images.

You can create boards for any subject you like: community issues, international solidarity, women, the environment and so on.

The USi page on Pinterest Instagram allows you to take pictures on your phone, apply arty effects, and share them. It can be a quick and easy way to create dynamic content. Get into the habit of using it!

USi on Instagram

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Exploiting memes Memes are part of the language of the internet. You can get some easy wins and communicate powerful ideas quickly by exploiting memes. Head over to memegenerator.net, and make your own.

Some union memes 51

Social news sites Reddit and Digg are social news sits that allow users to submit interesting stories, and then vote them up or down. They can be sources of huge amounts of traffic, so if you have interesting and relevant content you want to promote, consider submitting it here.

Don’t feed the trolls

The internet is full of trolls – people trying to derail your political message by making provocative comments. Do not engage with them: trolls generally don’t have a lot of followers, and they are trying to derail the discussion and waste your time.

Some organisations use trolls politically – for example, The Guardian newspaper’s online comments are filled with Tory supporters undermining stories that damage the interests of the rich and powerful, and derail the debate. Some of them are astroturfers – PR people employed to create the false impression of grassroots support for something unpopular, such as fracking or bankers’ bonuses.

Your time as an activist is precious. If you argue with trolls online, they have won by distracting you from more important tasks.

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Websites and blogs Having a union or campaign website is important; it allows you to tell your story in your own words, and to provide an information resource for other activists. Web 2.0 tools mean creating your own website is easier than ever. The easiest way to create a website for your branch or campaign is to use blogging software like Blogger or Wordpress. By logging on to Wordpress.com you can quickly create a website, using a number of free templates. You can also choose a custom domain for a small fee - for instance, www.yourunion.org.

If you have some technical skills and need a more sophisticated, fully functional website, you can install the open source Wordpress software on your own server and adapt it to suit you.

Websites are easy to create, but difficult to maintain: it is important to keep a union website up to date with fresh, relevant content, and it is a lot of hard work to find the time to write articles, and to promote your website to potential readers. One good way to solve this problem is to create a group blog with a number of contributors. That way, everyone can post articles and there is less of a burden on individual contributors.

It is also useful to network with other union bloggers. One way to do this is to register your blog at the union blog aggregator, tigmoo.co.uk.

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Building a branch website using WordPress Why you should use Wordpress WordPress is a Free and Open Source (FOSS) Content Management System (CMS). It allows you to build websites without having to learn any code. Because it is FOSS, there is a large community of developers. This means the software is kept up to date, and will always be free. There are several other very good FOSS content management systems available, including Drupal and Joomla, but we will use WordPress because it is easy to use, versatile and scaleable. It can create everything from a simple blog to a sophisticated website.

Websites are complicated. They involve databases of content, CSS files with design elements and much more. WordPress makes it about as simple as it can be. It is easy to use, but there is still a lot to learn. This course will cover the basics of getting a site up and running. There is detailed documentation on the WordPress website that you can use for more advanced features.

There are two ways you can use WordPress: Option 1: Host your site at WordPress.com Create a site at WordPress.com and register a blog. Your web address will be http://yourunion.WordPress.com, unless you register a custom domain.

Below is an example of a WordPress.com site.

Advantages: • This is very easy to do. You can set up a website in a few hours, with a minimum of hassle.

Disadvantages: • Your site is hosted on the WordPress server. Some companies block WordPress as they consider it social media.

• Your site will be more limited as you have fewer options.

However: it's easy to create a site on WordPress.com and export it later. It is a good place to start.

Option 2: Install WordPress on your own server (“self-hosted”) Get a hosting account with an Internet company and install WordPress on their servers.

WordPress is available at WordPress.org, or you can install it directly through the Control Panel of your web hosting company.

Advantages: • You have a tremendous amount of flexibility and control.

Disadvantages: • It is more difficult • You have to pay for hosting.

We will look at both methods during this training.

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Method 1: Hosting on WordPress.com Visit the WordPress.com site and register a blog. It looks like this:

You can choose the free <yourunion>.WordPress.com site, or pay to register a domain. You don't have to decide on this now – you can always upgrade in future.

Once you have created your blog, it will take you to the WordPress Dashboard. This dashboard is what you will see whenever you log in to your site, and it's what you will use to design and build your site.

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Right now your site looks like this:

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Everything about the site above can be edited. We will look at that in more detail later.

Method 2: Self-hosted WordPress In this method you find a webhost and install WordPress on a server you control. Your webhost needs to be WordPress compatible, and needs to run a collection of software called a LAMP stack.

This stands for: • • • •

Linux Apache MySQL PHP

This is less complicated than it sounds, and most websites will tell you right away whether they are WordPress compatible.

This is what you need to look for:

Next you will have to go through the process of registering a domain and buying hosting. This is not very expensive: Domain registration is generally less than £10, and hosting is also fairly inexpensive.

Once you have registered a domain and paid for hosting, it can be several hours before your account is live, so be patient.

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Once your site is live, you'll probably see your web hosts admin page. The most common software used to administer websites is cpanel – this is probably what your web company will have.

You will probably only have to visit this once. Look for the Quickinstall software link. Click through and you will see options for installing software. Select WordPress and click install. It should take only a few seconds to install WordPress.

Once this is done, you can access your Dashboard.

Logging in to WordPress 58

Once your site is up and running, you will always log into it by adding /wp-admin to the end of the address, and entering your username and password.

For instance, going to www.yourunion.org/wp-admin will take you to the log in page.

For this session, log in details are as follows: Templates The first thing you want to do is choose a template. This is the basic design of your site. In the WordPress.com version, you get a limited number of templates. With self-hosted WordPress, there are thousands of templates.

If you know HTML or CSS you can also edit templates your self.

The WordPress dashboard has a menu down the left hand side. Click on Appearance and then Themes access the page for building themes.

Once you have chosen a theme you like, you can redesign the different elements of the theme, for instance by adding a background image, adding widgets (more on that later) or making a custom header.

WordPress will specify what size to make the custom header. I use a free program called Inkscape (http://inkscape.org/) to create headers, but any graphics program will do.

This is an example of a custom header created in Inkscape:

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Creating your first post Clicking on Posts and Add New will take you to a page for creating new posts, or articles.

Once you are happy with your post, click publish and your new post will immediately become the first article on the front page.

You can also add categories and tags to your posts to help organise them.

By default, all your posts will go to the front page in chronological order.

Creating pages It is also a good idea to create Pages, which are accessed from a menu bar at the top of the site.

The menu bar might look like this:

Or this:

Depending on the template you use. Pages are created in a similar way to Posts. Just click on Pages and Add New.

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Widgets Widgets are bits of code that usually go in the sidebar of the site. For instance, this is a twitter widget, displaying the latest tweets from the @UniteScotland twitter feed.

Incorporating social media widgets into your site makes it more dynamic as it is easy for people to interact with you.

The widget on the right was created by copying code from the twitter page, and pasting it into a widget box.

To do this, go to Appearance > Widgets, and grab a text widget. Move it into the sidebar as pictured below, and then past in the code your have copied from twitter or any other social media website.

You can do the same with Facebook pages. As you can see, there are many different types of widget available.

Using plugins 61

If you are using self-hosted WordPress, you can dramatically extend the functionality of your site my using plugins. Plugins are bits of software written by third parties.

See Dashboard > Plugins > Add new, and search for key words. For instance, if you want users to be able to easily download your articles as PDFs, search for “PDF”, read the details and select the plugin that seems best. Click “install “and it will be installed automatically.

Most plugins are free of charge.

Some plugins then get their own menu on the left hand side of the dashboard. You can use this to configure them.

There are thousands of other themes that can be used to install podcasts, forums and many other features. Try not to use too many, though – sometimes they clash with each other, or slow your site down.

This should be enough to get a basic website up and running. There is much more you can do if you take the time to learn it.

Good luck!

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Using YouTube and video channels

A video on the USi YouTube channel with over 5,000 views You Tube makes sharing video very easy, and trade unions have made a concerted effort over the past few years to create union videos that are accessible and interesting. Every year, the TUC holds a 60 Second Ad contest for the best You Tube advertisement for trade unions, and LabourStart has a Labour Video of the Year competition. Video can be used to share innovative campaigns, like this trade union flash mob: http://s.coop/badhotel.

Video cameras have become relatively cheap, and some mobile phones shoot decent video. It is very easy to upload the video to You Tube, and to share it on Twitter, Facebook or your website. If you fancy yourself as a film maker, why not beg, borrow or steal a camera and make a short film.

In some cities, union activists or trade councils have started labour film makers groups, and collaborate on making short You Tube films. The union movement needs you to be creative!

If you don’t have a video camera, consider speaking directly into your computer’s webcam. You can get a simple message across quite effectively this way.

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Creating and distributing podcasts

Editing audio in Audacity Podcasts are like radio programmes for the internet. Users subscribe to them using their computers or phones, and new episodes are automatically downloaded. Listening to podcasts on public transport on the way to work is a really good way to keep up to date with interesting information.

Podcast are quite easy to record if you have a decent microphone. Why not start a union talk and music show?

Audacity is an excellent free audio production program. You can use it to record podcasts. You will need to host your podcast files somewhere: archive.org is a good resource. You will then be able to embed the files in the pages of your Wordpress site, create a “podcast” category, and an RSS feed that will allow people to subscribe to your podcasts. You can also submit it to iTunes so that people can find it easily.

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Web conferencing and VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is what we use for Skype calls. It's an excellent and free way to connect people around the world, and it has important implications for organising internationally.

Companies are multinational – so why not use video conferencing to talk to unions in other countries to share experiences and plan actions.

A Google Hangout Google’s new Hangouts feature works even better than Skype, because it allows video conferencing with up to 10 people at once. It also has a lot of useful tools, such as screen share.

Google recently launched Hangouts on Air, which allow you to broadcast and embed live Google Hangouts. This is a very simple way to broadcast to people. USi broadcast our #dailyoutrage news updates in this way.

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A Big Blue Button web conference with Kostas Vaxevanis For a secure alternative, use Big Blue Button – USi uses a Big Blue Button installation on secure servers at mayfirst.org, for important conversations that need to be kept secure and private.

Creating online surveys Surveying people is a great way of finding out how to direct a campaign, and for gathering contact details. There are a few good online tools for creating surveys – Survey Monkey (surveymonkey.com) is probably the best. Make sure you ask for people’s contact details!

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Advertising We heard earlier about how Facebook has become less useful to activists, because it prioritises advertisers. Well, if you have a small budget, you can turn this to your advantage. By paying for advertising on social media networks, you can make sure many more people see your content. You can also target your ads, so that for instance they are seen by people in the UK and Australia who are interested in trade unions.

In our experience, ads on YouTube and Facebook are most effective.

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Using Free and Open Source Software Free and Open Source software (FOSS) and Creative Commons provide a number of valuable free tools for activists. There are FOSS applications for just about anything: complete operating systems like Linux, as well as programs for creating newsletters, graphic design, photo manipulation and page layout. These are all available free of charge, and without copyright restrictions, on the Internet. Linux also has the advantage of being much more secure than Windows, as it is not susceptible to viruses, and can run on older computers. If you enjoy experimenting with software, it is worth exploring the world of FOSS. If you want to try a FOSS operating system, Ubuntu, Linux Mint or Debian is a good place to start.

Creative Commons is an alternative to Copyright, and it allows you to share what you create while still retaining some rights over it. You can specify what rights you reserve. This is useful for union activists, as sharing creative resources means we can work collectively on our project of building a fairer society.

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Conclusion: tying it all together We have discussed a number of different technologies above. None of them exist in isolation: our move towards what is called ‘web 3.0’, or the semantic web, means that different technologies are increasingly integrated with each other. For instance, if you use Wordpress to create a union website, you can import all your content from Flickr, You Tube, Twitter and so on, and set it to automatically update to keep your site fresh and dynamic. You can also import content from other websites - such as a news feed from your union.

New technologies offer a great opportunity for union activists to network directly with each other, to share resource and good practice, and to support each other in campaigns.

Go out and experiment. Good luck in your cyber activism!

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26. Further Reading Cory Doctorow – Little Brother For the Win Homeland Clay Shirky -

Here Comes Everybody

Evgeny Morozov – The Net Delusion  To Save Everything, Click Here

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