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I’ve been thinking about slacktivism a lot lately. I recently did a guest lecture at The New School on the topic, I’ve had countless conversations with colleagues and friends, and I’ve been capturing ideas and questions to myself on scraps of paper everywhere. Slacktivism, to me, comes down to two crucial points: 1) organizations play an important role in creating and endorsing the level to which people take action, and 2) “slacker activism” is really a gateway to more lasting change. My guest lecture notes cover the first point, and today I want to share a few ideas about slacktivism as a gateway to change.

Call and Response

Some consider Facebook likes and retweets as examples of slacktivism, but we can also view those actions as people raising their hands or signing on with the message that they are here, they are listening, and they are ready to respond. Organizations are putting out calls, and the community is responding. It’s just a matter of shaping your call to action well. Katya Andresen has a great post about some of the “essential elements to a strong call to action.” But I want to add a few more elements that can help change organizations’ calls for response into actual calls to action:

• Create opportunities that people can personalize. There’s no engagement quite the same as having responses include personal messages, pictures, videos, or even re-worded messages.
• Create opportunities with multiple levels of action. There’s nothing wrong with asking people to simply share a message, so long as you’re also providing opportunities for others in the network who are willing to do more.
• Create opportunities for taking action that bridge online and offline, and start moving people on both sides of the computer.

Getting Offline

I’ve had many people tell me that the Internet is ruining society, community, family, and everything else. I personally don’t believe that. I’ve worked with communities to build online spaces where people of all ages, accessibility, and interests can come together to share, learn, and more directly build a community that they can take offline. I’ve also worked with an organization that has created an online portal that helps connect teachers to content about global issues they can use in their class, and that gives students opportunities to take action and to connect with other students around the world.

Those who have worked on organizing and engaging communities will know firsthand that you can’t get people to take action until they feel that they understand the issue, have access to key information, and trust that their action will make a difference. Online connections with organizations and causes can help expose people to information about issues in a much richer, more dynamic, and more accessible (not to mention more scalable) way. That said, we need to make sure we remember that online connections are about more than just getting information.

A recent study from University of California’s Humanities Research Institute, backed by MacArthur Foundation, involved more than 2,500 high school students (the study followed some students for up to 3.5 years!) and “found that younger Internet users become more socially engaged in the real world, not just online.”

Youth engagement in interest-driven online communities was associated with increased volunteer and charity work, and in increased work with others on community issues. The Internet can serve as a gateway to online and offline civic and political engagement, including volunteerism, community problem-solving, and protest activity.

And, as Matthew Ingram posted recently, “A study from the Pew Research Center earlier this year found that being active in social networks and other community-related activities online makes it more likely you will be involved with similar groups and activities in the offline world as well.”

So, what are you doing to connect your online community with offline actions? How are you building information and action into your communications and online engagement? What have you tried that didn’t work or what do you want to try but haven’t yet?

(As I continue to put my thoughts together about slacktivism in the nonprofit and social impact space, I’m looking next at the impact of location and hyperlocal content on slacktivism and engagement.)

Can’t wait to hear your thoughts!

The picture here is a screen shot of a friend’s tweet and, whether I agree or not with her specific statement, I think it perfectly captures the frustration our communities feel when we, as organizations, don’t recognize our impact on creating and sustaining slacktivism instead of changing our world. More on that below…

Activism and Information

When talking about slacktivism, I think we need to start by talking about information. Regardless of the era (this isn’t a new phenomena), the emphasis and effort focused on spreading information and raising awareness has always resulted in people doing what organizations ask, even if it’s considered slacktivism. Previously, learning, spreading information, and raising awareness were very passive actions. But, with the raise of social media, we can further confuse the information stage of campaigning or change efforts with the action action.

What’s is so different today?

• citizen journalism vs institutions
• real time vs publishing
• a global-community view vs contacts only geographically close to us

Social media is a tool. It isn’t a tactic or a strategy. Whether you are urging supporters to make change or chronicling the revolution in your state, it is still a tool. But, because social media allows for engagement and personalization of information, it’s very easy and common for organizations to be satisfied with asking for and measuring the information stage.

Modern Slacktivism

Let’s step back for just a second and look at how our modern slacktivism came into this information = activism dynamic. Just as social media was really taking off, people and organizations were caught up in a huge focus on new ways to gain brand recognition. The 90s were filled with advocates calling for nonprofits to recognize that they could be just like companies in messaging, recognition and branding. Visibility and information were the keys.

How many people had a plastic bracelet from one organization or another? (If you’re reading this, did you?)

How many people here worked for an organization that created their own? I did! And we were an organization with a staff of 3 and board of 12…yeah.

Why’d we do it? To get into people’s lives; to start working up the touch points towards fundraising asks; to be part of how people associated themselves.

We’ve moved now from a plastic bracelet to a fan page. There’s nothing “wrong” with a fan page. But, as organizations or campaigners there IS something wrong if we praise likes and count followers instead of seeing these people as primed for real action and building opportunities for all those fans to actually engage in something meaningful.

Turning Fans into Changemakers

So, how do we really move likes into action?

As organizations, if we want to move our communities away from slacktivism and into real action, we need to recognize the large part we play. For all the negative talk about slacktivism, people are failing to recognize that there is actually a huge response coming from the community. People are taking the actions we are asking them to take – we are the ones giving them slacker-actions! Instead of crafting a compelling message and asking people to “like” it, we should see all of our “fans” as community members who have raised their hand saying “please give me something worthwhile to do!” and give them opportunities to start making real change.

We are so caught up in social media as a concept, a topic, a cause in itself that we forget to move people up the engagement ladder. We forget to connect to people period.

Focus on shared goals

Regardless of what our organization does, we have a certain set of goals. Our community, similarly, has goals. But they aren’t the same. They probably shouldn’t be the same! There are aspects of our work that the community doesn’t really care about or at least doesn’t care to be involved with. And the same is true for all that the community wants – some parts of it we just don’t want to get involved in. For example, maybe our community is rallying behind a specific politician, and we are working towards a piece of legislation. We aren’t going to join with each other on these specific goals – but bettering our state, well that’s the sweet spot. The sweet spot is where our goals overlap. And it’s the place where we can invest our time and our energy knowing that we are all rooting for the same end. Identifying the sweet spot is an integral part of community mapping and engagement planning. Knowing the areas that you and your community both care about can turn your campaigns, your communication and your engagement efforts into successful community-driven work.

Change your metrics

What we are measuring obviously impact what we focus on. (I gave a webinar on DIY Community Engagement Metrics recently if you’d like to check out the slides and templates.) When the only things we are tracking are the number of fans on a facebook page, or the number of email addresses in our database, we set ourselves up to endorse and call for slacktivism. Instead, look at your goals and build metrics that actually track your progress. Yes, the number of fans on facebook still counts, but it is just one column; For example, you could also track the number of community-generated posts to the page wall vs staff posts, the number of comments from the community vs staff, the kinds of content that generates the most response, and the level of engagement (whether it’s just likes, comments, or outside action).

Share leadership

If we aren’t building shared responsibility for the outcomes of our work into our campaigns and our email messages and everything in between then we are setting ourselves up for a lot of work and maybe also a bit of disappointment. Letting community members step up into leadership positions provides an opportunity in itself to move out of the binds of slacktivism and start more valuable engagement.

Let the community lead

As the organization/institution, you can provide the map, the gas, and even the car, but the community needs to be the driver. That will ensure passion and impact can go into steering, knowledge can help guide the way, and if no one wants to drive you have a pretty clear answer to adoption! The minute you step in as the organization to start driving, you take away the opportunity to go somewhere you’re community wants to go, to engage with the community in an important and formative way, and reinforce that the work is yours to design and implement.

Changing Landscape

Two quick examples of how things are changing:

First, the ladder of engagement (refer to the slides if you want to have a visual on the steps here). Let’s take for example the fact that the American Red Cross raised $34 million dollars from the text to donate campaign after the earthquakes last year in Haiti. I want to point out two aspects of the way the engagement ladder doesn’t necessarily work as one step to the next:

• On one side, that’s a lot of people that went from bystanders to donors. But how many of them are being encouraged to continue moving up and how many of them were even bystanders of ARC vs the news of the earthquake?
• On the other, how many people in this room are aware of ARC? You don’t have to respond but consider how many of you may have donated. It isn’t about whether you gave money or not, because I imagine you may have instead retweeted or shared a link or post on facebook.

I think that the engagement ladder needs to change to not show a raising level of engagement but instead operate more as a map, showing where someone may have entered from and where they can go next. They might start out as a creator but still have low engagement (not something that really matches our traditional engagement ladder view) and never get to the donation stage, for example.

Secondly, the 90-9-1 rule.  I’ve been discussing it with colleagues in different topic areas recently and most people I talk to, especially that are community managers, have found there are far more people contributing consistently, and the ratios have changed to be few that are 1-time, many that are never and consistently, and then a new section for those that rise above into more visible or leadership roles.

Slides

Reading

• http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/145/do-something-helping-humanity-with-a-click-of-the-mouse.html?partner=homepage_newsletter
• http://www.socialcitizens.org/blog/cutting-slacktivists-some-slack
• http://mashable.com/2010/05/13/slacktivists-activists-social-media
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/12/clicktivism-ruining-leftist-activism
• http://csi.gsb.stanford.edu/slacktivism
• http://www.frogloop.com/care2blog/2010/10/25/can-a-revolution-be-tweeted.html
• http://exchange.causes.com/2010/10/firing-back-from-the-frontlines-of-online-activism/
• http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell

Discussion

• What was the last “slacktivist” action you took; Why did you take it?
• What was communicated to you explicitly or implicitly about the purpose and impact of the actio?
• If you were part of the organization, what would you do to engage people (you!) to take more action now?

Location: New York, NY

Topic: Slacktivism & Connecting the Online/Offline

Description: The Masters course is called “Online Engagement: Leveraging the Internet and Social Media to Increase Visibility, Raise Money, and Create Change” and this specific class is all about advocacy, politics and building new relationships, and…slacktivism. I’ll be joining Dan Thain, Blue State Digital: Case Study, Hope Not Hate UK campaign, and George Weiner, Do Something: Case Study, Do Something, to present three views on the topic and lead a discussion with the students.

Related Links:

• The New School
• Online Engagement Course
• Slides
• Blog post with notes, slides and discussion

—–

If you’ve been on facebook at all in December this year, you may have seen something happening to all your friends – their pictures changing to their favorite cartoon characters! You may or may not have seen a message from those same friends encouraging you and everyone else to do it, too, as a way of increasing awareness of child abuse. It caught my eye and I couldn’t help but wonder what it was all about, what was the story behind the story.

According to ABC news:

According to the trend-tracking website Know Your Meme, the cartoon fad started with Facebook users in Greece and Cyprus in mid-November.
The site said the original message was in Greek and translated to “From the 16th to the 20th of November, we shall change our profile pictures to our favourite cartoon characters. The purpose of this game is to remove all photos of human for a few days from Facebook.”

What struck me about this original message was the lack of connection to a cause. According to Mashable,

The origins of this campaign remain a mystery, as it doesn’t seem to be affiliated with any official organization. And not that you need to limit child abuse awareness to a certain time of year, but, at least in the U.S., National Child Abuse Prevention Month isn’t until April. Some Facebook commenters have also pointed out the perhaps misdirected effort, posting messages skeptical of any tangible outcomes.

This is when I really started paying attention. There has to be something going on that’s getting everyone excited enough to search for a cartoon character and change their picture. I also started noticing that of my friends on facebook, it was a pretty even spread between people that worked in the nonprofit sector and those that didn’t. I posted in a facebook group for social media and nonprofit folks the following message:

I’ve been pretty perplexed by the cartooning of facebook and after seeing news posts about how it is not child abuse awareness month or week and so forth, and the posts about how the call to change profile pics to a cartoon started in greece made me wonder if perhaps for the meme to continue/catch fire in the english translation if people felt obligated to make up an advocacy-related reason for people to play along…

A fellow group member and colleague, Tom Watson, replied that, “I’ve seen perhaps two dozens links to child abuse organizations swapped in the last couple of days – and it was fun. Sure, it’s slacktivism but what the hey….it was fun.”

And another friend, Stacey Monk, noted, “I couldn’t resist an opportunity to swap my mug with the shmoo. And I got to learn why I love him so much – iturns out, according to wikipedia, he’s a “classic allegory of greed and corruption tarnishing all that’s good and innocent in the world” – so I studied up on shmoo which made it all worthwhile http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shmoo”

So, I think I “get it” as far as what catches hold on facebook – something easily shareable, easy to accomplish, and fun/enjoyable. But, what still really stands out for me, is the addition of the cause-advocacy appeal once the meme hit the English translation.

Do we need slacktivism to justify fun behavior online? Are we so accustomed to easy-to-accomplish campaigns that we assume every “call to action” is/needs to be associated with a cause? What does this mean for the Child Abuse Awareness Month activities in April – when a specific organization or campaign tries to call on us “for real” this time?

What do you think? Did you change your picture – why or why not? What’s your reaction to campaigns like this?

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Advertising Lab: Farmers Insurance Insures Farmville Farms – The “real world” and the virtual world are coming ever-more integrated! Do you have insurance? “Saw this blimp on Farmville’s spash screen today. It turns out that “The Farmers [Insurance] in-game integration will use the likeness of its Farmers Insurance Airship, a 246-foot long Zeppelin. When players place the Farmers Airship on their farm, they receive free “wither protection” for the crops on their virtual farm. In a nod to the security that Farmers Insurance offer its customers, this protection means players crops won’t wither for the 10 days of the promotion.””
• Photographs, Digital Rights & Social Media Events | Geoff Livingston’s Blog – Geoff shares a recent example of his attendance at an event where he was photographed and his images shared. Do you have examples on this topic, has this happened to you? And where you stand on the discussion of copyright, digital rights, online content sharing and intellectual property? Really looking forward to hearing your responses!
• Facebook in Online Privacy Breach; Applications Transmitting Identifying Information – WSJ.com – “Many of the most popular applications, or “apps,” on the social-networking site Facebook Inc. have been transmitting identifying information—in effect, providing access to people’s names and, in some cases, their friends’ names—to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found.”
• Lasa launches Big Society online survey – “The charity Lasa is conducting an online survey, called Big Society, Big Deal? Lasa’s research will explore what third sector organisations in the UK think about the coalition government’s Big Society policy, how they think it will affect their funding and change the way they work with other charities. Charities wishing to take part in the survey have until 5pm on Wednesday 27 October to complete the questionnaire, which aims to discover whether the Big Society policy represents an opportunity or a threat to the third sector.”
• Social Media –– Revolutionary Movement or Enabler of “Slacktivism”? : Center for Social Innovation (CSI) – “Many of us enjoy a good debate, and there’s an important one playing out on our doorstep. Some people say we’re in the midst of a revolution where the new tools of social media are reinventing social activism in vital ways. Others say that social media is a fad that does little more than enable “slacktivism”—that is, engaging in activities (mostly mouse-clicking) that make you feel like you’re doing good but actually amount to very little real change. Where do you stand?”
• SXSW Interactive Festival Non Profit Scholarship Program | SXSW.com – “The SXSW Interactive Festival brings together an eclectic mix of technologists, new media industry professionals, creative thinkers and marketing experts to launch new ideas and solutions into the marketplace. Attendees find inspiration, new business partners, and learn new concepts to take their work to the next level. For 2011, SXSW is proud to add a new scholarship program to make it easier for non profits to be part of the excitement of March in Austin.” – I am so happy to see this scholarship and hope that it ensures more nonprofits are on stage, in the hallway, and part of the vibrant conversations that SXSW is so known for!

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• HOW TO: Turn Slacktivists into Activists with Social Media – "Throughout the non-profit world, organizations struggle with social media’s impact on the volunteer and donor cycle. The rise of “slacktivism” — doing good without having to do much at all — challenges organizations to rethink the way they cultivate their core volunteers and donors. There are some important social media strategies for transforming those one-click “slacktivists” into fully engaged activists. Here are five tips from some of the best in the non-profit business."
• In Effort to Boost Reliability, Wikipedia Looks to Experts – Digits – WSJ – "Wikipedia is teaming with universities in a bid to entice professors and their students to beef up its coverage of complicated public-policy topics — part of a move by the online encyclopedia to strengthen editing and fill in gaps in its articles. The Wikimedia Foundation, which finances and oversees the nonprofit site, received a $1.2 million grant from the Stanton Foundation to work with academic experts on Wikipedia articles related to public policy, which could include everything from political theory to legislative history and issues such as health reform and science. The goal is to get professors — and, in turn, their students — involved in producing more articles on public policy and improving the quality of the articles that already exist."
• The Next Generation of American Giving – Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – frogloop – Here is a great guest post from Jocelyn Harmon on the Care2 Frogloop blog: "“Our donors are aging-out.” “We need to attract younger donors.” “We need to be on Facebook.” These are some of the common refrains I hear from nonprofits. It seems that everyone is trying to bring younger donors into the fold. But what does younger mean? Does it mean connecting with the Baby Boomers, creating a gateway to the Millenials, or both? And, how do you do it? Should you buy a list of 50 – 60 year olds, or should someone on your staff become savvier with email marketing and social media? A new study, by Convio, Edge Research and Sea Change Strategies, The Next Generation of American Giving: A study on the contrasting charitable habits of Generation Y, Generation X, Baby Boomers and Matures, answers these questions, and more. See an overview of the findings below."
• ChatRoulette : Web Ecology Project – "This paper represents an initial study of ChatRoulette.com, conducted between February 6th and 7th, 2010 by researchers in attendance at Web Ecology Camp III in Brooklyn, NY. We sampled 201 ChatRoulette sessions, noting characteristics such as group size and gender. We also conducted 30 brief interviews with users to inquire about their age, location, and frequency of ChatRoulette use."
• Twitter tactics – Louder.org.uk campaigning resources and info – "Twitter is growing at gigantic rate, experiencing 1,500% growth in the last year (for more stats see The State and Future of Twitter 2010). For those who are not converts it does seem to be the latest in a line of social media tools that everyone thinks you should be using. But what is in it for campaigners trying to bring about social change? Below sets out three main ways in which campaigners have already been using Twitter in their work to get you thinking and there are also three great examples to illustrate. Please add any experiences or thoughts of your own."

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• HopenSource – Thanks to @350 for the link – check out this great portal of hope and inspiration from Grist Magazine. "Show why Earth's not effed" and get inspired from the stories of those making change.
• LearnPhilanthropy.net – Online venue for grantmaker education – "The Grantmaker Education Initiative is bringing people together to create a stronger, more rational, and less fragmented system for grantmaker learning than we have today — one that builds a new culture of professional development in the field, works better for the individual learners involved in philanthropy, and better for the many groups and organizations that provide learning programs and resources to them.<br />
  <br />
  LearnPhilanthropy.net is a simple online venue we’ve created to invite dialogue among those who are passionate about grantmaker education. We hope to establish a collaborative learning community — with plenty of space for ideas and wisdom of the field. We aim to work together to create a vision for meeting the education and learning needs of people in our field. We invite you to join us, take our survey, and we welcome your contributions."
• Do Something: Helping Humanity With a Click of the Mouse | Fast Company – "Sending a text or clicking to vote may be the trendy way to help humankind. The question, says Nancy Lublin, is whether such so-called slacktivism really works. Name-calling is never nice — that much most of us learned in kindergarten. Go ahead and criticize the substance of an action or the content of a speech, but just calling a person a nasty name is like pulling hair. Unfortunately, a lot of it happens in the do-gooder sector–and lately, much of it has been directed at projects that could fall under the umbrella of a newish movement called "slacktivism.""
• OPEN CALL: Do Nonprofits Make Films? We Say Yes! – netwitsthinktank.com – "What's the top thing you can do this year to engage your constituents? Both online and off? Quick, what springs to mind? Well I'm here to tell you that it should be video. If you are going to do one new thing in 2010 to help get the word out about your organization’s mission, it should be to create a video."
• What You and Your Nonprofit Should Know About Facebook Changes – Beth's Blog – Facebook seems to be an ever-changing landscape whether it's features, privacy, security or functionality: something's always changing. Beth has a great post discussing some of the changes and how they impact your organization on facebook.
• The State of Online Word of Mouth Marketing [STATS] – "In a session yesterday at Forrester’s Marketing Forum, Forrester analysts Josh Bernoff and Augie Ray presented research findings on peer influence and word of mouth marketing. Some of the statistics were surprising, and the presentation was rife with practical tips for marketers we thought worth sharing."