“Decoding Digital Activism” DC Panel - Video
Jul 21
Posted: under Participated, Presented.
Video of last week’s panel discussion Decoding Digital Activism at the New America Foundation
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Digital Activism Decoded is the first book to map the field of digital activism in its entirety. Click the image above to purchase a copy or click here to learn more.View My CV
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Mary Joyce | Global Digital Activism
NYC Book Event on Tuesday
Jul 16
Posted: under Presented.
Last night’s panel at the New America Foundation in Washington went really well. The panel was an excellent mix of perspectives from the executive and legislative arms of the federal government with on-the-ground experience Skyped in from Kenya. The video of the event is available online if you missed the original and I’ve added photos of the event the the Mary@Work widget on the right.
Next week there will be another book event, this time in New York hosted by Not an Alternative at the wonderful Change You Want to See Gallery in Brooklyn. The New York event will be more informal and will also feature more of the book’s contributors: Mary Joyce, Brannon Cullum, Sem DeVillart, Brian Waniewski, Dan Schultz, and Dave Karpf.
Event: Decoding Digital Activism - Jam Session
Time: 7:30pm
Date: Tuesday, July 20
Location: Change You Want to See Gallery, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Directions: 84 Havemeyer St. (Map / Subway: L to Bedford, J to Marcy, G to Metropolitan)
Motivating Question: We know more and more about digital activism with each new example of digital “people power”, yet we understand very little about the fundamentals of this phenomenon. We have been asking the same questions about digital activism’s effect on political power around the world, yet we remained locked in the same un-winnable debates between optimists and pessimists, each armed with their own anecdotes. How can we as activists, practitioners, and citizens move the discourse of digital activism forward?
The book, Digital Activism Decoded, is available for sale in hard copy through Amazon and for free PDF download at www.meta-activism.org/book
Save the Date: Book Event in DC on July 15th
Jul 11
Posted: under Presented.
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As part of the promotion for Digital Activism Decoded I’ll be speaking on a panel at the New America Foundation at 5:30pm on Thursday, July 15th. The panel will look at the limitations of the current debate on digital activism and suggest new ways forward, with a focus on policy makers. From the event blurb:
We have been asking the same questions about digital activism for several years now, but do not seem any closer to the answers: Does digital technology give activists or repressive governments the advantage? What are the implications of the changing tools and technologies that underpin it? If cyber-utopians and cyber-pessimists are both overstating their cases, where does the truth lie? What don’t we know about digital activism?
Click for full announcement and to RSVP to the event. Hope to see you there!
“Digital Activism Decoded”: Hot off the Presses!
May 28
Posted: under Wrote.
Note: cross-posted from Meta-Activism.org
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I just received some advance copies of Digital Activism Decoded and they look great! The book, which I edited, will be available for free download at meta-activism.org/book next Tuesday, June 1st, and the paper copies will go on sale on Amazon.com on June 30th. Click here to pre-order.
There are over one million books on Amazon.com, but if you search for “digital activism” the title at the top of the list is Digital Activism Decoded.
Other books have preceded this one in exploring the intersection of digital technology and activism. There have already been guides that instruct activists in the use of popular applications like blogs and social networks.
There have also been scholarly works that analyze the effect of the Internet or mobile phones on political dynamics, both in rich democracies where politicians “tweet” and under repressive regimes. Best sellers have tried to explain the digitally changing world, including the impact on activism.
Yet Digital Activism Decoded is the first book to attempt to map the field of digital activism in its entirety.
The book begins with a section on Contexts, addressing not only the technology of network infrastructure, devices, and applications, but also the social, economic, and political environment in which digital activism occurs.
An analysis of Practices follows, not in the usual format of case study analysis, but by presenting different ways of thinking about these practices. The section begins with a chapter on pre-digital social movement theory, while a second chapter takes the digital perspective of web ecology. Both constructive and destructive activism practices are discussed.
The final section on Effects seeks to address the range of opinions on digital activism’s value. While optimists see the great potential for citizen empowerment, pessimists believe that the empowerment of forces of repression is equally likely. Skeptics view both askance and do not believe digital activism makes much difference at all. We leave the reader to draw his or her own conclusions.
Presentation on Strategic Media Advocacy
May 13
Posted: under Presented.
Tags: advocacy, design, media, strategy
Here is a presentation I gave at an orientation for Parsons Fellows. This program, supported by the Open Society Institute’s Health Media Initiative, sends Parsons design students to work with public health nonprofits around the world for 6 weeks during the summer.
This presentation is available for download and in full-screen format here.
I’m a Google Fellow
May 03
Posted: under Participated.
Personal Democracy Forum is the world’s leading conference exploring and analyzing technology’s impact on politics, so of course I applied for a Google Fellowship the day I got this email:
Google and Personal Democracy Forum are teaming up to offer registration fellowships… for twenty well-qualified, creative political entrepreneurs to attend this year’s Personal Democracy Forum conference. We’re looking for people who have demonstrated a real ability to turn ideas into action and into new applications of technology in the political or civic arenas.
… and today I found out I was selected! I can’t wait to meet the other fellows.
Why Digital Activism Matters
Apr 24
Posted: under Wrote.
NOTE: Cross-posted from the Meta-Activism Project blog.
On Thursday, President Obama gave a speech to a group of bank executives who collectively make up one of the world’s most powerful economic groups. He was there to scold them for the “failure of responsibility” that precipitated the financial crisis. That day was also Earth Day. Though scarcely recognized, it is meant as a reminder of the unsustainability of much of what constitutes modern life, and the degradation of earth, sea, and air that results. At first glance, these two events might seem unrelated, but they are part of the same nagging voice, telling us in different ways on a daily basis that we need to change the structure of our global society.
The idea that we need to change how the world operates is so daunting that the natural reaction is to deny that it is true. I am not speaking of true denial, of those who say that global warming is a hoax or new financial regulation is unnecessary. I do not think there are many people who believe that anymore. I am talking about denying that the change we need is systemic. I am talking about the desire to believe that we can fix these problems piecemeal, with small reforms here and there, with new oversight bodies, by driving hybrid cars. One reason we cling to these easy answer – to answers that maintain the current patterns of our lives – is because we do not believe that we can create a truly better world.
Yet to change the world, all we need to change is one thing: power. Not a transfer of power from one institution to another, or one leader to another, or one party to another, but the dissemination of power among the world’s citizens such that the divide between the most and least powerful is narrowed and no one can act with impunity. This is not a new idea. We have various institutions – such as one man/one vote and equality under the law – that try to enshrine this idea of equality of power, though it has not yet been achieved.
To lessen the power divide in our global society the path is not through the doors of current institutions, which are structured on historic power dynamics. We must instead look at the ground on which those institutions stand and see how the infrastructure beneath them could be made to shift such that the institutions would have no choice but to change. When examining this infrastructure, we should pay close attention to that which is new, which is different, which presents innovative modes of power distribution and creation.
In this day and age, a natural place to look for this new kind of infrastructure is the global digital network that connects ever more of the world’s citizens through the Internet and mobile phones. Here we have an infrastructure that really is new, where anyone on the network can create and publish to a mass audience, where the cost of mass publication approaches zero, where communication is no longer centralized, where people can not only broadcast to their peers on a mass scale, but also coordinate and mobilize interactively, where influence travels among peers through consent, rather than from authority figures through the monopoly of force. Read more….
Meta-Activism Project is live!
Mar 29
Posted: under Projects.
I’m proud to announce the launch of my new organization: The Meta-Activism Project (MAP). Our goal is to build the field of digital activism by creating new strategic knowledge that allows activists to fully leverage the power of digital infrastructure. The members of the Strategy Group and I plan to make the Meta-Activism Project a dynamic convener, connector, instigator, and catalyst, which will identify the most effective interventions and then bringing together key thought leaders to achieve them. You can learn more on the web site, meta-activism.org. I look forward to hearing your feedback!
Women’s Leadership and Technology Conference (Sharjah, UAE)
Mar 06
Posted: under Uncategorized.
Last week I traveled to the emirate of Sharjah to attend the first Women’s Leadership and Technology Conference. The event brought together women leaders from the region to talk about how they were using technology to engage local communities. Despite unheard of rain and flooding (this is the desert, after all) I had a lot of fun.
I presented a training module on social media strategy with Roz Lemieux of Fission Strategy, which I really enjoyed. The presentation I gave is below:
And here are some photos;
To determine which social media tool is right for your campaign you need to start with your advocacy goal, identify a target audience, and then determine the most effective means of reaching that audience, based on where their attention is and what platforms you have access to.
Talking to participants from Kuwait and Lebanon about their social media choices. The training module started with a presentation of the strategic framework (above) and then asked participants to make selections about the appropriate social media tool given their own strategic context.
To give them a better idea of the possibilities, each group was given a deck of both digital (Google Docs) and non-digital (events) tools to use in their campaign. The participants were given a tool “budget” meaning they had to select a limited number of tools and defend why each tool made sense in their particular campaign context.
At the end of the module, groups shared their social media selections, and did a really great job of showing linkages between advocacy goal and tools. I’d like to do this module again some time.
Stepping Down from DigiActive
Feb 17
Posted: under Meta.
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Last month I stepped down from my role at DigiActive to pursue a different interest in the field of digital activism. Over the past few months I’ve been reflecting a great deal on what drives my passion for digital activism. Amine and I began DigiActive in October of 2007 in a series of Facebook messages. We talked about creating “a forum to share projects, ideas and tools, identify allies, and above all, find inspiration”, “a loose network of digital democrats,” “a website… which deal[s] exclusively… with digital activism around the world”. The last message in the thread was from me to Amine: “This is very exciting. Let’s talk on the weekend.” And we did.
We launched DigiActive in February of 2008 and over the past two years we have built an international team of over 40 participants from 17 countries and 6 continents , published 2 guides on Facebook and Twitter activism (with one on eCampaigning strategy in the works). We released 5 academic papers through our Research@DIgiActive program, wrote over 300 blog posts detailing successful cases of digital activism around the world, and trained over 70 activists in the 3 countries of Morocco, India, and the Philippines. And all this on a budget of less than $1500 per year.
Over these two years I’ve found myself most engaged and excited by the foundational questions of the field: Why do some campaigns succeed while others fail? Where is the intellectual framework to structure our analysis of digital activism? Where is the common terminology to structure our discussions? How can we understand the mechanics of digital campaigns beyond the functionality of the latest hyped app? What is the future of digital activism beyond the implications of the latest digital victory or defeat? If digital activism can create a more egalitarian world by empowering ordinary citizens, what interventions will bring about that outcome?
For the most part, I found that these questions didn’t have answers yet, that the field lacks this type of foundational knowledge. My interests had shifted from the case-based identification of best practices that is the hallmark of DigiActive’s work, to building foundational knowledge in the field. Because I am so passionate about this challenge, I have decided to create a new organization to address it.
In order to fully devote myself to this new endeavor, I will be stepping down from my current role at DigiActive. This Friday January 22nd was my last active day at DigiActive. I’ll stay on in an advisory capacity but will no longer have an operational role in managing the organization. I leave DigiActive not only in the capable hands of our co-founder, Amine, and editor, Talia Whyte, but also with the wonderful volunteers that have been behind our every success: guide editors like Dan Schultz, guide authors like Andreas Jungherr and Priscilla Brice Weller, trainers like Lynn Casper, who came with me to the Philippines, and writers like Simon Columbus, Tamara Palamakumbura, Hillary Kakooza, Gaurav Mishra, Hamid Tehrani, Frederick Noronha, Tiby Kantrowitz, Alex Frizzell, and, of course, or network catalyst Patrick Meier and outreach director Kate Brodock.
I am excited to see how DigiActive develops as its members constantly seeks new ways to help grassroots activists around the world use digital technology to increase their impact.