Digital Activism Decoded is a book of essays on the context and practices of digital activism around the world, along with explorations of its value and consequences. Click the image above to purchase a copy or click here to learn more.
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Oct 17
Posted: under Trained.
Training Material Links
Slide Presentations
Hand-outs
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Oct 15
Posted: under Trained.
Today I gave a full-day digital activism workshop to a group of activists from immigrant groups around Norway.
full group shot at the end of the day
It began with a basic introduction to digital activism and tools:
and then moved on to strategic principles:
The final activity had participants create basic digital activism strategies related to causes they care about:
participants design a strategy to attack corruption in Nigeria
My materials are below and free for download (they’re under a Creative Commons license).
Oct 14
Posted: under Presented.
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Last summer Norway suffered a terror attack that struck at the heart of multiculturalism. Today I gave a keynote address at the annual conference of the Contact Committee for Immigrants and the Authorities (KIM) and decided to use that opportunity to discuss ways in which social media can be used to fight back against extremism and intolerance (slides below). Social media can be used to create both narrow tribes living in echo chambers and inclusive communities that embrace difference. It’s up to citizens to define the character of social media by challenging and exposing hateful ideologies.
Sep 23
Posted: under Presented.
Panelists L to R: Sheldon Himelfarb, Andy Carvin, Sultan Al Qassemi, Mary Joyce
Last Friday I was at the United States Institute of Peace on a panel with Andy Carvin and Sultan Al Qassemi to talk about social media and conflict. Of course, I used it as an opportunity to promote the Global Digital Activism Data Set, showing our current visualization slides (see below).
Sep 23
Posted: under Presented.
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This past week I went to Mexico City to give a keynote address at Ciudadano 3.0 (Citizen 3.0), a summit on online political marketing organized by the Mexican Internet Association. I went a little off topic, talking about the growing trend in mass movements around the world (see below). The summit was in anticipation of Mexico’s presidential elections in 2012 so, despite my more global topic, most of the questions were about the Obama campaign’s use of digital and how to apply it to Mexico.
Aug 29
Posted: under Presented.
This past weekend I was a panelist at the sixth annual Rising Tide blogger conference here in my home town of New Orleans. Video of the panel, on social media and social justice, is below. I went to the conference as a spectator and ended up as a panelist because one of the scheduled panelists was waylaid by Hurricane Irene and I was asked to fill in. Hopefully I did a good job on the fly. My opening remarks begin at 00:09:00.
Rising Tide 6 - Social Media, Social Justice from Jason Berry on Vimeo.
Jun 18
Posted: under Trained.
Last week I had the privilege to work with the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition on internal communications for their global organization of grassroots AIDS activists. I started by asking the staff to create an org chart of ITPC on the wall of the meeting room, which we could refer to throughout the day.
Creating an org chart, adding communication pathways
Then they added in the different communication pathways the organization needed to succeed. Colored yarn represented different types of communication, like “informing,” “consulting,” and “directing.”
Pathways that were not up to snuff got a GAP marker.
After the pathways were drawn, all the gaps were recorded on note cards so staff could vote on which they wanted to focus on. We didn’t have time to address all the gaps, but we wanted to make sure we addressed the most important.
Staff vote for the gaps they think should be addressed during the workshop
Then I facilitated a group discussion of solutions. We developed several practical processes to improve internal communication, such as Watering Hole Wednesdays, when staff around the world would be on Skype at the same time twice a month for casual conversation.
Staff discuss practical solutions and create a plan for implementation,
Jun 13
Posted: under Presented.
These are slides and an evaluation matrix that I prepared for the Open Society Foundations’ Public Health Program to help them think about evaluating the media use of their grantees.
Click the image below to download a PDF of the evaluation matrix, which was used as a hand-out. The crawl-walk-run framework is borrowed from Beth Kanter.
May 23
Posted: under Wrote.
I’ve recently been doing some research on nonprofit website trends for the Open Society Foundations’ Health Media Initiative and I thought I’d share them here:
May 04
Posted: under Meta.
I just updated my CV, click here to download the PDF.
