Auditing of STAND Now! Part II

Anti-Qaddafi Libyan rebels wave their national flag

The face of the world has greatly changed since my last post on STAND's social media presence just a few weeks ago.  An international coalition led by the U.S. and NATO forces militarily intervened in Libya to enforce the UN Security Council Resolution of a no-fly zone.  A new rebel movement grew momentum in the recently seceded Southern Sudan, further complicating its short and fragile history.  Members of U.S. Congress continue to debate the controversial details of the federal budget, increasing the looming possibility of a government shutdown.  All of these events, which have dominated the news cycles for weeks, have also impacted the operations of STAND and their social media campaigns.

Because of these developments around the world, it has been extremely interesting to follow STAND's social media presence throughout the past few weeks.  The impact of these events have not only proven that STAND utilizes their online tools to promote themselves as an organization, but that they also use social media to empower their members to help accomplish STAND's main agenda.  This, my friends, is groundswell in action!  For example, when accounts from Libya regarding violent government crackdown on anti-Qaddafi civilians were growing, STAND decided to use its social media presence to help their members advocate government action that would stop these atrocities against innocent civilians.  Through their Facebook, Twitter, and blog pages, they were able to take action by providing downloadable talking points for UpSTANDers to "Call the State Department now at (202) 647-5291 and ask for a no-fly zone over Libya."

Not only were STAND's efforts unique in this way, but they were also fruitful.  When the UN Security Council Resolution was passed on March 17th implementing a no-fly zone over Libya to reduce attacks against civilians, STAND was ecstatic and wanted to congratulate its fellow activists on their call to action.  This further portrayed their use of social media to empower their own groundswell:

Another example of how STAND's presence has been impacted by current events was when their annual Pledge2Protect campaign (which I discussed in my previous post) was disrupted due to the failure of Congress to introduce the genocide prevention bill in time for STAND to advocate during this event.  This is in part due to the government standoff regarding the budget and calls to reduce U.S. expenditures on foreign assistance (which, FYI accounts to less than 1% of the entire budget).  In spite of this, STAND decided to remain flexible and through its social media sources, shift the focus of their campaign from advocating this genocide prevention bill to providing invaluable training through a genocide prevention and activism boot camp.  Through suggestions from their members via online platforms, they were able to announce these changes and even decided to waive the $25 registration fee if those who already registered wanted to attend.  Talk about handling a crisis situation well!

Throughout this entire monitoring process, I have come to believe that STAND is unique in not only utilizing social media for marketing extremely well, but also for introducing never-seen-before initiatives that combine traditional and contemporary tactics of activism.  Because of this, it has been such a great and exceptional organization to monitor. 

However, through this monitoring process I have also come to understand that STAND still faces challenges that they will need to overcome in order to maximize their social media potential.  For instance, as it is an extremely large and decentralized organization with over 800 chapters all over the world, it has been difficult for social media auditors (like me) to analyze its large-scale impact.  Although STAND does have major social media outlets for its central headquarters, I would suggest further building their database to not only include a list of STAND chapters all over the world, but also links to the individual chapters' social media pages as well.  This way fellow UpSTANDers can see what the other chapters have been doing, and STAND officials can also keep a virtual eye on their different branches to make sure that the groundswell does not turn against them.

An Google map of STAND's different locations

Furthermore, as I mentioned in my last report, STAND is currently going through an "identity crisis," as they have recently changed their official name and main mission due to an expansion of their efforts.  For the sake of being able to monitor their social media impact, I believe it is important for STAND to be able to find an efficient title that is unique and able to track.  Although the word "STAND" is indeed clever, it is just not distinct enough to distinguish itself in this information-laden social media world.  Even their slogan, "Don't stand by, stand up!" is a phrase that is used in PSAs for anti-bullying campaigns.  Thus, although STAND has accomplished so much, I believe that they still need to find cohesion within their organizational identity and overall mission.  This issue will probably arise as STAND continues to grow as an organization, as they will confront the need to find an identity that will remain constant throughout their expansion.

In conclusion, I believe that everything STAND stands for (no pun intended) makes it such a unique organization to represent.  Its ability to empower the youth to not only be aware of ongoing injustices around the world, but also refuse to stand idly by as they occur, is completely consistent with their strategic use of novel social media tactics.  I believe that in their short history, STAND's actions have really impacted the discourse on U.S. foreign policy and a large part of their success has been accomplished with the assistance of social media tools.  It will be interesting to keep an eye on this organization and see how much they can grow--and how much they can shape anti-genocide policy--in the coming years.

What do YOU stand for?

Where Do We Go From Here? Reading Reflection #3

 
As we reach the end of the book, I found the last few chapters of Li and Bernoff's Groundswell optimistic, and their prediction future of companies continuing to improve due to the groundswell phenomenon rather reassuring.  After all, the main moral of this book is that the opinions of individuals affiliated with a company will be more and more valued with the growth of social media, whether its their customers or their employees.  This is great news, as the tools we have practically grown up with are going to be more pivotal in measuring the quality of a service or product as well as expressing ourselves as consumers.  Although it is still an ongoing evolution, it is safe to agree with Li and Bernoff that companies will soon be increasingly utilizing social media, rather than relying completely on creative departments of their own, to improve their products and services.

Standards are continuing to reshape itself even at this very moment.  Thanks to Groundswell, I know that if I someday end up working for a mid- to large-sized company that does not have social media outlets that they use to listen, empower, and respect their employees, it is an indicator of how little they care about their workers.  Same goes with a small company that does not have social media pages available to market themselves and listen to their groundswell: it shows that they are not thinking strategically and not committing that minimal effort to exploit social media to expand.  Reading Groundswell and knowing what is ideal and vital to success helps raise the bar on the quality of a company's work as well as their customer relations.

In addition, I found Chapter 11 on the employee groundswell extremely interesting, as it is now an increasing imperative to give all your employees the proper tools to be social media ambassadors.  In other words, not only should there be a centralized online site where employees can communicate with each other and throughout the hierarchy of the company ladder, but there should also be a top-down discourse that ensures company members that they are being listened to.  Furthermore, there should be regulations as to what is appropriate within each employee's individual social media sites and what they post in the company's main comment boards or pages.  After all, one company who divulges too much or too inaccurately could destroy a company's reputation in minutes.  It seems as though the dynamics of a company's future will be interesting, as younger people will continue to have more of a say in how a social media campaign should be approached, but guidance from senior officials about what is appropriate should still exist.

As Li and Bernoff seem extremely positive about the Groundswell phenomenon, I have to agree with them that this is the future of how businesses are run, how marketing is structured, and how shareholders and consumers will become increasingly important.  Hopefully as time goes on, social media standards (in other words, what is appropriate in personal and corporate social media use) will become more concrete in order preserve this valuable social communication phenomenon that is currently leading to better products and easier lives.

Social Media 101

For those of you who are still a bit confused....

Courtesy of vanished-omen.

STAND Now! Through the Social Media Microscope

The American Revolution had the Boston Tea Party and anti-colonist paraphernalia like Common Sense.  The Civil Rights Movement had influential "sit-ins," marches, and heroes like MLK and Rosa Parks.  The Vietnam War Protests had iconic student demonstrations and underground music and newspapers.  All today's activists need to be heard are the following: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and access to the rest of the internet.

The iconic "Flower Power" photograph of the '60s

The organization that I chose to monitor is called STAND: A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition.  Formerly known as Students Taking Action Now: Darfur, STAND is a student-based political organization founded in 2004 with the mission to advocate genocide prevention policy and legislation.  Initially meant to spread awareness of the devastating Darfur conflict in Western Sudan, STAND's rapid growth throughout the years has led them to advocate for political action to end all genocidal violence around the world.  To this day, STAND has established over 850 college chapters in 25 countries all over the world, raised over $650,000 in funds, and has been recognized by global organizations like the United Nations and Amnesty International.  The most amazing part of all this?  It was all done by college students not so different from you and I.

I chose this organization because I wanted to see how the face of activism has evolved with the use of the internet and social media networking.  In my opinion, part of the reason why STAND has become so successful in spreading their cause is because their founders, part of the web-2.0-savvy generation, knew exactly what was occurring with these changes and rode the wave of this technological revolution.  By utilizing the proper tools, they were able to hone the power of social media to complement traditional practices of political activism such as writing petitions, holding peaceful demonstrations, organizing conferences, and approaching influential leaders for help.

The way STAND operates is that they provide local university and high school chapters the tools needed to raise awareness against genocide: fundraising, media materials, lessons about lobbying, and background information about the ongoing conflicts.  Because their various chapters are located all over the world, most of these tools are accessible online through their website, Facebook page, and YouTube.  Although the different chapters hold their own demonstrations and events, STAND also holds nation-wide conferences and lobbying events to help unite their hundreds of thousands of members from all over the world.  For example, this April STAND will be holding their Third Pledge2Protect campaign, which is an opportunity for STAND members to donate funds, upload YouTube videos which would be presented to members of Congress, as well as visit the STAND headquarters in Washington, DC for a lobbying day and march on the Washington Mall.  As it has become the largest lobbying event in genocide prevention history, what is particularly remarkable about this event is how it defines 21st century activism--the ability to mobilize and advocate through a combination of traditional tactics and social media strategy.

Worcester's own Congressman McGovern speaking
in the Pledge2Protect Campaign in 2009

Like Clark University's chapter of STAND, most STAND schools have their own social media pages to help advertise their events, organize their ideas, and increase membership.  This is a unique take on the Groundswell phenomenon, where members of an organization use social media to act on their own without the need of top-down direction from leadership.  It allows the organization to continue growing and taking on new chapters all over the world without running short on manpower and resources to handle all of its members.  For instance, through Facebook Pages individual STAND chapters can tag photos, videos, and events to the main STAND Facebook page and let everyone know what each chapter is doing.

STAND's main Facebook Page

What I also found interesting was that through a simple monitoring of their social media presence, it is immediately obvious how passionate STAND's different chapters were about organizing their events and advocating their main cause.  For example, during the Southern Sudanese independence referendum in the end of January, which was a pivotal step to ending the civil conflict in Sudan, a Social Mention search of STAND within that month led to their positive to negative mentions ratio to grow almost 4 to 1.  An IceRocket search of the last week of January, which was when the results of the referendum came out, saw an extreme peak in blog posts mentioning STAND (see graph below).

That same week also commenced STAND's official "Tweet to the White House" week, where STAND users all over the world used hashtags and RT functions to President Obama, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, and Vice President Joe Biden's Facebook and Twitter pages to raise the Sudan question in the president's foreign policy agenda and hopefully include it in the latest State of the Union Address.  Although the Darfur issue was cut out of final draft, this only displayed the power Twitter has to not only allow students and ordinary people to address powerful officials, but to also get a response from them.  In @StandNOW's Twitter page, their tweets show an almost immediate reply from President Obama's account:

 

After monitoring STAND's social media presence, I believe that they are a great example of how social media is utilized in an organizational level and how the proper tools are used to empower a group's groundswell to help them achieve their goals.  Furthermore, when social media is applied to activism, it is extremely easy for an advocacy group like STAND to monitor how much they impact policy and how successfully they advocate their cause.  Although there is more they can do to increase membership, organize the social media pages of their existing chapters, and expand the reach of their social media presence, I find that the novel things that this organization has accomplished with social media shows the potential they have to really make a bottom-up political impact on a global level.  I believe this organization will continue to make headway in making activism and social media an indelible partnership.

To conclude, I wanted to show this video which shows how STAND members participated in a Tweet the White House Day (very much like the one described above) and gets President Obama to start talking about what his administration is planning to do with Sudan:

More to come!

A 140-Character Story to Warm Your Heart

A few days ago as I was browsing the news, a New York Times article caught my eye and as many things around me have been doing recently, reminded me about this class and the social media phenomenon that we have been trying to make sense of.  The short article, entitled "A Life on the Streets, Captured by Twitter" featured 44-year old Derrick Wiggins who is not only a native Brooklyn-ite and Giants fan, but has also been part of the homeless community for many years now.  It told the tale of how Derrick was given a pre-paid flipphone to tweet regularly about the challenges he overcomes on a day-to-day basis--many of these things we take for granted such as eating a hearty meal, taking a warm shower and sleeping with heat and thick blankets.  To this day, Derrick has garnered over 5,500 followers and still tries to respond to most of his followers who wish him a good luck and send their prayers day by day.

Derrick Wiggins, @awitness2011

Through Underheard in New York, a non-profit organization that focuses on homelessness awareness, Derrick and a few other select individuals (Danny, Albert, and Carlos) were provided pre-paid cellphones to regularly tweet from anywhere in the city about their life without a home.  The organization was founded a month ago by three graduate students interning at a NYC PR firm who have always wanted to do something to help the homeless community in their city, but had limited resources of their own to do so.  In spite of this, they honed the power of social media and decided to take this unorthodox approach at activism by helping homeless residents of the city gain a voice of their own.  Their mission: "...use their social media presence to create real interaction and make them a part of our global community."

Since reading the NYT article about a week ago, I have been following the UnderheardinNY website and checking to see how their Twitter stars are doing.   Lately, I've started to notice that I wasn't the only one in my circle of friends doing this--a friend of mine on Facebook recently posted a link to the site on his own profile, and some Tweeters on my network who I told about this also started following Danny (who, personally is my favorite) with me.  What a great example of how word of mouth really spreads like wildfire!  And that's not all--as the buzz about this organization continued to grow, so did the opportunities for these men: a few days ago I noticed they were starting to get invites to job interviews, people were tweeting to welcome them to their homes for a meal, and Derrick was even given a ticket to see the NY Giants from the money raised by his Facebook and Twitter followers.  However, the most incredible story happened a few days ago when Danny was finally reunited with his daughter and his two grandchildren for the first time after losing contact with them ELEVEN years ago.  (DISCLAIMER: Get ready to shed a tear or two...)

Celina blogged a few weeks ago about Spent, a great interactive website that also features homelessness awareness, and I believe this is another wonderful example of how social media can be used to greatly advocate a cause and tackle an entrenched societal problem.  Although critics argue that social media tools have made us lazy activists (or rather, slacktivists), I believe that allowing Danny, Derrick, Carlos and Albert to speak for themselves through  Twitter and thus rebuild their lives on their own is worth much more than giving them $1 on the street.  Don't you?  If you agree, I invite you all to spread this story and revel in the power 140 characters has in restoring someone's life and opening many windows of opportunities.

"It's a great moment," said Danny Morales when asked about meeting his daughter.  "I feel rejoiced.  I never thought it would be this way... It's so beautiful."

*Keep up to date on what's going on in UnderheardInNY through their Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube pages.*