EIYN Warsaw Summit 2011

Social media and legal tools in interfaith advocacy

Written by Daniel Barton

1. Experience with social media• Which brands come to your mind when we say social media?

(Facebook, Flickr, Google+, Twitter, Delicious, LinkedIn, Digg, LastFM, Blogger, YouTube, Xing, Picasa, Spotify, Dropbox, Moodle, Doodle, Vlogs, Wordpress, Classmates, Netlog, Goldenline, Vimeo, Dailymotion...)

• What kind of social media do we have?◦ social networking◦ Internet forums◦ blogs, weblogs, microblogs ◦ collaborative projects (wikis)◦ content communities (photographs, pictures, videos, music)◦ social bookmarking◦ game communities, virtual worlds

• What is common to them?◦ Internet-based (online) applications◦ (replacement for) social interaction◦ user-generated content◦ rely on reputation (social authority) of each online individual (online

people trust less traditional media than their online acquaintances)◦ creation of virtual communities based on common interest, cause,

profession, location etc.◦ dependent on access to the Internet◦ building a common identity◦ easier to access than traditional media◦ not easy to control and manage (decentralised, less hierarchical)◦ immediacy: everything happens instantaneously

• How can we use these characteristics?

2. Lessons learnt (recommendations)• There are different types of social media and you have to choose the most

appropriate ones for your campaign.• You need to have a good number of committed individuals who would be

supplying content: something needs to be happening all the time.• You need to be able to start off the campaign in a quick and appealing way:

first days are the most efficient for attracting attention and building on the fact that something done by many online friends is much easier to notice → good planning required.

• You need to be well prepared for the launch: everything in place (no sections ‘under reconstructions’ or ‘to be added later’).

• You need to choose branding and wording that are appealing.• You need to identify a few individuals that are trustworthy (have social

authority) in the social network (online community). • You can hardly do a good online campaign if you don’t have a fresh-looking

Daniel Barton: Advocacy training (Warsaw) 1

and trustworthy website (of your organisation, network or campaign).• People are fed up with average online campaigning: you need to be

interesting and innovative. No past campaign can be repeated.• Capitalize on world-moving events. • Everything that happens in social media stays fresh only for a short time. If

you want to have any significant impact, you have to perpetuate the event. (On the other hand, everything that you do wrong stays online for a long time as a testimony of your incompetency.)

• Good content spreads almost by itself (but it still needs an initial assistance).• Be prepared for people using mobile devices: have mobile websites, low-

resolution pictures, small attachments (files to download) etc.• Implement like, +1, share etc. buttons on your websites, pages, blogs etc. if

you want to facilitate their presence on social networks.• People are quite often reluctant to download anything (too much effort): it’s

quite practical to use platforms for document sharing, such as googledocs, scribd or issuu.

• Use social networks for finding partners, collaborators, volunteers etc.

3. Legal tools • Usually quite complicated, therefore requiring an assistance of legal

practitioners and/or specialised NGOs.• The most useful thing that you can do is to figure out that a particular story

can be used as a test case or a means of campaigning for something, and tell it to the specialists.

• Test cases are cases which are selected to be send through legal proceedings because they represent a concrete problem of our societies, and because they are quite straight-forward (not too many elements that would be distracting from the main point or threatening the success of the case).

• A good test case is an important tool for medialisation – you can build a whole campaign around it.

• Types of legal procedures:◦ Court proceedings: very formalised, costly, lengthy.◦ Complaints procedures: easier to use, less formal, cheaper; usually

require just filing a complaint with a body responsible for the agenda. You can petition both national and international bodies. Useful examples:▪ Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief (Heiner Bielefeldt)▪ United Nations Human Rights Committee

◦ Arbitration/mediation: less formal, lengthy and costly than court proceedings, therefore very useful for e.g. employment disputes between an employer and a Muslim employee being prohibited to attend Friday services.

• Legal proceedings can be also quite harmful to your image, especially if you try to help a marginalised group which is targeted by the society at large. Before you enter legal proceedings, have your media strategy ready. Be aware that even if you manage to win a legal battle, you may lose confidence of your society and partners.

• Conclusion: think of using legal procedures as part of your campaigns and have a good network of friends and NGOs that could provide you the legal know-how.

Daniel Barton: Advocacy training (Warsaw) 2