There are a lot of ways to cover the Komen/PP firestorm–too many, in fact. For the purposes of my work here, I’m going to focus on what made this brouhaha different than any other concerning Planned Parenthood, the lessons learned if you’re on the defensive, and the lessons learned if you’re on the offensive.

The culture of this particular moment

I’m going to first spend some time investigating why it was that this particular attack on reproductive health and Planned Parenthood was so explosive. Planned Parenthood has been under attack for quite a while, and especially in the last few years– those working on reproductive freedom issues won’t likely soon forget the US House trying to defund Planned Parenthood altogether in 2011, for example. (And we won’t forget Stephen Colbert’s completely amazing takedown, either.) So why was Komen’s move so incendiary? And what can we learn from it?

Invariably, I know people working with social media strategy are eventually going to be asked to reproduce situations like Komen/PP. They’re going to be asked to make this new campaign GO VIRAL. Let’s get this part out of the way: Nothing can ever be made “viral” on purpose, period. Anyone who says differently is selling something.*

Here are the salient points about This Moment for future campaign work:

1. Komen mistook the community of breast cancer survivors and cause supporters as their own community and supporters. People who are involved in working towards a cure for breast cancer are coming to this work often for very emotional reasons: because they have survived, or they know someone who has– or hasn’t. They appreciate that Komen is leading the charge, but their passion ultimately centers itself on breast cancer.

Katha Pollitt points out in her Nation piece, by the way, that Komen’s origins are activist and feminist in nature:

Breast cancer activism began as a feminist cause, after all: the initial impetus, back when Komen was founded in 1982, was the silence and shame surrounding the disease, the lack of research funding and the general sexism pervading treatment. Those are all feminist issues, and were structured as such in public discourse at the time.

This has been mainstreamed in many ways, and particularly the pinkwashing campaigns have normalized breast cancer as part of our everyday conversations about women’s health and cancer in general. (Pinkwashing is problematic for a number of reasons; I’m not going down that road here, but read the piece at the link above if you want to know more.)  In any case, Komen’s championing of breast cancer support on multiple fronts gave the organization the impression that people cared about Komen. They don’t. They clearly care about Komen’s money and that it always goes towards supporting breast cancer initiatives, though.

Will Komen be able to fix this? I don’t know. As a colleague pointed out to me in an email:

I doubt that Komen can regain the trust and support of the millions of disappointed women. Komen’s former meme was “We fight breast cancer for you and the people you love.” A new meme has been created: “We are part of the nasty culture wars that have hurt so many, and we care more about that than about whether you die from breast cancer.”

2. Furthermore, emotional connections in general matter. Planned Parenthood has an incredibly emotional relationship to their constituencies: the women for whom they provide services, and of course, the advocates for reproductive rights and justice. Look at any of the stories posted on the Tumblr that I created, Planned Parenthood Saved Me, and you’ll find people not referring just to the services that they received, but more so, the care, understanding and non-judgmental support. More on the Tumblr later, but the bottom line here is that Planned Parenthood has carefully cultivated that emotional connection into a relationship. When the crap comes down in a relationship, friends are there for each other. PP’s constituencies felt personally attacked by Komen, and responded as such.

How was that different than the legislative attacks of last year? Mostly because so many more women outside of PP’s traditional constituencies were involved, but I’d also say that this felt particularly jarring to core activists and supporters. This wasn’t the usual social conservative attack: A non-partisan organization (albeit one with a dubious history, about more of which we’re learning every day) caved to anti-choice pressure. That hurt.

While an organization can’t create this kind of attack for themselves, what they can do is this: Create your community before you need them. Leverage emotional connections to your work into real relationships.

3. A reconnection of reproductive healthcare as real healthcare was made in the wider mainstream community. This one is harder to quantify– or at least, I’ve been having trouble quantifying it. There are two parts of this: that women have assumed for the last couple decades that care of their ladyparts is automatically going to be covered under other healthcare provisions; two, that Planned Parenthood has morphed in the public consciousness as a healthcare provider to an abortionplex (as depicted by The Onion, a satirical newspaper. Also, see the Yelp reviews.). Rebecca Traister and Joan Walsh talk about this in their excellent Salon piece:

For the first time in what feels like forever, passion and fury were being loudly, proudly given in a full-throated voice, on behalf of women – women as moral actors; women as citizens with rights, health, bodies, freedoms; women as people with families and economic concerns. [...]
The demonization of Planned Parenthood should have awakened the country to the radicalism of the right, and how far it has pushed the political conversation. It’s been hard to measure the degree of the radicalism, so slowly and unceasingly has it crept across our consciousness and the political discourse. But it’s important to remember how mainstream Planned Parenthood used to be. It was the respectable, even Republican, advocate for women’s health, including reproductive services.

Both of these common-culture frames/memes — assuming care and demonizing Planned Parenthood– have contributed to the chipping away at reproductive health and freedom. The emotional pain of the moment combined with the chipping away led many women outside of traditional activism spheres to their a-ha moment last week.

Lessons learned: if you’re under attack

So, the mob has lit their torches and gotten out their pitchforks. What do you do? Assuming you’ve already built your community before you need it, there are a few other things to keep in mind.

1. Say something. Komen chose to remain silent, and as pointed out by Raven Brooks over at the Netroots Foundation, they allowed the conversation to get away from them. What could they have said? “We’re listening. We hear you. We know you’re upset, we’re here for you.”

I was reminded in this situation of a problem that my dear friend Jaclyn Friedman faced a few weeks ago. She wrote a column about Blue Ivy, and in it, didn’t use a racial justice lens on Black women’s sexuality. This upset a lot of people, understandably, and Jaclyn was faced with a lot of angry tweets. So, she tweeted that she was about to get in a car and drive to an event for a few hours, but didn’t want people to think she was being silent. She also tweeted that she was genuinely listening to concerns and wanted to take time to process and respond properly. When she did respond, she posted an apology that has since been held up as a shining example of how to handle this kind of situation. While not everyone was satisfied, many people who previously were angry with her took the time to support and thank her.

2. When you do finally say something, don’t do it in plastic. Komen posted a video that was widely criticized as flat and inauthentic. It reminded me of watching people who dance who’ve recently been taught how to dance. They’ve got all the moves down, but it’s awkward–they’ve got no flow. People at this point don’t want to hear about numbers. They don’t care, frankly, about understanding you at this point. They want you to understand them.

Also weird: they never mentioned Planned Parenthood in this video, as if mentioning PP would make the entire Komen organization evaporate instantly. This is clearly straight out of an old-school PR book: don’t mention the enemy! Time to get that memo out again: old-school PR tactics don’t work in social media. You’re in a conversation.

More tips can be found at my post on #AmazonFAIL from 3 years ago (these rules haven’t changed!), over at Allyson Kapin’s post on Frogloop, and Raven’s post at Netroots Foundation.

Lessons learned: if you’re on the attack

Again, we’re assuming here that you’ve already built your community before you need it. I can’t stress enough how important this is. You might also want to look at Beth Kanter’s Ladder of Engagement to understand more how people become involved with your organization through digital channels.

1. While you can’t create these kind of opportunities on the fly, you can be ready for them when they happen. Removing barriers to effective, nimble organizational response is key. Planned Parenthood had an email out almost immediately, and their social media followed suit.

2. Don’t forget targeted, multi-pronged approaches to digital activism.  While a lot of yelling and screaming on social media may make you feel better as an individual, you have to ask yourself: Does an organization like Komen really care about loose cannon spray? I don’t think that they do. In that vein, a lot of people with whom I work started talking right away about how to hurt Komen financially, using a targeted set of strategies to shame current donors into withdrawing support, and to raise money for Planned Parenthood.

I also started wondering what kind of activism could be done with women who don’t have any money to withdraw or re-donate–those who would be most affected by a lack of services at Planned Parenthood. It was with that impetus that I created the Tumblr blog, Planned Parenthood Saved Me, as a storytelling vehicle. Numbers and statistics don’t tell stories; people do. That’s how we relate to one another. Collecting these stories in one place became a powerful messaging tool: for Planned Parenthood itself, if they wanted to use it; for journalists looking for the human side of this story; and, of course, for the women who have lived through horrific healthcare experiences, who were saved by PP, as a tool of catharsis and support.

What else can we examine here? Leave your thoughts, ideas and lessons in the comments, or ping me with them on Twitter.

You know about social media. You know that you’ve got to get on board with it for your organization, or for your own activist work. You may have even signed up for Twitter or Facebook already, but you don’t know where to start. What are the right tools to use? What do I say? Why are other people doing this? And, perhaps, most importantly: how the hell do I know if it’s working?!

View the full event page for the whole description and pricing information, and to register. We’re also offering scholarships for those in need.

WE ARE GOING TO HAVE SO MUCH FUN.

Oh, and speaking of need, I should mention how this idea came about– a lot of people come to Jen Angel (of Aid & Abet) and I looking for a hands-on workshop, but can’t afford to bring me into their organization or event. This workshop will get folks who need it the most, working on the front lines, the skills they need without emptying their budgets.

Based on how things go in SF, I’ll be offering this boot camp in other cities (likely next up will be NYC and DC), and possibly online. If you’re interested helping to host one in other cities, please let us know– leave a comment below or send me an email. And, if you’re interested in bringing me to your organization for a group training or strategy session, drop Jen a line.

What I’ve found troublesome so far is that the atmosphere/culture Google+ has far less “personality” than the other services do. I don’t see as much intimate content there (yet?) as I do other services. And the intimate content that is posted there doesn’t seem to resonate as much with readers.

I’m theorizing that this is entirely due to Circles. Because people have the ability to limit their more intimate moments to smaller groups of people, they seem to be automatically choosing to keep most intimate moments extremely private. This is a boon for issues of safety and vulnerability, for sure– as an advocate for privacy controls elsewhere, and against egregious privacy changes, I of course see the value.

But I’m mourning a little bit the loss of what often, for me, makes social networking so interesting: the very human, authentic versions of ourselves being shared in a wider public way. That kind of sharing initiates trust-building, validates others who have similar experiences, educates those who don’t, among many other sociological phenomena. But really, bottom line here, it made everyone seem actually human.

Google+ feels like a personal branding engine. And I hate personal branding. I’m often reminded of this quote from Tara Hunt in my book:

“People shouldn’t be acting more like brands,” she said. “We’re humans! Instead of having a personal brand, why not just have a personality?”

People on Google+ are sharing what they think wider audiences want to hear from them. Audiences. As in, “let me broadcast to you.” There is a missing emotional connection there that makes posting something “sharing.”

The last few years, we’ve had this remarkable revolution in sharing that has made it a little safer, and a little more fun, to make ourselves a teensy bit vulnerable. Now that we have a toy that gives us the option to hide our vulnerability, it feels like we’re choosing the easy way out.

The other thing that bothers me is the amount of people on Google+ talking about their exodus from the new red-headed stepchild of the moment, Facebook. I’m no lover of how Facebook handles a lot of its policies, mind you, but it still holds lots of value for me. One of my (many, many) cousins, who just had her first baby, isn’t on Google+ to share photos of him. Neither is my brother, who posts rare but utterly hilarious status updates. Nor are a huge swath of people from whom I want to learn, and about whose lives I want to hear.

Maybe you’re saying, “Not yet.” And maybe you’re right– maybe there will be a huge exodus someday, just as we all left Friendster and MySpace. But the tone of these anti-Facebook-community statements reminds me too much of what danah boyd talked about in her Personal Democracy Forum 2009 keynote, “The Not-So-Hidden Politics of Class Online.” If you haven’t heard or read it, go now.

The basic point is that because social networks are social, they are completely wrapped up in all of the class, race, gender and other identity parameters that we carry with us in our offline lives. When the exodus from MySpace to Facebook started, it started with predominantly white, affluent kids who decided to get away from the “ghetto” of MySpace. A key quote from boyd:

They narrated MySpace as the dangerous underbelly of the Internet while Facebook was the utopian savior.

It sounds achingly familiar to what I read on Google+ == getting away from family members, getting away from app/game users, getting away from the inconsequential jabbering. There have also been sexist/ageist analyses saying “your mom won’t use Google+.” Because it started with the tech elite (who, I dare say, don’t have the highest emotional intelligence a lot of the time), this sad course of Escaping The Other(s) has started to be set.

This is all anecdotal, so I’m trying to raise a red flag and ask people to thing about their migratory behaviors and thought processes.

And, for the record, personally, I’m a big fan of inconsequential jabbering.

“	Holy shit. (@ Stonewall Inn w/ 102 others) [pic]: http://4sq.com/jVvxlQ
	randomdeanna June 25, 2011

Holy shit.
Photo by randomdeanna on flickr

“	The biggest feeling, after joy, here outside Stonewall: relief. #ssm
	randomdeanna June 25, 2011

This is what equality looks like.
Photo by randomdeanna on flickr

“	It seen like ppl are getting engaged every 10 ft, haha #ssm
	randomdeanna June 25, 2011

“	OH: “Everyone deserves hugs and kisses.” #ssm #stonewall
	randomdeanna June 25, 2011

“	Where it all began. Thank you to all who sacrificed before us. http://flic.kr/p/9WAstm
	randomdeanna June 25, 2011

Where it all began. Thank you to all who sacrificed before us.
Photo by randomdeanna on flickr

“	Also a common theme outside Stonewall: random reunions, inspired joyous serendipity. #ssm
	randomdeanna June 25, 2011

“	I’m also loving the diversity of genders, ethnicities and identities. Everyone deserves this joy. #ssm #stonewall
	randomdeanna June 25, 2011

Crowds outside Stonewall, #1
Photo by randomdeanna on flickr

Crowds outside Stonewall, #2
Photo by randomdeanna on flickr

“	Spontaneous song breaks out: “Going to the chapel” #ssm #stonewall
	randomdeanna June 25, 2011

“	@randomdeanna LOL! KitchenAid Mixer Artisan series. Good call. Have a blast celebrating at Stonewall!
	ruthkalinka June 25, 2011

Empire State Building Goes Rainbow
Photo by zennie62 on flickr

powered by Storify

• We all know that social media get the word out at lightning speed–but what struck me most about this news was not the speed of information, but the immediacy of community development. People are using Twitter and Facebook to work out what are, for many, complicated emotions. Relief, joy, anger, sadness are all appearing at once. This is in stark contrast to what we often see in traditional media soundbites (particularly video media), where broad strokes are painted when it comes to emotional content–i.e., those people are cheering, those people over there are not. Social media is creating a space where it’s acceptable, and useful, to express multiple feelings. This is also very different than, for example, the days following 9/11–when the war on Afghanistan was announced, it was largely extremely taboo in American public squares (online or off) to express concern, or disagreement. Part of that was the political climate, but part of that was that there weren’t necessary effective public spaces for people to be nuanced human beings.
• I’m also struck by the speed with humor was employed as a tactic to process the news. Again, in contrast to 9/11, when we waited two weeks for the new issue of The Onion to come out–no one made any jokes before then. Not only was it taboo, but there just wasn’t a way to deal. (By the way, that issue of The Onion might be the best one ever–headlines like, “God Angrily Clarifies ‘Don’t Kill’ Rule, “Hijackers Surprised To Find Selves in Hell,” and many more gems.) Last night, some of the immediate jokes, some in good taste, some not, clearly paved a way for people to express all kinds of reactions to this global news phenomenon. My personal favorites were @marcfaletti‘s “It was that f***ing iPad location history, wasn’t it?” and the newly created @OsamaInHell account tweeting, “Wait, what?”

More as time allows today…

• Monday, 9:30am. Hyatt TX Ballroom 1.
  The best donuts you’ve ever had in your life will be served!
  People Power: Leveraging Personal Stories to Build Influence.
  http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP7037
  With: Twanna Hines, Jean Russell, Cheryl Contee and Andrea Miller.
  Now, social is personal. From finance site Mint.com’s anti-immigration blog post gaffe to YourTango CEO Andrea Miller’s “How to Date an Indian (Advice for the Non-Indian),” social media fuses personal with public in a way never seen before. Whether sharing taste in hiphop, dating preferences, provocative political ideas, or insider information about a soon-to-be-launched business, social media strategically develops personal and professional reputations. Stories can build audiences, grow support for campaigns and change mainstream ideas about social issues. They can also alienate various communities, compromise business information confidentiality or damage brands. If social media has shown us anything, it’s that stories still matter. This panel will be a concrete conversation on how successful online personalities have managed their personal and professional lives using social media: telling authentic stories about our experiences, and using those stories to build powerful, engaged communities.
• Monday, 11:30am. SXSW Bookstore — ACC Ballroom Foyer D
  Book signing! I’ll be there till 12pm.
  http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_OE00561
• Monday, 12:30pm. Icehauers, 83 Rainey St.
  Twitter for Good at SXSW and Beyond
  http://claire.us.com/twitter-for-good-at-sxsw-and-beyond/
  The lovely Claire Diaz Ortiz, who leads philanthropy and social innovation at Twitter, is hosting this lunchtime discussion and workshop to answer the question: “What 1 THING could Twitter, Inc. do to better help non-profits, causes, and anyone trying to make a difference in the world using the platform?” More details at Claire’s blog post.

At the beginning of December, Aspen Baker, the executive director of Exhale, wrote me an email. “I’m looking for a social media coordinator and web person for a short-term project,” she said. “Interested?” I’ve always been a fan of Aspen’s work at Exhale — they’re a nonprofit organization which provides the first and only nonjudgmental national, multilingual after-abortion talkline. One of the things I love most about Exhale, which I learned largely through their campaign, is their advocacy of “pro-voice” in dealing with abortion. Every woman’s voice deserves to be heard; women (in numerous political contexts) don’t need to be talked at, shamed, have numbers and percentages thrown at them as much as they need to be listened to, and told that they are loved.

The project Aspen had in mind was exciting from the outset–large with names but fraught with challenges. It turns out that MTV approached them when they decided to do a special on abortion for their program “16 & Pregnant.” Now, if you’re not familiar, MTV has two reality shows about teen pregnancy running; “16 & Pregnant” is one of them, and the other is “Teen Mom.” They’ve both been running for two seasons, and up until this special, neither series showed any teen having an abortion. This is noteworthy because 37% of all teen pregnancies do end in abortion; many have criticized MTV for not showing a large portion of the teen pregnancy experience.

MTV came to Exhale originally looking for women who would be willing to go on the show and talk about their experience having an abortion. Exhale ultimately got the opportunity to help shape how the show was put together, and used this opportunity to do some pro-voice educating with the production team. They wanted to show that it was possible to have an honest, thoughtful, nuanced conversation about abortion that wouldn’t be polarizing and inflammatory. And, most importantly, they wanted MTV’s young viewers who have had abortions to personally relate to the stories shared on the special.

Aspen then wanted to create a social media campaign and website to accompany the airing of the special. It was slated to air at 11:30pm on Dec 28th, just a few days after Christmas, and there would be no commercial interruptions, and no promotions announcing that the show would be on. So, despite the bonus of having a nationwide audience, we ran the risk of no one hearing about it. The other challenge was that we weren’t allowed to announce the show ourselves until MTV was ready, which likely (given their desire to fly this under the radar) wasn’t going to be until right before the show.

HOW WE BUILT THE CAMPAIGN

I quickly enlisted the help of Sonal Bains, with whom I work often: we split client work quite nicely, with me on the strategic development and technology end of things, and Sonal on the implementation and media relation end of things. Both of us come from strong offline organizing backgrounds, and this informs our style of work and collaboration. (Plus, Sonal’s hilarious.) The takeaway here is that as you assess your campaign, it’s helpful to write down what your strong points are, what you bring to the table. I know that I don’t have the relationships with bloggers and journalists that Sonal does, for example. If you’re working within an organization, get your key players together and write down concrete skills and time availability as part of your campaign brainstorming. On Exhale’s side, their Director of Programs, Jovida Ross, played a critical role in the implementation of the campaign and was a great partner for Sonal and I. We had a small yet mighty team of high-functioning, excellent communicators.

Aspen’s campaign idea was to create a digital safe space where the women who decided to tell their stories on the show–and by extension, all women who’d had abortions–would feel loved and supported. Central to this space would be a website where anyone could submit a message of love or support. Any political messages (from any corner of the debate) would not be accepted; Aspen’s vision was a zone free of typical advocacy posturing, and wanted it only to focus on the women. Why? In Exhale’s extensive counseling experience, they have found that political rhetoric can shut down women seeking emotional support after abortion. This would be a space where we wouldn’t allow that to happen.

It was important to me to give the campaign a catchy name that had emotional resonance. I rejected our original names that were things like “Your story matters” and “You are loved.” They were all vague, emotionally absent, and just didn’t hit on the enormity of what we were trying to pull off. I asked our group to think of names that were plays on the title of the show, allowing us to capitalize on the already-popular brand; it was Aspen that landed “16 & Loved.”

ELEMENTS OF THE CAMPAIGN

• Set up metrics and analytics to track how the campaign performs
• Build a quick ‘n’ dirty website to capture submissions of love
• Rename the Twitter profile from “xhaleisprovoice” to “ExhaleProVoice” and use the hashtag #16andloved to capture the conversations about the campaign
• Build the Facebook Page for Exhale as an organization, and use it to share the love, and updates about the campaign.
• Involved the reproductive justice blogging community by organizing a private, embargoed call before the special airs, and inviting people to participate in a live blog during the show.

METRICS

I’m a big fan of Rowfeeder for my social media tracking needs. I work with individuals and small organizations, so we pretty much can’t afford tools like Radian6, which is one of the more popular services in the non-profit sphere. For $35/month, Rowfeeder lets us track up to 3 terms on both Twitter and Facebook. On top of providing interesting metrics reports that you can tweak and do fun things with in Excel (if you’re that kind of nerd; not that I know anything about that), it also dumps all the mentions/posts it finds into a Google doc for you, so that you have the raw data.

We chose to have it track #16andloved, ExhaleProVoice and xhaleprovoice (in case there were tons of people using the old Twitter handle). In retrospect, I should have chosen 16andloved without the hash sign; that would have also captured mentions of the website where neither the hashtag nor Twitter handle were used.

WEBSITE

We purchased 16andloved.com and set up hosting with LivingDot.com (their “One” plan for $10.95/month). We installed WordPress, and chose the Therapy theme from WooThemes for $75. I recreated the “16 & Pregnant” logo to read “16 & Loved” by hand using my Wacom Intuos drawing tablet.

For the submissions and posting, we used a few WordPress plugins. The submission form was created by Contact Form 7, and we had to sent to a special email address that we hooked up to Postie. Postie turned the submission emails into draft blog posts, and we checked regularly and approved/discarded the posts. We also used an extension for Contact Form 7 that captured the submissions and added all the info to a table in the database that could be exported. We also used the Really Simple CAPTCHA to keep out spam/bot submissions.

I installed the WP Supercache plugin in case the site got really popular and crashed (it did once). For social sharing, we used the Facebook Likes It plugin (this seems to have been abandoned; I can’t find its install page anymore), and the WP Tweet button plugin.

TWITTER

Before we got word we could talk about the special, we started working on building the community engagement by joining existing abortion conversations, following and engaging with influential folks that we identified, and also posting a few teasers about having Exciting News! to share very soon.

Once we got the go ahead, we launched the website and started soliciting submissions. We received several dozen on the first day, and tweeted some of our favorites. We continued to solicit, post favorites, retweet others’ Twitter posts, and respond to inquiries. Because of the short time period for the campaign, we didn’t do as much curating as I normally advocate for. That’s not to say that we used Twitter as a broadcast tool (a big no-no!); we still maintained a very conversational focus. It’s just that for this case, most of the focus was on “16 & Loved.”

We also used Twitter to promote airing of the show, watching the live blog we were putting together, and to continue to curate responses.

FACEBOOK

Prior to this campaign, Exhale had a Page that they didn’t use, but they did have a Cause with ~1,000 members. My experiences with Causes haven’t been overly fantastic; I feel like it takes a lot of time and resource investment to get minimal material return. Especially for the purposes of our campaign (promoting submissions to the site, and getting the word out about the show), I feel like a Page would serve our purposes much better. The biggest thing is that status updates and links from Pages are more likely to appear in a fan’s news feed, and that was absolutely critical for us.

I asked 25 friends quick to Like it before we even did that much with it so that we could land a username, making it easier to share the Page with the wider world. We chose http://facebook.com/ExhaleProVoice. We then started posting periodic updates to the Cause, asking people to Like the page so that they could stay in touch with Exhale and its Very Exciting News! that was coming.

After that, we used a similar posting strategy as to what we had going on at Twitter.

BLOGGER CALL AND LIVEBLOG

Sonal got to work right away on putting together a conference call for the blogging and journalist communities. She contacted about 10-12 people who write about abortion issues and women’s rights on a larger scale. The Friday before we launched, we hosted the call just using FreeConferenceCall.com. We scheduled a short talk with Aspen, a few words from a spokesperson who had had an abortion. We stressed that the information we were sharing was embargoed, and we would let them know as soon as we could when they could share with their communities. We had a few key asks: 1. to see who wanted to participate in our live blog, 2. to see who was willing to write about the show and our campaign, and 3. to stress the importance of the pro-voice angle of our movement, and ask that they respect that as much as possible. We then opened it up to Q&A, and altogether, we spent about an hour on the phone together.

Five or six of the bloggers on the call volunteered to participate in the live blog the night that the show aired. In addition, the Women’s Media Center offered to create a “watch-in,” and they shared it with their community. How that worked: They created a Facebook event in which people were invited to watch the show (in their own homes) and voice their opinions about it.

For the liveblog, we used CoverItLive. They make it very easy to get a group of approved panelists, as they’re called, to come together and chat live. You can embed the CoverItLive tool in any website very easily, and we encouraged our panelists to do so, widening our reach. I monitored the comments from the community and approved appropriate messages as the show aired. Sonal worked on monitoring the new submissions to the website. After the special was over, people could also re-read the liveblog.

RESULTS! (That’s what you’ve been waiting for, right?)

The straight-up numbers*…

• Website: ~9,000 visits, with most of those happening between Dec. 22nd and Dec. 30th. Users spent an average of 2:26 minutes on the site, and visited 2.1 pages while they stayed. 200+ submissions.
• Twitter: Followers increased from 235 to 465; 548 mentions of @ExhaleProVoice (from 12/20/10, that’s ~27/day); 1563 mentions of #16andloved (from 12/20/10, that’s ~78/day)
• Facebook: Fans went from under 25 to 616; 617 likes of posts with 1,152 active users; Dec. 29th was the most popular day for likes and comments; 86% female fans; 62% are 18-34
• Liveblog:  During the show, we maxed at ~120 viewers at once, with a total of 422 viewers. 175 panelist comments were published; 234 reader comments were sent (98 were published). Since then, the live blog has been replayed over 900 times.
• Media: About 25 blog posts and articles, including feminist strongholds of Feministing, Feministe, Jezebel; independent media such as Salon.com, Change.org, and Care2; mainstream media such as ABCNews, NY Post, Washington Post. Two weeks later, an article on the campaign appeared in the NY Times.

Were these good numbers? All told, yes! We were very happy with them. Moreover, we were even more thrilled with our qualitative metrics, which for me are the real measure of a social media campaign: The overwhelming messages of love and support often left us emotional and speechless. We received very few negative submissions (less than 5), and very few negative comments online. (There was a minor campaign by a conservative blogger, but it never caught traction.) All around, a huge, huge set of cultural wins for the pro-voice movement.

* Exhale agreed to let me publish these numbers. Normally, all quantitative and qualitative metrics are kept private as part of my contracts.

THE INTRO

For background on the #dearjohn campaign, check out these posts from Sady Doyle and Amanda Marcotte.

If you’re not on Twitter, but you’d like a helping hand through the sign-up process, go here.

If you’re new to Twitter, and want an introduction to basic concepts– retweets, hashtags, and mentions, oh my!– go here.

THE GOODS

One of the more attractive social media tactics when it comes to creating a stir is to use hashtags. Hashtags, in the case of campaigns and politics, can be useful to:

• collect all the tweets about a particular topic in one place;
• put pressure on public figures to respond to a topic (because of the above);

What’s a hashtag? It’s an agreed-upon keyword preceded by the pound sign that’s added to your tweet. In this case, we’re using #dearjohn. No special skill is required–just type it into your tweet, or copy and paste it.

Tweets with the #dearjohn hashtag should convey one or more of the following:

• A sense of urgency about sexual assault and reproductive rights.
• A personal story–storytelling is what gets to people, not isolated facts and figures.
• Deep conviction. You don’t have to tell your story to be authentic, but your words should be your own.

UPDATE: Check out Sady’s newer post for content ideas and guidelines.

Consider also monitoring the #dearjohn hashtag (how to do that is explained below) and retweeting posts that you agree with. Amplifying powerful messages and diverse voices goes a long way towards building critical mass.

It’s also helpful to include the Twitter handles of people that you want to hear your message. House representatives who are sponsoring the bill should be considered first–start with @SpeakerBoehner himself. A list of the rest of the co-sponsors–all 173 of them!– can be found here (click on “Co-sponsors” under Representative Christopher Smith). You can use GovLuv to find the Twitter handles of the representative you wish to mention. Consider also sending messages of thanks to representatives who are speaking out and standing up for women in this fight. UPDATE: Amaditalks on Tumblr compiled the whole list here.

You might also think about starting (or joining an existing) an act.ly petition to collect #dearjohn tweeters in yet another online location.

A word about decency/politeness: You don’t have to be nice in your tweets when confronting folks that support HR3. But calling names, making false or libelous accusations, etc., only hurts the rest of the movement. Be outraged, but keep your head on straight.

A word about trolls: If you’re new to this kind of thing, you might not have had much experience with trolling behavior. Basically, a troll is someone who actually isn’t interested in having a productive discussion, and only posts extremely inflammatory comments to derail the entire conversation. Ignore them. Block them. Do not, repeat, do not respond in any way, shape or form–do not even tell them that you’re blocking them. Trolls are vampires: they are emboldened and strengthened by any response to their antics, and you will inevitably be weakened. I know it’s hard to ignore them. But trust me, it is the only way.

To see the running log of all #dearjohn posts, you can do a few things:

• Keep coming back to this post and clicking on #dearjohn
• Look at the top of your Twitter page–there’s a search box. Enter #dearjohn into it, and when you see the search results, you’ll notice a button at the top right of the results–”Save this search.” Click that. Then, to find it again, look at the top of your Timeline for the “Searches” link. Click on it, and you’ll be shown a list of your saved searches.
• For more advanced options, you can perform an advanced Twitter search here: https://search.twitter.com/advanced

I’ll continue to update this post as the movement builds and evolves. Have a tip for me? Feel free to @me on Twitter, or drop a line.

(For a more in depth exploration and ensuing discussion of DDoS, see my post, and the comments, over here.)

(Note: There are so many parts to the Wikileaks story that it’s almost impossible to cover them all–once you start to detangle one angle, you discover twenty more. Slip down that rabbit hole, and you’ll come out dizzier than when you went in. In any case, this isn’t meant to be a comprehensive discussion of the entire topic, but to expand on a conversation sparked yesterday.)

I attended Personal Democracy Forum’s symposium on Wikileaks yesterday–a fantastic lineup of speakers and attendees, gathered quickly to discuss one of the most complicated intersections of Internet and politics that we’ve seen in a while. During one of the earlier forums, my friend Noel Hidalgo put forth an idea that divided the room pretty quickly: that distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are a legitimate form of civil disobedience.

A quick lesson on DDoS for the unfamiliar: a group of people gets together and decides to render a website unusable. They do this by flooding the website’s server with so many requests that the server gets overloaded and either slows down, or stops responding altogether. A big important point: this is not hacking. “Hacking” generally applies to incidents where systems are actually broken into and data is compromised. DDoS doesn’t do this.

To use the case from this week, a group of activists called Anonymous (more on them in a second) decided to render, among others, Mastercard’s website unusable. This does not mean that credit card data was stolen, or that people were unable to use their Mastercards for purchases. It means that if you went to Mastercard.com, you got a message that the website was unavailable.

So, the question: is this a legitimate form of civil disobedience?

The first sentence of the civil disobedience entry in Wikipedia reads, “Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power.” After that, all bets are off on what you consider the term to mean. It’s generally accepted in the US to mean an organized, non-violent way of protesting or expressing extreme displeasure with a situation. I’m certainly open to hearing others’ definitions, here–this is as concisely as I can nail my own understanding.

The next part of this question is to look at the word “legitimate.” Legitimate doesn’t always mean legal; in fact, most of the time, it doesn’t have much to do with law at all. I want to clarify this because it also explains how I approach politics. As I said in my talk at PdF this year:

Let’s be clear about what politics are. “Politics” is not just about candidates, elections, and ballot initiatives. Politics is the art and science of influencing or changing any kind of power relationship: the cultural norms by which we act; the laws that govern us; the expectations we experience based on our gender, race, class, sexuality, abilities, and more. When I talk about political work, I’m talking about challenging and radically redefining those power relationships.

Because “legitimate” is so much more than laws, in the same way that politics is more than government, I use the term to mean “justifiable,” or otherwise “acceptable.”

To be clear, most DDoS attacks are rarely explicitly politically motivated; the people that commit them are often just in it for the lulz. (In other words, in it for kicks ‘n’ giggles.) Those folks, typical of Anonymous’ membership, are what I call “chaos enthusiasts.” They want to cause disruption for its own sake, and love watching the theater and drama of an attack play out. When politics do become involved, other tactics are often added to the DDoS attacks, and aren’t what I’d consider OK within the realm of protest vs. power. Friends, clients and colleagues have been the victim of this end Anonymous’ work in the past–particularly my feminist cohorts have experienced their brutal misogyny.

When we face issues of free speech on the Net, we’re confronted with a severe reality in the harshest moments: we consider this here to be public space, but in reality it’s owned and operated by private companies. There is currently no set of accepted standards that say we have a set of rights online. (Though many have tried– Katrin Verclas referred us to a very short history of Internet rights, for example.)

Several corporations bowed to political pressure and cut off services to Wikileaks. It has not yet been proven that the organization broke any laws, but Paypal, Mastercard and others decided to stop allowing citizens to show their support for the organization by giving them money. This is a clear violation of limiting a form of speech– the Supreme Court ruled this year that political donations are a form of free speech, at least when corporations are doing the donating. To me, this was the first volley in this theater of battle. It angered me, and a whole lot of other people, clearly. I’ve been told that in Germany, where the citizenry are notoriously suspicious of technology, privacy and politics, the federal courts there have labeled DDoS a form of free speech. (Link tk.)

Thus, in response, Anonymous launched a DDoS attack against the websites of the companies that took away people’s rights to support a political organization. Many, myself included, consider DDoS in this context to be much like a sit-in in the offline world. The point of a sit-in is to render a building/room/service unusable for a temporary period of time. Sit-ins aren’t “legal”– you get arrested, and most activists who participate in them know this ahead of time and prepare for it. (At the event, I was asked what happens after arrest; most of the time, it’s a misdemeanor charge, and you’re issued an ACD.)

No permanent damage is done in a DDoS attack. This is particularly important to note when discussing DDoS as a political tool. It’s the difference between participating in a die-in at an embassy, for example, and smashing the windows of an embassy. As with any other form of activism, it shouldn’t be the only prong in a campaign strategy, and shouldn’t be used in every campaign.

Many at the forum disagree vehemently with this line of thinking: from what I understand, the argument is that “attacking the network does everyone a disservice.” I understand this and see the nobility it tries to bring; I was pointed to a quote from 2000 by Cult of the Dead Cow opposing early political DoS attacks– “One does not make a better point in a public forum by shouting down one’s opponent.” However, I disagree in cases where we are dealing with powerful corporations who do not respond to traditional forms of protest. I also believe it is, in cases against corporate abuse of power, a way to get direct media attention for a cause.

Noel asked what I’d ask people who disagree with me: how do I digitally throw myself in front of a tank? What we do online often runs the risk of slacktivism. For example, I’m surprised at how many people rallied around last weekend’s “change your Facebook picture to a cartoon character to raise awareness about child abuse.” Really? This is the innovation we’re coming up with? What does a picture-swap do except make us feel chummy with each other?*

We — tech activists and politically-minded folk, especially in the US — bring a tremendous amount of privilege to the table. We have the ability and freedom to risk ourselves for the benefit of many who do not. So with that in mind, we’re using our privilege to poo-poo the temporary disabling of a giant corporate website, while looking for just the right shot of Mickey Mouse? Power dynamics matter. There is a reason that David and Goliath is such a powerful story in Western culture.

Perhaps what some people are afraid of is that giving a stamp of approval to DDoS as a political tool makes it okay for their political enemies to do the same. What’s to stop the CIA, or Iran’s government ops, or whomever to do the same to sites we believe in and support? Again, I understand, but I maintain another angle on the slippery-slope fears: I fear cataloging DDoS as illegitimate will ultimately prevent other forms of digital activism from being used, or even from being able to be used. There’s a nicely nuanced post about DDoS from the Iranian protest period of 2009 that discusses pros and cons, vis a vis the “we don’t want to stoop to the enemy’s level” argument.

The last point of discussion I want to bring up is one of accountability– over on Twitter, my friend Ben Greenberg made this point: “I question actions that are not accountable to a community or to the other side. How is that ‘civil’ disobedience?” Well, I think Anonymous certainly is accountable to itself, with its own set of wacky mores and rules. In a case like this, who else do they need to be accountable to? Maybe I’m misunderstanding the question, which is why I wanted to take this part beyond the 140-character limit. An anti-war group that sits-in at a recruiting station is accountable to whom? Themselves, certainly. Are they accountable to the entire rest of the anti-war movement? The opposing side, in this case, the military or the police, can hold them accountable by arresting them. In the case of DDoS, that’s not as easy, but still quite possible. (Especially when the publicly released tool to propel the DDoS on Wikileaks’ detractors didn’t disguise IP addresses.)

Nonetheless, anonymity is mainstay of DDoS, and this could be the sticking point for many as to whether it’s considered “civil.” My friend Arthur said, “Anonymity is generally not accepted as civil disobedience- that is not a bad thing, it’s just a different category. Civil disobedience uses the spectacle of the citizen confronting the mechanisms of the state to create its power. I don’t think denial of service attacks are comparable in that regard.” What if members of a DDoS attack volunteered their names? Would that change how people who currently disagree with the tactic feel?

Ultimately, I’m far more fearful of (and angered by) corporate reactions to politically sticky situations, and what we’re going to be doing to aid people I buy Internet services from in protecting me against politically-motivated squelching, and how we’ll stop those companies that seek to do it anyways. Until we have clear, strong protection globally, I have few to no issues with using many of the tools at our disposal.

UPDATE: Noel sent me this article on Electronic Civil Disobedience.

UPDATE #2: Must read: Nathan’s comment below.

Thanks to the Women’s Media Center for capturing.

Check it out: full text, audiocast with slides, and guerrilla video:

• The Free-for-All Web and the Secret Tyrants We All Are

You can also have a look at other presentations, workshops and talks that I’ve done.

I first became aware of what was going on through an article in New York Magazine a couple years ago. I was fascinated to see my hometown, Binghamton NY, covered in such an emotionally exciting way. Most of the coverage you see about these parts of upstate New York are about the ongoing struggles of survival: an economic depression since the 1980s has ravaged this rural-industrial and robbed it of the resources it needs to grow again. Luckily, it wasn’t terribly affected by the burst of housing bubble–because it never saw the rise in value in the first place. It’s the seventh cloudiest city in the country, something that is not lost on its residents and their mood.

The prospect of economic vitality, especially for struggling farmers with lots of land on the Shale, was almost other-worldly. Things like this just don’t happen in Binghamton. I called my (politically conservative) dad to ask him what was going on, what was the level of excitement. “Oh, quite a bit,” he said. I asked if people were thinking that this could be something to finally rescue the Southern Tier’s economy. “Yeah, for sure,” he said. There were concerns about the effects on water table, of course, but overall, it seemed like a good deal that was going to help a lot of people out, and in turn, boost the local economy.

Since then, the debate has turned into one of the most heated discussions I’ve seen in the region. Environmentalists are warning about the severe danger to water sources that hydro-fracking poses, and that’s some pretty frightening stuff. Contaminated water screws millions of people, period, and there’s little that can be done to remedy a situation once it’s happened. Looking at BP in the Gulf, there’s a reason why people are scared. Big corporations largely can’t be trusted to be good stewards when there are serious dollars to be made.

I certainly don’t want to damn this message. I do, however, want to shake some sense into some of its messengers, though. I got request on Facebook a couple weeks ago to join an anti-hydrofracking campaign page that was just one of the most elitist pieces of lazy activism I’ve ever seen. The subtext was basically, “Don’t let those stupid hicks upstate rent their land and ruin it all for us city folk.” I wish I were exaggerating.

It reminds me of when the Democratic campaigns sent all kinds of activists and volunteers to do campaigning in the swing states in 2004. One of the reasons that it didn’t work was that it looked to those on the receiving end that Washington hucksters were parachuting in overeducated city kids who didn’t know jack about what life is like in fly-over land. I can’t say that I blame them.

If you talk–actually go and talk– to the people who are considering these leases, and their neighbors, you’ll hear a much more complicated set of arguments than what media who are covering the issue might lead you to believe. They’re concerned more than what’s represented in media stories about the environmental effects. They want a comprehensive, fair examination of practices, and they want, as my dad says, “people who don’t have a horse in the race” to be responsible for transparency and accountability. They want economic incentive and punishment, and for the companies to be responsible for cleaning up after themselves.

If you listen, what you’ll hear is this: Don’t take our hope away from us completely. In the Shale lies a lot of promise, and for some people that promise is of desperate proporations. The people of upstate are largely willing to listen to reason and work through the issues. No one takes too kindly to being bossed around and bullied by people who they think has more money or political clout than them.

Progressives should know better.

Both of these frames are problematic. It’s challenging to articulate exactly why, but I’m going to give it my best shot–because language has evolved within the same power structures we seek to tear down, we don’t always have the words to describe the problem.

Human rights within both frames are treated as a commodity that is traded. This is based on our market understanding of what we do with commodities: we accumulate, we spend, we give, we win, we lose. But if we really believe that certain rights are inalienable to humans, we can’t and shouldn’t commodify them. By doing so we support a power structure where rights are doled out and taken away at the whims of the dominant paradigm.

It also, in a deeper metaphorical sense, suggests that women aren’t necessarily fully human– they must be given the right to vote, or they must fight and win it for themselves. It’s not assumed that women would naturally vote in the grand scheme of things. We think so now (mostly), but if we continue to use this language, we support the antiquated structures that keep women from being recognized fully as humans.

If you’re into this kind of thing, by the way, and have the patience for heavy academic text, I highly recommend Women, Fire & Dangerous Things by George Lakoff. There’s a section called “Anger, Lust & Rape” that is truly disturbingly insightful as to how unraveling language can reveal our darkest cultural secrets. I’ll see if I can get in touch with George and post the piece here.