Tracy Viselli and I are working on an article for The Exception on how progressives can use Twitter. Here’s our current thinking on recommendations:
- progressives should get good at Twitter best practices: insiders providing information regularly, backchannels at conferences and workshops, regular Twitter-based chats by organizations and bloggers, contact lists and skills pitching to journalists who prefer Twitter, etc.
- activists need to refine techniques for Twitter-based “flash actions” (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). Social computing technologies are tools; we need to learn to use them effectively.
- Twitter can be a medium for progressives to engage online with communities currently marginalized by the “progressive blogosphere”. Shared vocabulary and hashtag structure, and respect for different norms in different hashtags, can help.
- we should reach out to conservatives, libertarians, and greens to explore ways to engage more constructively
The full article will of course go into detail on the thinking and experiences that lead to the recommendations.
Any feedback? Suggestions for improvements, related experiences, criticisms, ideas about how to make this happen — it’s all good. Please don’t be shy! We’ll do our best to incorporate the feedback in the final draft.
Thanks much!
jon
Liminal states » How progressives can use Twitter: a strategic perspective (DRAFT) | 12-Feb-09 at 9:26 am | Permalink
[…] CURRENTLY BEING REVISED SUBSTANTIALLY.  New recommendations here. Thanks all for the […]
Ivan Boothe | 12-Feb-09 at 11:51 am | Permalink
This looks like a great starting point. In particular I’m working on compiling good examples of the second item you list, so I’ll be interested to see any analysis of these. And Tweet-pitching to journalists sounds like it will be an interesting back-door for nonprofits/activists in the know to increase their chances of coverage.
jon | 13-Feb-09 at 8:31 am | Permalink
Thanks for the feedback, Ivan – and others via email and Facebook. Here’s the revised recommendations:
Next steps: discussions on #p2 and an upcoming “TweetChat”, details TBD. Watch for it on Twitter.
There was a *lot* of skepticism about it about outreach to conservatives and libertarians. So while we included a brief discussion of this as a future possibility, we didn’t make it a recommendation.
Thanks again! The final version is much better than the one originally posted here … as always, review makes a big difference!
Jean Riquelme | 13-Feb-09 at 9:36 am | Permalink
Progressives should organize so that messages are delivered in accessible language(s) and leverage the voices of the seldom heard. We should seek out ways to get elders, immigrants, poor people, students and the incarcerated to have a voice in twitter, even if they can’t twitter themselves. I could envision a progressive twitterer wearing a tag or t-shirt at events, meetings and in the neighborhood that offers to tweet for the twitterless