Check out this article, written by one of our favorite bloggers, Danah Boyd, on the use of social networking websites and the internet for political organizing. She brings up some really interesting points in regards to how social networking sites can in some ways serve as a ‘public sphere’, and likewise the need for candidates and organizations to treat them as such. There is a lot of potential to reach out to unprecedented numbers of people – especially youth – in the upcoming years via this method, getting them engaged and involved with important issues. That said, there seems to be a trend amongst big organization and candidates to put up the same polished/pr approved messaging and image as they would in all of their other forms of communication. The lack of personalization is a big red flag – no one reads it for real, and because an online presence has such a big impact on how an organization or candidate is viewed, it will become increasingly important for web presences to become more and more ‘genuine’.
Anyway, as we are always interested here at Lokahi in ways to better link online and on the ground organizing, we though we’d pass this article on…
danah boyd
online organizing
lokahi outreach
youth and politics
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