Be The Media: Free Speech Unfurled!

While mainstream media remains under the control of a handful of giant corporations, you no longer have to own a printing press to reach a
dedicated audience. Gone are the days when we chose from one of three national nightly newscasts on the living room TV. Free speech, broadband services and mobile handsets are quickly dismantling the “one to many” Broadcast Age and putting media production and distribution directly into the hands of “the people”. Building on traditions of public access, independent media and peer-to-peer networks, we now communicate, “many to many”, across phone and internet networks with affordable and high powered laptops, PDAs, phones and gaming devices. In this major step forward for free speech, the “network centric” age enables us to “be the media”, tell our stories and make social change happen.

But what media and communication tools will make the biggest impact and have the farthest reach? The choices can be daunting—especially if you are an activist or nonprofit with modest means and limited time. Whether you are planning a demonstration, a print campaign, a web site, a viral video or a mobile action, you need to start with a goal and a strategy. To help, we’ve compiled many of the rich resources available to the nonprofit community in these basic steps to strategic communications:

1. Who is your Audience? – Once you are clear on your communications goal, take a hard look at the people you want to reach and what is important to them. Are they boomer peace activists who want to stop the war? Are they young women who “want out” of abusive relationships? Are they neighbors who want to remove fluoride from your water system? Their concerns are your concerns. Research your key audiences carefully. Learn what they care about, the media they consume, the ways they connect with their peers and the hot buttons that prompt them to action. From “mind-mapping” to “power-mapping”, you have to start with a solid knowledge of your “market”. Seth Godin talks about the importance of engaging people in “conversation” and listening closely to their “help me” statements. Only then will they listen to OUR messages of social change.

2. Do you have a compelling Story? – Stories are the foundation of
memory and the fabric of our communities and culture. Andy Goodman
provides many compelling ways to knit Emotion + Facts + Characters + Action + Resolution in ways that move people to watch, tell-a-friend, act, donate, and make change happen. There’s a reason everyone remembers Hansel & Gretel. Have you captured the drama and
narrative of your cause?

3. What Action do you want people to take? Does your compelling story and the person telling it resonate with your audience’s interests and values enough to drive them to action? Is your message clear? Where will it lead your people? Do you want them to sign petitions? Contribute to the Cause? Vote for you? Bring their friends onto the bandwagon? When you map the “pathways” that your audience will follow you are able to develop relationships and lead people to the action you want them to take. This makes it possible for you to measure your success and answer the question: Did you accomplish your goal? This is the key concept behind “usability” (of web sites on-line tools) and
what you measure when you look, for example, at Google Analytics.

4. What Tools do you use? Op-ed pieces won’t have much impact if your audience does not read the newspaper and text messaging won’t work with people who don’t use mobile phones. Your audience profiles help you to choose the appropriate tools for influencing behavior. From print ads to radio to targeted email to wikis, blogs and Twitter, public access television to YouTube, text campaigns to live mobile video and maps to mash-ups, a wide world of options is open to you. For a closer look at what activists and organizations are doing--inside and outside of your own field--beam into connected resources such as NTEN and TechSoup. Remember: with both off-line and on-line strategies, your impact increases if you first operate with functioning databases, a basic email strategy and an operational web hub.

5. Experiment! Many national organizations and political campaigns experiment with a rapidly changing menu of new tools and stick with the ones that work. Small-scale experiments tell us a lot about how to construct our own campaigns and actions for maximum impact. The main message at this year’s NTEN conference was “Experiment!”. The good news is that we are all part of a growing, inventive and optimistic group of media makers and distributors who understand that, with a sound strategy, we can use the new generation of tools to exercise our first amendment rights, challenge the power structure and change the world. Be the media!

Lauren-Glenn Davitian (davitian [at] cctv [dot] org) is the Executive Director of CCTV’s Center for Media & Democracy based in Burlington Vermont. She is a free speech advocate and translator of new media tools for nonprofits and fellow community media access centers. Many thanks to the sources cited here. You can find most of the links here at http://vtnonprofittools.wikispaces.com/