The #p2 Hashtag and Strategies for Progressives on Twitter
Jon Pincus and Tracy Viselli, authors of this article, met working on Twitter Vote Report last October and have continued to experiment with and write about Twitter-based activism. They would like to thank the Exception Magazine for the opportunity to build on Stefan Deeran’s Progressives Try to Match Conservatives on Twitter and take a strategic view of the possibilities for progressives on the platform.
Recommendations:
- Adopt and improve on Twitter best practices. Insiders providing information regularly, backchannels at conferences and workshops, regular Twitter-based chats by organizations and bloggers, a wiki with contact lists and learning materials, developing skills pitching to journalists who prefer Twitter, using Twitter to help with Digg (1, 2, 3), etc.
- Refine techniques for Twitter-based "flash actions" (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Social computing technologies are tools; we need to learn to use them effectively.
- Use Twitter to engage with communities currently marginalized by the "progressive blogosphere." We propose a new #p2 ("progressives 2.0") hashtag to help enable this.
Next steps: discussions on #p2 and an upcoming "TweetChat", details TBD. Watch for it on Twitter.
Details below the fold.
New media experts, journalists, conservatives, moms, feminists, and increasing numbers of politicians have all been using Twitter very effectively. So in the two weeks since @problemchylde's call for progressives to use the #rebelleft hashtag followed by @drdigipol's proposal for a new #topprog "top progressives on Twitter" hashtag, there's been a flurry of activity. As well as a lot of humor* and dismissiveness.
Why waste time playing catchup with the conservatives on Twitter, of all places?
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Comments
Great idea
I'll try it. I'm afraid, however, that this will be like progressives trying to win the talk radio game with air america. There are some things that the GOP just does "better".
Shaun Dakin
@EndTheRobocalls
@IsCool
I don't think so ...
First of all we're only just scratching the surface of using Twitter for activism, so I wouldn't read too much into #tcot's early success. I think there's a strong argument to be made that social networking technologies like Twitter favor network-style collaboration between diverse groups, and this is something that conflicts with the top-down hierarchical and authoritative style often favored by conservatives. And if you look at the list of Top Conservatives on Twitter it's probably 75% male, so they haven't yet done a good job of leveraging Twitter's uniqueness as a less-male-dominated enviornment; with the Republicans pursuing so many anti-woman policies, that'll be hard for them. So I think progressives have a good chance ... we shall see.
jon
@jdp23
Hey!
First of all, not all GOPers are conservative so please don't lump me in with that bunch :p
Secondly, we're talking about new media here. There are no rules. And old media certainly hasn't a clue about the new media and why it's become so effective, and even less of a clue as to how to utilize it. Radio = old media; Web 2.0 = new media.
I've actually got a number of #TCOT followers on Twitter but I'm not really all that conservative outside of the sphere of the wallet. Socially, I'm quite progressive (again, provided it's in accord with the wallet).
I get some pretty interesting reactions from the #TCOT folk when I tweet and blog about LGBTQ rights and activism, especially marriage equality.
Oh, and if you're interested in helping plan/promote/produce/organize/launch the largest LGBTQ grass-roots event in history, please connect with me on Facebook (http://nitestar.socialtoo.com/) and in your connect request mention that you want to be part of the "2010 event" so I can invite you to the hidden group where this is all being talked about and planned and you can find out the details for yourself....
@NiteStar