Take Back The Tech – Twittering activists
This website gives a review of how to use twitter for community activism, including working to end violence against women.
http://www.takebackthetech.net/frontpage
There are many ways to quickly communicate and inform your friends and networks about what you are up to. We are mostly familiar with communication tools like instant messengers and SMS text messages.
Twitter is another platform that connects you with your community and friends, and enables you to publish and share brief updates. It is also known as a micro-blogging service, which simply means publishing brief (140 characters-long) text journal entries. As a Twitter user, you can send and receive updates to and from your social network not just through the Twitter website, but also through SMS, RSS, email and an ever growing list of applications that integrates with it.
Twitter has been strategically adapted as a tool for activism for live reporting of current situations to ensure safety through visiblity, to connect groups of people in critical and emergency situations, in organising campaigns, to seek support during police arrests during a protest and more. The simplicity and ease of using Twitter to publish current updates quickly, widely and cost-effectively has made it especially useful and valuable to those without access to broader forms of dissemination channels.
How can Twitter be useful in situations of violence against women? Imagine if you are a migrant domestic worker who have little opportunity to leave the house you work in, or use the internet. With a Twitter network between an organisation working on vaw or between members of your community, you can publish alerts by sending an SMS to your Twitter account when faced with violence by your employer, and immediately inform an external support community for emergency help.
Today’s action invites you to play with Twitter, and explore how it might be useful for activism to end violence against women.
Tags: activism, community organizing, twitter, violence against women
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