DigiActive.org

Campaign: Blogging for Equal Pay Day

Description: In 1996 the National Committee on Pay Equity (NCPE) created Equal Pay Day as a public awareness event to demonstrate the wage gap between men and women. Always observed on a Tuesday in April, the day symbolizes how far into the year women must work, on average, to earn as much as men earned the previous year. This year, Equal Pay Day took place on April 28^th, to highlight the current wage gap of women earning 78 cents to every man’s dollar. At this current rate, there will not be wage equality until 2057. While the NCPE is the major organizer of the campaign, coordinating rallies, lobby days, speak-outs, letter-writing campaigns, and workshops, the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) has taken on the digital activism role for promoting the event with their blogging for equal pay campaign. The organization, which has been running the campaign for the past few years, called out to the digital community to blog, twitter, and use their Facebook profiles to raise awareness for wage disparity.

Digital Tools Being Used: Blogs, Twitter, Facebook

How These Tools Are Being Used: Running the campaign entirely through their website, the NWLC urged bloggers, tweeters, and Facebook users to raise their voice for fair pay for women. To organize the campaign, the website used a form for web users to sign up their blog, Twitter, or Facebook account with their name and URL so all posts could be aggregated during Equal Pay Day. To organize all tweets, the NWLC urged tweeters to tag their posts with #fairpay. The organization also created a button to be posted on blogs for bloggers to show their commitment to the campaign and spread the word.

Outcome: By the end of the day, April 28^th, over 660 tweets and 165 blog posts were written in association with the campaign to raise awareness for equal pay. To put this in perspective, last year the campaign generated 80 blog posts, an increase of at least 106 percent. It is difficult to quantify the reach of the campaign on Facebook, through notes or status updates, but it could reasonably be assumed to be used by those already tweeting and blogging and others who are not as active within the online community. More important is the reach of this campaign throughout the blogosphere. The campaign included the expected participation of women’s advocacy groups and feminist blogs, yet other participants included: major news sources (New York Times, Forbes, Huffington Post), religious sites (jewish and catholic), human rights groups, labor unions, affirmative action supporters, individuals’ blogs, celebrity blogs (Kenneth Cole), activist sites (change.org, care2.com, alternet.org), pension rights groups, industry focused sites (athletics, healthcare, finance, law, journalism), parental blogs, and government sponsored blogs.

Content within the blog posts varied. Most posts relayed data provided by women’s advocacy groups, regarding actual wage disparity by occupation, state, or race. Some urged readers to contact their Senators to press for the passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act (S.182). Others shared personal stories relating to their own experiences with unequal pay or wrote about the importance of the recent passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Act. Many posts included videos to get their point across:

Women Museum video for Equal Pay Day

AAUW YouTube Video

In determining the success of the campaign, we must look to both the immediate and future impact. The immediate effect of the campaign seems to be successful, the campaign had a broad reach and grew exponentially over last years effort. In the long term, the goal of Equal Pay Day is to raise awareness of the problem and to ignite change. While awareness was definitely raised, it remains to be if and how soon the Paycheck Fairness Act will be passed by Congress. If this bill is indeed passed, partly due to the loud voice of activists, the wage gap will greatly decrease. This campaign idea seems transferable to various activist causes and can have an impact.

Digitally Active Org: The Sex Workers Project

Web site: www.sexworkersproject.org
What was it?: The Sex Workers Project, based in New York, has used technology in its mission to defend the rights of sex workers around the world. One of their goals is to remove a rule prohibiting organizations that work with prostitutes from receiving money from the PEPFAR AIDS prevention fund and the federal development agency USAID.
Where is it?: New York, USA
Tools: podcasts, digital video, blog, listservs, SMS

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Tactic: Using Digital Video to Oppose Racism on TV

Description: A video shows a clip of a caller using a racial slur on a Fox sports call-in show and then asks viewers to lodge a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission against Fox News for not deleting the comment from their broadcast.
Organizer: the video has appeared on several blogs, but it is unclear who created it.
Purpose of Action: To punish Fox for airing the racist comment.
Organizing Tools: YouTube
Outcome: The showed aired on December 23rd and no action has yet been taken against the network by the FCC.
Ease of Replication: The is a pretty basic – yet highly effective – style of advocacy video, which cuts between live action clips and white text on a black screen. You will need to video editing skills to create it.

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Tactic: Using Online Games for Organizing

Organizer: Ron Paul fan site Revolutioni.st
Purpose of Action: Revolutioni.st organized a march in World of Warcraft, the purpose of which was to raise awareness of the presidential candidacy of Ron Paul.
Organizing Tools: World of Warcraft, web site, YouTube
Outcome: About 150 players attended the march, though the effect on Ron Paul’s candidacy was negligible.
Ease of Replication: Extremely easy if you are already a member of the game. You just need to e-mail your friends in the game and tell them to appear at a certain location at a certain time.

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Event: South by Southwest Interactive

What? South by Southwest Interactive Festival
When? March 7-11, 2008
Where? Austin, Texas
Why? To hear some cool digital activism speakers with a music festival and film festival to keep you entertained Read more »