ONLINE: INTERNET AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Overview of online (internet and social media)

Online efforts can be valuable for all four parent empowerment strategies. The internet and social media are critical ways to reach large numbers of people (as well as smaller numbers of targeted audiences) to provide them critical information and the means to organize and take action.

• Strategy 1 – Parents as Partners: The internet and social media are channels for organizations to provide a broad array of information to parents on how to support the education of their children.
• Strategy 2 – Exercising the Power of Their Choice: Most organizations supporting parents in this strategy would emphasis the importance of real-world engagement to help parents navigate their options. However, the internet and social media can be crucial channels to reach out and find parents to make them aware of these supports, and for parents to find their way to these organizations.

Organizations can also provide online platforms to help with navigating through choice options. For example, Families Empowered developed and maintains their Apply Houston platform where families in Houston can apply to multiple school lotteries through a single website.

• Strategy 3 – Exercising the Power of Their Collective Voice and Strategy 4 – Exercising the Power of Their Vote: Debate continues regarding if, when and how online efforts translate into issue and electoral power.

Online efforts can reach large numbers of people increasingly where they spend their time and interact with others. The internet and social media provide low barrier ways for people to take online actions such as filling out a petition, completing a survey, reaching out to an official through email, etc.

However, some discount the value that these actions have in influencing people in positions of authority precisely because these actions are so easy to take. In contrast, showing up to a real-world action requires more effort and therefore is believed to demonstrate greater commitment to a campaign and its agenda.

At the same time, even if these actions are of limited influence (and that is not a given), they can still be effective ways to allow people to take initial online actions that serve as stepping-stones to taking real-world actions. Also, because online actions are easier to take, even if on a per-person basis they have less impact and influence than a real-world action, they may ultimately allow many more people overall to take action.

Online is also a very effective way to inform people about real-world actions, even if it is not as powerful a way to get them to commit to attending as a real-world, personal outreach.

Ultimately, online and real-world actions will continue to be more integrated, and we believe the evolving sophistication of online actions will make them more valuable – not as a replacement to real-world actions, but as a complement to them.

“The successful campaign is going to be one that integrates all the various elements of the digital channel – email, text, website, mobile apps, and social networks – together as one digital program and also mixing the digital program together with the offline reality of field organizations,” noted Joe Rospars, President Obama’s Chief Digital Strategist, in 2012.

Or as Jeremy Bird, President Obama’s National Field Director advises: