Activism has evolved.  Although the old fashioned means of door knocking, calling, protesting, and speaking out in public are still the most important element that can help shape the debate and change some undecided minds, we have a new realm where we can make a difference: the internet.

Online activism can come in many forms: blogging, email lists, forum boards, social networking, and youtube for instance.  Each is important in its own way, but certain forms are more effective than others.

This chart displays how people share content in the web:

Now, I like to keep my real world identity private from everyone.  I have had enough heated debates with mentally unstable and potentially violent wingnuts on the right that this is a basic factor of safety for myself and my family.  Therefore, I use Facebook mainly as a social source to keep in touch with close friends, and am not one to ask how to use that for progressive activism.  I also have accounts on Mixx, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Reddit, and others, but quite simply don’t have the time to do much on those.

DIGG

The reason why I use http://digg.com/ is two fold.  First off, each story submitted has a wonderful comments section where you can have a real discussion about the story, its ramifications, and is a great place to meet some like-minded people.

Second, and more important to the overall realm of internet activism, is that digg has the potential to spread information to a far wider audience than any of the other social networking sites.  It does this by the power of the Front Page.  It works like this, you submit an article to digg, then users can give it a thumbs up (digg it) or a thumbs down (bury it).  If a submit gets enough positive diggs in a certain span of time (usually ~24 hours), it will hit the Front Page, exposing it to many thousands of people and give it a huge boost on google searches (by having a higher page rank), exposing it to tens of thousands more.  I’ve also noticed that the debates on digg often help shape the greater message on the cable news channels, and some of us have been cited by the MSM before.

Digg is a diverse land, and progressive politics usually falls under the politics and political opinion categories of the site.  There are many basic user guides out there, and I want to keep this focused on ways that progressives can help each other out, so let’s just go right to an instructional on the best way to do that.

It generally takes between 60-140 diggs to get a story on the front page.  You can digg up to ~200 different submits per day.  It takes time to browse this many stories, but if you perfect your speed reading and skimming skills, one can often get to more than 100.  With more active progressives on Digg who are willing to support each other, we could get important articles a lot more traction.

RSS FEED for DIGG

What’s an effective way of doing this?  What’s the easiest ways to keep up with your friends submits?  The RSS feed.  This is a basic instructional on how to add your friends submits to an RSS for the easiest access.  Go to the homepage of a friend on digg.com.  The example we will use here is Philperspective.

Now scroll down to the ‘Submitted’ link on the bottom right

This will bring you into the page where all of their submits are kept, along with digg totals, and dates.  Click on the little orange RSS feed button shown.

It may take a few seconds, but a pop up will appear requesting where you want to save this RSS feed (live bookmark) to.  I created a set of folders directly on the top bar of Firefox for various RSS feeds, and put Philperspective in my P2 (progressive friends) folder, subfolder 10 (because he has dugg my last 10 submissions).

After another few second, you will get a notice that ‘you have x# new feed items’.  Go to whatever folder you saved the RSS feed to (in my case, P2, 10) and you will see a list of links (newest at the top) showing submits from Philperspective, each which will bring you that particular digg page.  Usually if you have not clicked on the link, it will be blank, but will have that websites little symbol if you have.  Note in the picture below, I have clicked on all of them, so they have the little shovel-man digg symbol displayed.

Other diggers fall in the folders below that, and I usually check this in order, read the article and digg them up until I run out of time.  You can always check how many diggs you’ve done in the last 24 hour period at http://socialblade.com/ Go to the next friendly digg user, repeat the process and continue until you have who you want on RSS feeds, whether that’s your favorite submitters, your closest friends, etc.

I’ve seen far too many very important stories simply not get any attention on Digg because the submitter doesn’t support anyone else, so in turn has a hard time gathering 10 or 20 digs, where to get it to the front page where it will get exposure to thousands, a critical mass of ~100 diggs is usually required.  Help each other out folks.  Once you get the RSS feeds set up and organized, it’s very easy to keep up with your friends and become a more effective digger.

One can see who is actively supporting their digg submits by going to the invaluable DiggStatistics site http://www.diggstatistics.com/ and entering your username.  This is how I determine who is supporting me and who I need to support in return.  It is a good idea to go back and digg up expired submits of your friends until the most recent 10 are dugg, that way they know you are actively supporting them and should return the favor.   For most people, the time needed to help each other out should not be too steep (outside of helping out on the sometimes brutally long comment streams) once you get the hang of it, and can have a huge impact.

One final point.  There is always a temptation to submit every good article you find on the internet to digg.  However, by doing this, you are exhausting those who are trying to support your submits.  Ideally, everyone should submit an average of 1 article a day.  Regular submissions keep people checking your RSS.  However, never submit more than 5 per day.  People only have so much time (and so many diggs to give), and if everybody is submitting over 5 a day, nobody will be able to keep up.  Quality, not quantity.

USE TWITTER TO PROMOTE PROGRESSIVE CONTENT

There was a time when you could contact your digg friends directly via a ‘shout’ system on the site.  Digg shouts have gone the way of the dinosaur, so in order to promote your stories, Twitter seems to be the mode everyone is migrating to in order to direct traffic to digg submits.

Twitter is a different beast, but has potential to reach a far larger audience. Instead of having a tight group of friends (which one can still do to keep it more of an intimate experience), I follow back any progressive who follows me and try to reach as large of an audience as possible. Keep it small or go large, your choice, but I suggest getting at least 500 followers in order to spread your message to a reasonably large audience. I get multiple tweets every minute, so unless I am paying exclusive attention, I miss many of them. Some people have multiple accounts, which is not against the Twitter TOS, one for close friends, another for the masses.

The Twitter basics are pretty straight forward. You send a message (tweet) up to 140 characters in length to everyone who is following you. If you want to direct a message to someone directly, just type an @ before their name. If someone sends a message you want to pass on, copy and paste it, but start it with RT @(their username) message. This is called ReTweeting.

A central purpose for twitter is to share links. I usually put in the headline or my thoughts followed by the url. As there is a 140char limit, use a url shortening service like:

http://tr.im/ (highly recommended)

http://3.ly/

http://is.gd/

http://bit.ly/

If I don’t use the diggbar to promote submits, I typically write the url to the orig article then the digg comments page url such as:

Roberts Court Shifts Right, Tipped by Kennedy http://is.gd/1kUCH #digg it at http://tr.im/qxje #p2

#HASHTAGS

Hashtags just mean putting a # before a word so that it more easily searched at places like: http://search.twitter.com/ and http://www.hashtags.org/ An incomplete, short list of  important hashtags to use are:

#p2 #topprog #rebelleft progressive issues

#digg #digguser #diggmates let ppl know it’s a digg submit

#hcr #hc09 #healthcare #singlepayer #publicoption for health care reform

#green #eco #enviro #cc #wildlife green, ecological, environmental, climate change

#mmot #marijuana #legalization #norml #pot #drugwar #weed legalization issues

#atheists #agnostic #secular #deist #pagan various non-religious umbrellas

#fem2 #FAB #WOC #prochoice various womens and reproductive issues

#LGBT #equalrights LGBT civil rights

#EFCA #unions #aflcio #seiu #ufcw #ibew workers rights and unions

#RI4A #dreamact #immigration immigration reform

#followfriday  (or #FF) great way to find other recommended tweeters

#SameSexSundays (or #SSS) find #lgbt and #= #equalrights folks on Sundays

#EcoMonday find green, environmental activists on Mondays

#ProgressiveTuesday network with progressives on Tuesdays

Use combinations of the hashtags above to tie things together.  For instance, a story about a lesbian couple denied health care coverage could use #p2 #lgbt #fem2 #hcr.  A story about unions supporting immigrants rights: #p2 #union #efca #ri4a #immigration.  A story about how legalizing marijuana is good for the environment and would help reform our failing criminal justice system: #p2 #mmot #legalize #green #eco #justice.

I have been trying to unite various groups under the #p2 umbrella, because we need to start organizing and working together better on twitter.  The #tcot folks, like most conservatives are authority driven, so have a huge lead on disseminating right wing misinformation on Twitter.  Organizing folks on the left side of the political spectrum is like herding cats, we are creative individuals who won’t blindly obey, which is part of why I’m proud to be a progressive, but we need to start cooperating better.  You can find other good progressives on various issue by visiting TweetLeft.

There are many good user guides out there for both Digg and Twitter.  This article was meant as a way to rally progressive voices to get more organized, to start cooperating better, and to inspire folks to help out each other’s causes.  We are all in this together, and the conservatives are hoping that they can divide us.

The health care reform debate is currently in progress, and everyone needs to get involved helping out with this.  The sooner we can pass a strong bill, the sooner we can get on with other critical changes this country desperately needs: immigration reform, passing the Employee Free Choice Act, repealing ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’, decriminalizing cannabis, prosecuting war crimes, strengthening our educational system, campaign finance reform, ending domestic espionage, and passing a strong climate bill, among many, many other things.

If you’re on Digg, get on Twitter to help unite the factions and promote good progressive articles.  If you’re on Twitter, get on Digg to start generating greater traction for important #p2 stories.  This is internet activism in the digital age, the sooner we get organized, the sooner we can start shaping the greater debate.

Edit 24AUG09: There is a great new website called TweetProgress just launched by the founders of #p2 that appears as if it’s going to really help us play some catch up.  Articles about its impact can be found here and here.  Take the 30 seconds to go sign up right now.