Creating a Humanities Advocacy Media Plan

• Humanities advocacy projects should be designed around at least one media flow path consisting of:

core message >> spokesperson >> media channel >> media form/genre >> audience.

• Robust projects create plural, flexible, and multi-tiered media flow paths (see "Media Pyramids" below).

• Projects adapted to digital media take advantage of "Five Contemporary IT Principles" (see below).

Humanities@UCSB Meeting #4

http://humanistica.ualberta.ca/2011/12/4humanitiesucsb-meeting-4/

Jan. 1011 (led by Alan Liu)

Creating a Humanities Advocacy Media Plan

v. 1.0

Thesis:

Communication Design

AUDIENCES

• Media
• Politicians
• Administrators
• Funding Agencies
• Parents
• K-12 Teachers
• Students
• Fellow Academics
• Voters
• Global audience

CORE MESSAGE

• Values (why the humanities matter)
• Frames
• Language, Stories, Arguments
• Simplifying Models/Catchphrases

• Issues
• Scenarios (positive visions/ examples of humanities in action)

MEDIA CHANNELS

• Print
• Radio
• TV
• Email
• Web Sites
• Blogs
• PodCasts
• YouTube
• Social Media (Facebook, Twiiter)
• Mobile Media (smartphones, tablets)

SPOKESPERSONS

• Students
• Parents
• Scientists
• Politicians
• Film or media people
• Business leaders
• Technology leaders
• Authors
• Musicians
• Religious leaders
• University leaders
• Humanities scholars
• People from elsewhere in the world

FORMS / GENRES

• Op-Ed
• Essay
• Flyer/Brochure
• Ad
• Interview
• Testimonials
• Documentaries
• Maps & Charts
• Fiction
• Music
• Cartoon
• Satire
• Petitions
• Letter campaigns
• Boycotts
• Funding campaigns
• Celebratory Events
• Protest Events
• Hacker Attacks

IT Platforms & Tools

Jennifer Earl and Katrina Kimport, Digitally Enabled Social Change: Activism in the Internet Age (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2011):

Historical & Current Paradigms

of Advocacy IT

--e.g., http://humanistica.ualberta.ca/

-- http://cpsr.org/

-- http://web.archive.org/web/20040210134458/http://www.igc.org/

-- https://www.eff.org/

-- http://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/demo/present/index.php/demojournal/issue/current

--e.g., http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/mcpress/plannedobsolescence/

Key concepts of online activism:

• E-mobilizations / E-tactics / E-movements
• "Leveraging low costs online" & "power law" dynamics
• "Five-minute activism" (and "flash activism")
• Coordination vs. co-presence ("acting together without being together")
• "Lone-wolf," "small team," and "distributed" organizing
• "Organizing without organizations" (social movement organizations vs. non-SMO sites; political outsiders)
• Privacy in online collective actions
• "Supersize versus theory 2.0" understandings of online activism
• "A new digital repertoire of contention"

-- http://front.moveon.org/

-- http://www.unitedforpeace.org/

-- http://omeka.org/

-- http://www.amnestyusa.org/

Early Paradigms of Activist Sites:

• Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
• Institute for Global Communications
• Electronic Frontier Foundation

Recent Paradigms of Activist Sites:

• MoveOn.org
• United for Peace and Justice
• Amnesty International
• Rainforest Action Network
• Occupy movement

Platforms & Tools for E-tactics:

• PetitionOnline
• KarmaBanque

Humanities & Arts Advocacy Sites:

-- http://ran.org/

INFORMATION

TECHNOLOGY for:

• Creation, Collaboration, & Aggregation
• Publication & Exhibition
• Discovery by, and of, audiences (e.g., search, recommend, & audience analytics tools)
• Feedback (e.g., poll, comment tools)
• Social Networking
• Automation & Scaling

FIVE CONTEMPORARY IT PRINCIPLES

that humanities advocacy can exploit:

• Low cost (in expense and time)
• Automation
• Crowd sourcing
• "Five-minute activism"
• Integrated with ordinary work (research & teaching)

--e.g., http://occupywallst.org/

-- http://entry.tapor.ca/

-- http://www.petitiononline.com/

-- http://seasr.org/documentation/example-flows/text-summarizer/

-- (platform for boycotts) http://karmabanque.com/

Content Management Systems

(and blog engines):

• WordPress, Drupal, Joomla

New Publication Systems:

• Open Journal Systems (OJS)
• CommentPress

Multimedia Exhibition & Presentation Platforms:

• Omeka
• Podcasts
• YouTube

Data Mining & Pattern-Recognition Systems:

• "Reading Tools" in OJS
• Data-mining tools (e.g., TAPoR, SEASR)
• Google Ngram Viewer

Data & Text Visualization Systems:

• Many Eyes
• Tableau Public

Social Networking & Network Analysis Systems:

• Facebook (and Google+)
• Twitter
• Petition Systems
• Social network analysis applied to the humanities

Hacker Platforms:

• FloodNet

-- http://books.google.com/ngrams

--see http://humanistica.ualberta.ca/

-- http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/

-- http://www.tableausoftware.com/products/public

--e.g., http://www.change.org/petitions

--e.g., http://litlab.stanford.edu/LiteraryLabPamphlet3.pdf

-- http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/xtf/view?mode=RGraph&docId=bush-vannevar-1890-1974-cr.xml

-- http://rose.english.ucsb.edu/

-- http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ecd/ZapTact.html

Media Pyramids

Plural, flexible, & multi-tiered media repertories designed so that one element supports or amplifies another

Example based on Alan Liu's "The Humanities and Tomorrow's Discoveries" (draft post for Humanities, Plan & Simple Initiative)

Blog post for

"Humanities Plain & Simple" Initiative

http://humanistica.ualberta.ca/category/humanities-plain-and-simple/

Alternative media channels and forms

--e.g.: video, podcast, interview, etc.

Discovery Links

Humanities Advocacy

Statements

(e.g., Why Louis Pasteur wanted to find the cure for diseases such as typhus)

(e.g., statements by and interviews with scientists, government leaders, business people, film directors, educators, and administrators, parents, and students)

Humanities Showcase

(e.g., Omeka exhibit of humanities research and teaching selected for public impact)

How Can You Get Involved?

Proposals for Next-generation

Humanities Infrastructure & Support

(e.g., local, national, and humanities initiatives--customized for the user's geographical locale)

(e.g., Omeka exhibit of humanities research and teaching selected for public impact)

4Humanities on Twitter (@4hum)

4Humanities on Facebook

4Humanities on the Web