Sunday, February 1, 2009
Advocacy and Facebook
I was reading our Advocacy article for this week and came across a section about the use of Facebook. They suggested that if you are advocating for something, you should create a facebook page. This didn't occur to me because as someone who got a facebook when it was first beginning to get popular, I think of it as a socializing tool. But when I thought about it some more, this makes a lot of sense. If you are advocating for something concerning education, the way to get students involved is to use facebook. And, even if you need the adults, so many of them are now using the tool. People check it all the time and so it would be a great way to get your information out.
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In general, I would agree that using Facebook and Myspace is a great way of building grassroots support for a cause. I did this for my program when I was at Germanna. It was a wonderful way to get in touch with the students and have them pay attention to what we had to say. But, I was trying to reach an audience that included thousands of people. It made sense to go where we knew they were. It may not make sense for an issue that has a more limited audience, such as teachers and parents at your school. What might make more sense would be a listserve. I've been on several of them, and they are quite useful for getting the word out and organizing a more specific audience.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about that. We have had a terrible year for student deaths at our school. Facebook has been an amazing communicator of events and feeling sharing for our community. Students set up groups and invited interested parties to join in. So I think it is a good tool for reaching smaller, specific groups.
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