Digital Activism

Learn how to build and grow a movement using the web and social media with our Digital Activism Training.

[Digital Activism @Digital_Activsm]

Sign up here
https://t.co/K6yjRbMnd0

[Digital Activism @Digital_Activsm]

🚨 Digital Activism training starts next Tuesday at @AFP_NH

[Digital Activism @Digital_Activsm]

Today's hyper-online world of video shorts and viral content demands authenticity. In the days of legacy media, you could shove your inauthentic message down people's throats by paying gatekeepers. Digital doesn't work that way.

[Mr. Beat @beatmastermatt]

One reason why Trump got fans is because he doesn't hide who is really is. Walz is now getting fans because of his authenticity. Even Harris is getting fans now that her speaking feels less scripted.
The same cannot be said about most running for President in recent years.

[Business @XBusiness]

Did you know 35 million swing voters use X monthly in the US? Tap into this vital audience with the power of X Ads.

Source: @CausewaySol & @HarrisXdata

[Digital Activism @Digital_Activsm]

A mini-masterclass in persuasion 👇

[James Melville 🚜 @JamesMelville]

Mohammed Qahtani won the Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking. It’s easy to see why.

Please watch his speech. Words have power. Words can be our power. Words can unite or divide. Words can spit venom or can mend a broken soul. Words matter.

[Digital Activism @Digital_Activsm]

Friday – Advertising (Part 2): This class shows how ad campaigns are structured, professional strategies for getting the best results and an overview of the various platforms.

[Digital Activism @Digital_Activsm]

New Digital Activism class August 12-16 in Manchester in conjunction with @AFPFNH. #NHPolitics
@NHGOP @nhliberty @LPNH @FreeStateNH

Learn more and sign up here:
https://t.co/80hIxv8cr3

[Digital Activism @Digital_Activsm]

Thursday – Infrastructure and Advertising (Part 1): The “digital” part of digital activism requires technology. In this class, you���ll get a crash course in the technology stack: domains, websites, email, voter data, and digital advertising platforms.

[Digital Activism @Digital_Activsm]

Excellent summary of our entire Digital Activism course in one post:

[Owen Gregorian @OwenGregorian]

How to Win Elections: Evidence-Based Principles of Effective Persuasion | David Myers

I can read your mind. I see your worried spirit. I sense that, when assessing today’s U.S. political divide and voter sentiments, you feel astonished at what so many others believe and embrace. If only you, and your preferred candidate, could persuade well-meaning but misinformed people to embrace truth and value decency.

If you support an incumbent, you and your kindred souls will want voters to perceive the economy as thriving, crime rates as falling, and leadership as effective. If you support a challenger, you will want voters to see a darker present—a government plagued by corruption, an economy languishing, a society in decline—and to long for someone who can make things great again.

So, how to win in 2024? Election triumphs require persuasion, which we social psychologists have long studied. Our experiments confirm ten strategies:

1. Frame messages that speak to your audience’s viewpoint and values. Associate your message with their preexisting perspective. “Don’t mess with Texas” says the effective litter-reducing signage aimed at the leading litterers—18- to 35-year-old macho males. For a business audience, a climate-protecting policy could explain its economic benefit.              📷

2. Harness the influence of multiple credible sources. Use communicators that your audience will regard as expert, trustworthy, and likable. And better three speakers each making one argument than one person making three arguments.

3. Exploit the power of repetition. Barack Obama understood what experiments have documented—repetition feeds an illusion of truth: “If they just repeat attacks enough and outright lies over and over again . . . people start believing it.” Donald Trump understands: “If you say it enough and keep saying it, they’ll start to believe you.” Even cliches, when repeated, will persist in people’s minds. So will repeated truths, crisply expressed: “The Biden Boom.”

4. Invite public commitments. Once people voice or sign their support, they tend not only to have stood up for what they believe, but also then to believe more fervently and durably in what they have stood up for.

5. Engage emotions. Appeal to the heart. Effective political appeals often elicit both negative emotions (warnings about a scary opponent) and positive emotions (patriotism, pride, and hope).

6. Create visual images. People have much better memory for scenes than words. Even an irrelevant photo—of, say, a thermometer alongside a claim that “Magnesium is the liquid metal inside a thermometer”—can make assertions seem more believable. If you describe falling unemployment or an increasing stock market, portray the spoken words visually, with rising or lowering arm motions.

7. Connect with people’s social identities. Present your candidate as one of “us,” as someone with whom your audience can identify.

8. Inoculate your audience against future opposing arguments. Effective persuasion not only debunks misinformation, it “prebunks” such. It defuses the other side’s case by acknowledging and refuting it, thus preparing people to hear the opponent’s message, and to counterargue.

9. Focus communications on those undecided or disengaged. Don’t waste limited time and resources on those with strong preexisting views. The future is decided by the muddled middle.

10. Prioritize face-to-face appeals. In a mid-twentieth century field experiment, Michigan researchers Samuel Eldersveld and Richard Dodge divided citizens not planning to support an Ann Arbor city charter revision into three groups. Among those exposed to mass media appeals for the revision, 19 percent changed their minds and supported it, as did 45 percent of those who received four supportive mailings, and 75 percent of those visited personally.

Finally, and even more important than any of these ten evidence-based persuasion principles, is one more: the power of self-persuasion. Get people to rehearse and verbalize your argument.

When supporting a candidate, focus less on the crushing brilliance of your thinking than on what your audience is thinking. Remember: Your aim is not to score argument points, but to persuade.

Skilled teachers understand the power of self-education. They guide students not just to be passive information receptacles but active information processors. With rhetorical questions, lab activities, and in-class writing exercises, they get students to glean and verbalize answers for themselves. As a mountain of recent research shows (see here for an animation in which I apply this to student learning), people best remember ideas that they have articulated in their own words.

In the final days of the contested 1980 U.S. presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan, 8 points down in a late October Gallup poll, used two memorable and potent rhetorical questions to stimulate voters’ active processing. His presidential debate wrap-up statement began by asking: “Are you better off than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago?” This rhetorical device proved so effective (most people privately answered “No”) that he repeated the questions over and again in his campaign’s final week, and won by a stunning 10 percent.

So, in the upcoming U.S. presidential debate, the candidates would be wise to pose alternatives, and ask people what they advocate. A U.S. Republican candidate or supporter might invite people to reflect on questions for which majority sentiment favors their position; for example, “Do you favor or oppose a more secure southern border to stop illegal immigration?” And a Democratic candidate or supporter might respond by asking people if they favor or oppose the bipartisan border protection act deep-sixed by Donald Trump, or they might ask, “Do you agree more with Donald Trump that climate change is a ‘hoax’ and that government should support more fossil fuel production, or with Joe Biden that government should prioritize clean energy?” When you know that most folks support your side of an issue, don’t just tell them what you think. Ask them what they think. If someone acknowledges a positive aspect of your candidate, invite them to elaborate.

Political “push polls”—negative campaigning and rumormongering in the guise of surveys—similarly attempt to nudge voter thinking. But they often do with obvious guile, as illustrated by a 2013 National Rifle Association pseudo-survey: “Would you knowingly vote to reelect a member of the U.S. House or Senate who supports the Obama gun-ban agenda?"

Read more:

https://t.co/uDHB6gdtRy

[ALX 🇺🇸 @alx]

Instagram and 🧵s gearing up for election season

[Digital Activism @Digital_Activsm]

Link to source:
https://t.co/Q2WGIL3Zi9

[Digital Activism @Digital_Activsm]

Best Social Media Platforms for Political Advertising Are (Still) YouTube and Facebook

@pewresearch published new findings on Americans' social media use. TikTok and Snapchat are all the rage when it comes to reaching young voters but YouTube and Facebook are still king. 🧵

[Digital Activism @Digital_Activsm]

YouTube also has the least variation among demographic groups (because almost everyone uses it).

[Digital Activism @Digital_Activsm]

Read the full article here: https://t.co/Zm0S4u2Aae

[Digital Activism @Digital_Activsm]

What Does the Political Campaign Landscape Look Like in 2024?

Technology is constantly changing, but in 2023, it tossed the political campaign chessboard into the air. Here are 5 trends disrupting political campaigning in 2024. 🧵

[Digital Activism @Digital_Activsm]

Step 2: Laser-guided Bomb
Create an ad campaign targeting that identified audience and customize the message to address the issue from the previous step. Effective marketing is all about getting the right message to the right people at the right time.