De positieve effecten van sociale media kregen en krijgen nog altijd ruim de aandacht. Met name van marketeers en aanhangers van het zogeheten Cognitieve Surplus, dat het internet in de mensheid losmaakt. Want wat kunnen we daar niet allemaal voor moois mee doen? Klopt als een bus, maar vergeet vooral de karikaturale en de zwarte kanten niet, die er hand in hand mee gaan en vaak de overhand hebben. Voor je het weet, doen die effecten onze Attention Economy, onze Experience Economy en onze Knowledge Economy de das om: financieel en cultureel.

Karikatuur en ontwrichting hebben in de media altijd de overhand gehad. Recent: de Gremlins en Goebbels, Bambi en Breivik. Media zijn de megafoon van ons intellect en beide worden meestal vooral instinctief ingezet. Daarom staat sinds jaar en dag vooral ook datgene hoog in de hitlijst, waar we en plein public liever niet over praten. Omdat het niet netjes is of omdat we er liever onze kop voor in het zand steken. Karikaturale en zwarte kanten – het is nog heel geciviliseerd uitgedrukt. Maar die domineren nu vooral onze sociale media: niet alleen thematisch maar vooral ook als effect.

Pathetisch tijdverdrijf

Afgezien van schunnigheden en alles wat we het liefst ontkennen, zijn we met sociale media echt te ver doorgeschoten. Wat de meeste Facebook- en Twitteradepten dagelijks de wereld in slingeren, is tijdverdrijf voor economisch zonnige tijden, wanneer het geluk ons toelacht en het succes ons komt aanwaaien. Nu de handen echt uit de mouwen moeten om werk te behouden en inkomen bij elkaar te schrapen, zien we in, dat we eigenlijk helemaal geen tijd hebben om dagelijks urenlang alles met elkaar te delen. Daar komen we echter maar moeilijk vanaf, want de smartphone vol met apps brandt in onze broekzak of handtas. De laatste tijd duiken deze verslavende gadgets steeds vaker op in relatie tot oproer, misdaad, rellen en terreur. Geen wonder misschien in tijden van crisis, en waarschijnlijk zelfs niet eens zo veel nieuws onder de zon.

Tien gitzwarte gevolgen

Maar de verslaving aan social media op mobiele devices, en alle hypes, hopes, hints, hazards etcetera die we dagelijks delen, lijken zo erg de spuigaten uit te lopen, dat er op zijn minst sprake is van een onverantwoord tijdsbeslag. Daardoor wordt een juiste en heldere focus op wat er echt toe doet onmogelijk en krijgt het instinct helemaal de overhand. De volgende tien gitzwarte gevolgen van sociale media doen overal de ronde. We worden dom, asociaal, verblind en zelfs ziek. Ons geheugen takelt af en we vallen ten prooi aan manipulatie, monitoring, terreur en sensatiezucht. Privacy bestaat niet meer. Stuk voor stuk zijn dit beperkingen en afwijkingen: van tunnelvisie en gebrek aan eigenheid tot aan ziekte toe.

Niks nieuws onder de zon? Wat dacht je van een intensivering, intimisering en verslaving, die zijn weerga in de historie niet kent! De socialemediagekte komt wel heel slecht uit in deze crisistijd. We hebben echt wel wat anders te doen dan mobiel sociaal te zitten zijn via allerlei crap-apps. Om echt profijt te hebben van sociale media moeten we er om te beginnen behoedzaam en gefocust mee omgaan. Minder instinctief en impulsief. Daar begint nu steeds meer aandacht voor te komen. Berichten over de Back Side, de Dark Side, de Flip Side, de Nasty Side, de Other Side en de Ugly Side of Social Media volgen elkaar in rap tempo op.

Twee soorten social media deficits

Al sinds ons VINT-boek ‘Me the Media’ kijken we structureel naar dit thema. Om te beginnen stellen we vast, dat sociale media uit hun aard veel donkere kanten hebben. ‘Sociaal’ en ‘media’ tegelijk – hoe kan het eigenlijk ook anders? Sociale interactie bovenop communicatie, zoals de Engelse Wikipedia het treffend zegt. Dat is natuurlijk vragen om moeilijkheden.

In Dark Side of Social Media onderscheiden we twee complementaire hoofdterreinen: het mensdomein en het businessdomein. Daar liggen de zwaartepunten van onze zorg: in cultuur en economie. De gepercipieerde en gemeten negatieve impact van sociale media op organisaties en op individuen hebben we in het trendrapport ondergebracht in een Social Media Deficits hitlijst, een lijst met de tekortkomingen van sociale media. In het verlengde van het mens- en het businessdomein gaat het om de volgende twee soorten gebreken:

Beide hangen natuurlijk nauw samen. In plaats van de gebruikelijke term Attention Economy zien we tegenwoordig steeds vaker het begrip Attention Deficit Economy opduiken. Communicatie en cultuur zijn daar niet los van te zien. Instinctieve socialemediaverslaving zorgt in dit verband voor een gemakzuchtige Attention Economy, een oppervlakkige Experience Economy en voor het failliet van deKnowledge Economy. Het lijkt een open deur, maar dit besef begint pas nu daadwerkelijk te dagen. Daarvan getuigt onder meer de bijdrage van Forrester-chef George Colony op LeWeb 2011, begin december. Een Social Business – met dank aan IBM – en Culture zeggen wij er onmiddellijk bij, is social tot in de haarvaten, maar dan wel gefocust. Zowel in onze business als onze cultuur moeten we goed beseffen waar we mee bezig zijn.

Wanted: jouw kijk op en ervaring met Social Media Deficits

Het trendrapport ‘De Zwarte Kant van Sociale Media 2012′ heeft als versienummer 0.99 meegekregen. Het is dus nog niet af. Aan 0.99 ontbreekt namelijk nog iets wezenlijks; jouw hulp. Wij hebben met dit rapport geprobeerd de problematiek ten aanzien van sociale media te delen en te duiden. Wij zijn er echter, gezien het sociale karakter, ook bijzonder van overtuigd, dat juist jij nog veel meer weet dan wij. Daarom zijn we op zoek naar je mening over van de negatieve effecten die we aanstippen, de analyse die we geven en de oplossingsrichting die we voorstellen.

Discussier mee in de LinkedIn-groep. Alle evaluaties en kritiek worden verzameld en verwerkt in de uiteindelijke versie 1.0.

Download het trendrapport

Het trendrapport “De Zwarte Kant van Sociale Media 2012″ kun je hier downloaden (pdf).

(Dit artikel is een mash up van 2 artikelen door Sander Duivestein van Sogeti en Jaap Bloem van Vint Sogeti.)

“For the Church of Kopimism, information is holy and copying is a sacrament. Information holds a value, in itself and in what it contains and the value multiplies through copying. Therefore copying is central for the organisation and its members”

De ideeën van de Kopimisme kerk zijn ontstaan uit het gedachtegoed van de Zweedse Piratenpartij die gelooft dat alles online vrij zou moeten kunnen worden gedeeld, zonder beperkingen op intellectuele eigendomsrechten. Informatie is heilig en informatie delen een goede daad. De piratenkerk sluit al haar e-mails af met Copy & Seed. De website van de kerk is inmiddels niet meer te bekijken, die ligt plat.
Dat de religie nu officieel is erkend wil niet zeggen dat al het delen van informatie online legaal is, waarschuwt Webwereld. Daarvoor gelden de bestaande Zweedse regels.

Bron: NRC Next blog
NL kerk: kopimisme.org

Interview Volkskrant 7 januari 2012

En dat is jammer, want de korte documentaires – variërend in lengte van 1 minuut tot een half uur, hebben genoeg te bieden dat de moeite waard is. En bevalt het niet, ‘dan mag je gerust meteen weer vertrekken’, aldus de aardige gastvrouw.

Onder de titel Doc Next vertonen IDFA en de European Cultural Foundation (ECF) tijdens IDFA 2011 korte documentaires van een nieuwe generatie Europese filmmakers. Deze doe-het-zelf mediamakers zijn niet traditioneel geschoold en gebruiken nieuwe goedkope media, online distributiemogelijkheden en innovatieve manieren om een verhaal te vertellen voor een andere visie op Europa.

Vlees

Zo is er Epodermis, een 2 minuten durend commentaarloos portret van de hypocriete schoonheidsgeoriënteerde samenleving. Korte schokkerige beelden van popcultuur, ongezond voedsel, plastische chirurgie, en beelden van messen die door vlees snijden bij de slachter. Een treffende videoclip van Spaanse afkomst.

In de minidocu ‘Guilty Until Proven Innocent’ (4 minuten), gemaakt door jonge Britse moslims, wordt een van terrorisme beschuldigde jongen geïnterviewd. Hij vertelt over hoe hij is gecriminaliseerd door de media, ook al was hij niet veroordeeld. Op zijn hoofd zijn krantenkoppen geplakt. Het relaas van Hasni Omar wordt afgewisseld met vox-pops met nette, typisch Britse studenten. Hen wordt gevraagd te reageren op de koppen in de media en ‘zou jij iemand die beschuldigd is van terrorisme ooit nog vertrouwen?’. Nee, antwoorden al die jongeren.

Nog een documentaire waarin in slechts 1 minuut en 40 seconden een heel verhaal verteld kan worden, is ‘Political Brands, Empty Words’. Slogans van bekende merken worden op portretten van Obama en McCain geplakt. Woorden die op de campagne van Obama passen, bij Obama en woorden die bij zijn toenmalige opponent in de race om het presidentsschap passen. Hiermee vertellen de makers dat niet één politieke partij zich schuldig maakt aan pop-politiek, maar dat het eenheidsworst is. Think different, just do it.

De YouTube-generatie heeft geen anderhalf uur nodig om een verhaal te vertellen. En zoals Nelle Koop gisteren zei bij het in ontvangst nemen van de Mediafondsprijs: Jonge filmmakers hebben het moeilijk, maar ik geloof dat de nieuwe generatie een weg zal vinden om de verhalen te vertellen die verteld moeten worden.

Volkskrant, 17 nov 2011

Van april tot juli konden deskundigen en cultuurliefhebbers hun ideeën opperen. Belangrijkste conclusie is dat culturele instellingen van de toekomst – meer dan nu het geval is – cultuurmakers met het publiek moeten zien te verbinden. Koers Kunst schetst drie routes om te komen tot een 21e eeuwse cultuurinstelling.
Cultuurinstellingen moeten bezoekers niet alleen laten consumeren maar hen juist aanzetten tot nadenken, interpreteren en begrijpen, want dat is bepalend voor de kwaliteit van de cultuurervaring, aldus filosoof Thijs Lijster. Zorg dus voor begrijpelijke en aantrekkelijke teksten, aansprekende filmpjes, en recensies op toegangskaartjes, smartphones of groot op de muur.
Cultuurinstellingen moeten een relatie opbouwen met hun publiek. Zij moeten hen niet eenzijdig bestoken, maar hen juist bij hun producten betrekken. Publiek, amateurkunstenaars en partners zouden de kans moeten krijgen om te reageren en mee te doen (co-creatie).
Tenslotte zouden cultuurinstellingen hun aanbod niet moeten wegstoppen in gebouwen, aldus architect Francine Houben, maar meer buitenshuis zichtbaar moeten maken: zoek het publiek op met voorproefjes, materialen en verhalen.

Opmerkelijk is dan dat op website en in eindpublicatie nergens expliciet het woord cultuureducatie genoemd wordt, terwijl de Koers-Kunst-conclusies genoeg aanleiding geven om dat wel te doen.
Zeg nu zelf: hoe kun je publiek nu beter verbinden met cultuur, cultuurmakers en cultuuruitingen, hoe kun je hen beter laten nadenken, interpreteren en begrijpen dan door educatie? En dan niet incidenteel, maar juist structureel. Je kunt er niet vroeg genoeg mee beginnen. Op school zit immers het publiek van de toekomst. Culturele instellingen kunnen een culturele relatie voor het leven opbouwen met kinderen en jongeren. Op die manier raken zij vertrouwd met kunst en cultuur, met kunstenaars en instellingen, en met leeropbrengsten als verwonderen, ervaren, interpreteren en meedoen.

Niet voor niets moeten culturele instellingen in de landelijke basisinfrastructuur hun visie op en uitwerking van cultuureducatie geven in hun aanvraag voor de komende cultuurplanperiode. Voor de meeste mensen geldt uiteindelijk dat als je zelf kunst beoefent, je vaker naar voorstellingen, tentoonstellingen en concerten gaat dan wanneer dat je dat niet doet.

Zie voor discussie over het effectief betrekken van publiek ook het Netwerk Cultuureducatie op LinkedIn.

Door Piet Hagenaars (directeur Cultuurnetwerk Nederland).

But there was something familiar in the media interviews. “We want a voice, and our voice has slowly been degraded over time,” a St. Louis man told USA Today. An unemployed woman from Connecticut said in The Wall Street Journal that too many people have been dismissive of the protests. “The only way to do it is to show them, to make them open their eyes.”

Substitute the word “government” for “corporation” in the signs and slogans, give them a wardrobe change and a few gray hairs, and they’d look a lot like the early tea party demonstrators.

There are major differences, of course, beginning with the fact that conservative politicians ran to the front of the tea party line to promote their causes. Many liberal politicians have been skittish about being associated with the folks sleeping in a Manhattan park since Sept. 17. While the tea party founders actually organized protests, the group behind the Wall Street demonstrations decided to bring people together first and then figure out its demands later.

But the anger and desire to take back power from the powerful is the same. And, as the demonstrations spread to Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles and other cities, major unions like the AFL-CIO and advocacy groups like MoveOn.org are now on board. The mainstream media — no doubt ready to make the same tea party comparison — will surely follow, especially as we enter an election year. The politicians won’t be far behind.

Meanwhile, across the globe, larger-scale protests of another type have been taking place, Forbes notes in a must-read cover story called “Social Power and the Coming Corporate Revolution.”Ordinary people, using Facebook and Twitter, have helped to topple dictators in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya — and have created instability in Syria. These actions are truly remarkable for the speed with which they brought about change. They also speak of the basic human urge to be heard and respected.

So how does the Arab Spring relate to the Occupy Wall Street crowd?

“This social might is now moving toward your company,” David Kirkpatrick writes in the Forbes article. “We have entered the age of empowered individuals, who use potent new technologies and harness social media to organize themselves.” Neither governments nor companies are prepared to deal with social power.

“The elites — or managers in companies — no longer control the conversation. This is how insurrections start,” Mark Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, a cloud computing company, told Forbes. “This isn’t just about Arab Spring. This is about Corporate Spring.”

While email was the catalyst for early online activism, Facebook, with its 750 million active users in every country in the world, has become an even more potent tool for spreading opinions. Once like-minded people start saying the same thing — whether it’s about favorite movies or corporate greed — these “memes” quickly become part of our common belief system.

Some companies have learned this lesson the hard way. When rugby fans in New Zealand learned they were paying more for Adidas team jerseys than fans in the U.S. and elsewhere, they launched a massive online protest that resulted in customers returning Adidas clothing to stores. When a social media campaign in the Netherlands protested executive bonuses at Amsterdam-based ING, large numbers of people threatened to close their accounts with the bank. According to Forbes, ING’s CEO finally decided to waive his $1.8 million bonus and ordered company directors to follow suit.

In a bad economy, it shouldn’t be surprising that large, profitable companies have become targets for protesters enraged by corporate scandals and high unemployment. These types of demonstrations have gone on for years; the difference now is that inexpensive tools are available to enlist the help of a sympathetic public.

In this new world, writes Kirkpatrick, executives and their companies will need to demonstrate authenticity, fairness, transparency and good faith:

Clearly, the best way to manage these changes is to realize you can’t manage them. “And pragmatically,” says Kirkpatrick, “social power can help keep your company vital. Newly armed customer and employee activists can become the source of creativity, innovation and new ideas to take your company forward.” More and more companies, particularly those with high-profile brands, are becoming true believers.

He notes that Gatorade operates a full-time social media command center where it monitors and participates in conversations on Facebook, Twitter, blogs and elsewhere. Ford uses social media to help it design cars and communicate effectively with young consumers.

But learning to be humble and open can be difficult for executives who are used to touting their successes and downplaying their failures. This requires a new way of thinking. “Trust is built by sharing vulnerability,” John Hagel, co-chairman of The Deloitte Center for the Edge, said in the Forbes article. “The more you expose and share your problems, the more successful you become. It’s not about the top executive dictating what needs to be done and when, it’s about providing individuals with the power to connect.”

Cross-posted from the Public Affairs Council blog

Today there are multiple events that examine technology’s role on all aspects of life, not just every week, but every single day. In fact, there has emerged an entire conference class that does little else except for travel from one conference to another to offer their analysis about technology’s impact on politics, business, marketing, travel, video, subtitling … even pet care. The question is why? When so much information already exists on the internet about the internet, why do we continue to attend these events?

I believe that there are two reasons. First, by our very nature we obsessively seek information and seek to make sense of it. Second, we sense that the pace of history is accelerating and it is thrilling to be part of it, to help write its first draft.

Three years before the first Ars Electronica, a 35-year-old Richard Dawkins published the book The Selfish Gene. According to Dawkins’ gene-centric view of the universe, we humans are mere vessels that allow genes to replicate themselves. We happily oblige these genes in their process, mostly because we enjoy sex so much. In the same book Dawkins coins the term “meme” for a unit of human cultural evolution. Not only are we humans mere vessels for genetic information to replicate itself, but now we are mere vessels for all types of information, each seeking replication and competing for that precious resource,our attention.

Today in many parts of the world we have new terms like Information Addiction and Information Obesity. In the same way that pollen awaits a honey bee, information awaits our information addiction, hoping to be shared, replicated, mutated. Nicholas Humphrey called memes “brain parasites,” lodging themselves in our brains, literally changing the nervous structure and practically compelling us to propagate them among our social networks. 100 years ago this was called word of mouth. Today it occurs every time we log into Facebook and Twitter, every time we compulsively pull out our cell phone to check our email account.

Some information is more memetic than others, it more successfully activates our compulsion to share it with our networks. It is almost impossible to not share a video of Tom Cruise speaking about the Church of Scientology. This year it seems that freedom, democracy, and free speech are popular memes in the Middle East and North Africa. But we must recognize that anti-Islam and anti-immigrant messages are also increasingly memetic here in Europe.

We now create more information every two days than we did since the first cave painting until 2003.

The question for us is this: Why is some of that information so much more successful at seeking replication? Why does some information spread rapidly while other information falls into the abyss of the forgotten? Why does some information inspire us to take to the streets while other information causes us to fall asleep?

The TV Generation
In the 1950s information found a new way to spread and replicate, television. Over the next ten years television would have two profound and paradoxical effects on global society: a sense of social alienation and of global solidarity. In 1967 Guy Debord published Society of the Spectacle, which argued that television and slick marketing engendered a consumer culture in which all that was once directly lived had become mere representation. Mexican intellectual Octavio Paz wrote that reality was beginning to imitate television more than television imitated reality.

Broadcast television was certainly responsible in part for the “mere representation of all that was once directly lived.” But it was also the medium used by young protesters the very next year to attract attention to their protests across the globe. Protest, it turned out, was memetic.

Daniel Ben Cohn-Bendit, one of the organizers of the original Paris protests would later say of his counterparts in other parts of the world: “We met through television. We were the first television generation.” Abbie Hoffman who helped organize the famous 1968 protests at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago said “A modern revolutionary group headed for the television, not for the factory.” When the Chicago police attacked the protesters they chanted in unison “The whole world is watching!” And for the first time it was.

In hindsight, the protest movements of 1968 were largely failures. The Franco regime continued in Spain, as did Brazil’s military dictatorship. The demands of Mexican students were never met and justice was never brought to those responsible for their massacre. In August Soviet tanks rolled into Prague and remained there until 1989. The temporary, weak alliance between the French labor and youth movements fell apart before the onset of winter. The Vietnam war continued, Apartheid in South Africa continued, and Charles De Gaulle remained in power.

In 1968, with the help of television, information became even more successful at replication. But it wasn’t able to change policies or end wars.

The Internet Generation
The very following year came the invention of the Internet, the best development for information since written language.

While in the West we soon became obese with information, in other countries the internet permitted information to replicate itself around the filters of censors. In countries like Tunisia and Egypt, where governments long censored radio and television, information was now having a heyday, eager to show us humble humans acts of corruption and police abuse.

Major, social media-fueled protests have taken place this year in Portugal, Tunisia, Spain, Egypt, Senegal, Yemen, Syria, Uganda, Algeria, Oman, Greece, Jordan, Morocco, Mexico, Chile, Wisconsin, Malaysia, and tomorrow 15,000 young people in Mauritius have joined a Facebook page to take to the streets tomorrow to demand for greater civil rights.

Only now are we beginning to witness and make sense of how it is changing us and how we are changing it, but one observation I can make with some certainty is for future historians, what 1968 was to television, 2011 will be to the internet.

The question is will today’s youth be more successful than the youth of 1968 in creating lasting social and political change? Many writers have observed that 1968 was defined by anti-power rather than counter-power. Which is to say that the youth of 1968 were protesting against “the system”, but they didn’t offer any realistic alternative on which to build upon.

Anti-power protests are inherently more popular than counter-power because we humans seem to enjoy protesting against much more than protesting for. Most of the protests this year began as anti-power movements. Today’s speakers will tell us whether new alternatives are now taking shape.

Information seeks to replicate and spread itself further. And we, as information hungry humans are happy to oblige, but it increasingly important that we also seek truth and compromise through discussion and debate.

This post was originally published on David Sasaki’s blog

There’s a lot more to democratic government than holding elections and town hall meetings.

It’s about transparency and openness in government operations. It’s about empowering citizens with information, access to services, and opportunities for engagement. It’s about being “of the people and for the people” in every way possible.

In many ways, mobile technologies offer an ideal avenue for agencies to achieve these goals.Mobile trends suggest that increasing numbers of people are using smart phones for information and interaction — for personal, business and consumer purposes. Naturally, proponents of open government have been clamoring for agencies to get on board by providing mobile options to citizens. Whether it is a mobile version of a municipal site, apps for government services, mobile civic engagement campaigns, or a combination, making some type of mobile effort can show an agency’s commitment to connecting with citizens.

So … what can mobile government do for democracy? Here are a few ideas:

Engage more people
Not just the civic-minded folks that have time to attend public meetings or write to their elected officials — mobile tools can be used to reach people that might otherwise have very limited means of connecting with government. Rural residents, youth, handicapped or home-bound citizens, even people who are just plain busy — all can benefit from mobile access to government info and services. Mobile is everywhere, and it’s growing ever more common and affordable. By utilizing this avenue, governments can provide information AND get feedback from a broader swath of the population than by other means. This is democracy — equal opportunity — or at least a significant advancement in that direction.

Meet them where they are
Too often, governments do not make the effort (or just don’t know how) to connect with residents in meaningful ways. A government “for” the people will meet people where they already are, use the tools they are using, communicate in a way they can understand. This doesn’t mean that citizens are dumb, it just means that agencies need to cut the jargon, red tape and long lines as much as possible if they truly wish to empower the people. Mobile efforts are an ideal step in this direction. Through mobile interfaces, governments can offer no-wait access to services like bill payments, licenses and registrations, transit information, citizen reporting and beyond. Bringing these options TO the people, meeting them where they are, demonstrates a true democratic mindset and a sincere effort to connect with citizens.

Power to the people
Knowledge is power, and the democratic concept of empowering people through the opening of government data is a large part of the open government movement. It seems inevitable that agencies should aim to jump-start this process by going mobile — after all, citizens are already getting the majority of their daily information (weather, traffic, socialization, stocks, news, business, etc.) through their mobile devices. Governments hold great amounts of potentially helpful data in their hands. Opening this data by releasing it on public websites is good, but using mobile interfaces to disseminate it in a usable form is even better, and puts the power where it belongs — with the people.

Affordable democracy
Mobile democracy is affordable in the deepest sense (not just monetarily). It makes government connections and interactions more affordable for citizens in terms of effort, portability, flexibility, and convenience. Given mobile gov options, people are more likely to interact with their governments frequently, increasing trust and familiarity in ways that should be the goal of every democracy. They may visit the voting booth once a year or less, but citizens use government services — transit, taxes, sanitation, public works — every day. They also use their mobile phones every day. See the connection?

For a true democracy, a government striving for openness and accountability, getting on board with mobile technology just makes sense. Many agencies have made significant mobile efforts, with success, encouraging others to follow suit. Mobile democracy takes “open data” and makes it usable for the people … and wasn’t that the whole point of open government in the first place?

from Sid Burgess @ http://govfresh.com/

‘Politici praat met ons.‘ Een oproep in de krant van afgelopen week van acht Nederlandse musea, uit acht verschillende steden.

Een staaltje advocacy advertising waarin ze zich zogenaamd rechtstreeks tot politiek Den Haag wenden om alsnog te praten over de aangekondigde bezuinigingen op kunst, waarvan de musea de dupe dreigen te worden. De noodkreet, in aangepast vormgeving, luidt: ‘Wat nu kapot wordt gemaakt gaat onherstelbaar verloren.’

De 8 musea zijn: Van Abbe (Eindhoven), Centraal (Utrecht), Stedelijk (Amsterdam), Gemeente (Den Haag), Bonnefanten (Maastricht), Kröller-Müller (Otterlo), Boijmans Van Beuningen (Rotterdam) en Frans Hals (Haarlem).

Advocacy advertising is: Advertising that is not intended to sell a product or service, but rather to change people’s opinions or behaviour.

In het Nederlands: Advocacy advertising is een vorm van adverteren waarbij een organisatie publiekelijk een standpunt inneemt over een issue van algemeen belang en waarbij het gezichtspunt van de organisatie wordt verklaard en onderbouwd.

De musea wenden zich natuurlijk niet echt direct tot de politiek,maar doen een poging om het publiek te laten weten dat ze tot rede bereid zijn – maar politici (tot dusver) niet. Goeie ad, in elk geval beter dan die “Schreeuw om Cultuur”. Mis alleen een beetje waar ze (we?) dan terecht kunnen. Het ene glazen huisje roept tegen het andere glazen huisje. De burger staat er weer tussenin.

But something’s up, starting with that nose. It’s unnaturally ginormous. And so too are his eyes, ears and cheeks. Has Murdoch got mumps? And why is his chaperone carrying a placard that reads: “Murdoch: Wanted For News Crimes”?

A little secret, then. Clad in an oversized cartoon mask, “Murdoch” is actually Sam Barratt – UK media director of online pressure groupAvaaz. The placard-bearing accomplice is his colleague Amy Barry, and this surreal moment constitutes the latest in a series of Avaaz-led protests against Rupert Murdoch’s stranglehold on British media. In recent weeks, these puppets have been a frequent sight around Parliament Square, and have also made their way to News International’s Wapping offices, and the department for culture, media and sport (DCMS). It’s hard work, protesting. The mask – created by two sympathetic theatre prop designers – is a few centimetres thick, weighs several kilograms, and is seemingly impregnable to sound. “Can you hear me?” Barry asks Barratt. Silence. “Sam?” Sam says nothing, and picks his massive nose.

Founded in 2007, Avaaz is not primarily known for this kind of direct action, or indeed any action outside of cyberspace. To most people, Avaaz is just the group that organises all those online petitions; that corrals anyone with access to the internet and a conscience into emailing politicians on subjects that range from homophobia in Uganda, to the EU ban on GM crops and political corruption in Brazil. In the process, Avaaz – which means “voice” in Farsi and other languages – has established quite a following. Nearly 10 million people across 193 countries have now taken part in its nigh-on 46m “actions” (as the group calls the emails, phonecalls, fundraisers and rallies undertaken in its name).

Part of its success is down to the ease with which you can get involved. Once you access the site, and find a petition that’s of interest, adding your voice to the campaign is as simple as typing in your email address. This simple gesture has the dual effect of a) sending the petition’s target a standard-form message in your name, and b) subscribing you to alerts about future Avaaz campaigns. If there’s a campaign you’re particularly fond of, you can also quickly spread the word by clicking on the social media tabs; this in turn will post details about the petition on your Facebook wall or Twitter feed.

So clicktivism – as Avaaz’s brand of online activism is sometimes known – is easy. So easy, in fact, that it often gets a bad press. Cynics argue that signing an online petition, like joining a Facebook group, takes mere seconds, achieves little, and doesn’t encourage clicktivists to engage properly with the issues concerned. Sites such as Avaaz, suggestedMicah White in the Guardian last year, often only deal with middle-of-the-road causes, to the exclusion of niche interests: “They are the Walmart of activism . . . and silence underfunded radical voices.” More infamously, internet theorist Evgeny Morozov has called the likes of Avaaz “slacktivists”, claiming that they encourage previously tenacious activists to become lazy and complacent.

There’s also the issue of breadth. Clicktivist websites often cover a range of issues that have little thematic or geographical relation to each other, which leaves them open to accusations of dilettantism.

But Avaaz begs to differ. It argues that its work has both greatly engaged the public, and had comprehensive effects that extend far beyond cyberspace. For evidence, the group points no further than its anti-Murdoch campaign. “Our activism played a critical role in delaying the BSkyB deal until the recent scandal was able to kill it,” Avaaz’s founder, New York-based Ricken Patel, tells me via Skype. Last November, in collaboration with 38 Degrees, a similar online campaign group, Avaaz sent 60,000 complaints to Ofcom during its initial review of the BSkyB merger. Through the winter, Avaaz kept chipping away, shifting its aim on to David Cameron and culture minister Jeremy Hunt. Shortly before the New Year, 50,000 of its 700,000 British members sent the pair messages that called for a full investigation into the deal. In early March, after Jeremy Hunt decided that the merger would not compromise Sky’s editorial independence, Avaaz mobilised another 40,000 complaints (which all had to be read by DCMS officials) and organised several stunts, including pickets outside the Royal Courts of Justice and Hunt’s constituency surgery.

Avaaz argues that this – coupled with its 160,000-strong petition in early July – led to the merger decision being delayed until September, then referred to the Competitions Commission, and finally junked by Murdoch altogether.

The whole operation is meticulously planned. I sit in on a 90-minute, intercontinental Skype conference call (one of two held each week between the 20-odd core Avaaz activists) and the level of detail at which they discuss the day-to-day minutiae of each local campaign is impressive. There’s a brisk debate between activists in New York and Majorca about what kind of signage the London protest team should be using, and what each sign should say. Banner or placard? “News criminal”, or “news crime”? Everything is decided methodically and quickly until, at the end of the session, 2,000 words of minutes have been compiled, on issues ranging from Palestinian independence, Indian corruption, and, naturally, British journalism.

Of course, Avaaz isn’t the only clicktivist group at work. 38 Degrees, as mentioned, also ran its own campaign, while a new group, Hacked Off, pushed for a full judicial inquiry into wrongdoing at News International. And as more and more revelations emerged about the News of the World’s conduct in the early part of the past decade, leftwing blogs such as Liberal Conspiracy, Political Scrapbook, and individuals such asMelissa Harrison began to encourage people to email and tweet the News of the World’s advertisers, and ask them to boycott the paper. As with Avaaz’s actions, this brand of online activism seemed to have a very real effect: within two days, all but four main NoW advertisers (Tesco, Mars, British Gas, and, unsurprisingly, Sky) had pulled their support, and the paper soon folded.

But it’s Avaaz, perhaps due to its size, that has won the most plaudits. “Avaaz has been hugely significant,” says Labour peer David Puttnam, and he should know.

In 2002, Puttnam played a key role in the formation of the communications bill, the legislation that governed the BSkyB merger. “This was not a bunch of yahoos marching up and down,” Puttnam adds. “This was hugely thought through.”

Indeed, Avaaz’s tactics went much further than just online petitions. They took out adverts criticising Murdoch in the Financial Times, the Daily Mail and various newspapers in Hunt’s Surrey constituency. They also paid – out of money raised solely from donations – for three separate pieces of legal advice that detailed how best to challenge the merger. The first picked holes in Hunt’s initial judgment; the second investigated the possibility of a judicial review; the third explored whether the deal could be blocked by staging a quasi-takeover of BSkyB. (If the worst came to the worst, Avaaz planned to ask its members to buy shares in the company; a numerical majority of shareholders could then have voted down the takeover.) Other legal depositions were made jointly by TrinityMirror, Guardian Media Group, Telegraph Media Group, BT and Associated Newspapers. But, according to Barratt, the Murdoch impersonator, without Avaaz’s work “the deal probably would have gone through a month earlier”. Meanwhile, argues Puttnam, as a result of Avaaz’s campaign, “the process of government will never be the same again. Any responsible government adviser will now have to factor in the possibility of a crowd-sourced legal action before making a similar decision.”

Not everyone agrees on the power of the online pressure group. “Angry about racism, the war in Afghanistan and foie gras?” asked a sarcastic Rod Liddle last week in an article about Avaaz’s clicktivist ally, 38 Degrees. “Just press a key and they’re gone – congratulations!” But Patel thinks this kind of debate misses the point. “It’s important to look beyond the technology,” he says. “You click when you go on iTunes or eBay, but nobody disputes that these sites have changed commerce.” In any case, one protester outside parliament points out, the fact that Avaaz is online-based allows people with mobility problems to stay politically involved. “I’m still fit enough to go to the demonstrations,” says north Londoner Thelma Stone, 68. “But my husband isn’t.”

Patel also feels it’s unfair to suggest Avaaz is too middle-of-the-road, or unengaged with niche issues. When Avaaz was founded, he did initially fear it would be “dishwater-centrist, never taking a side or a stance”. But four years on, he argues, they’re often fighting quirky, unexpected campaigns, such as the one this week that calls for a reform of European fishing quotas. “People can get mobilised by the most unfashionable things,” Patel says, recalling a 2009 campaign for energy-efficient refrigerators.

On many campaigns, Avaaz’s core team takes guidance from people they call their “kitchen cabinets”, or small groups of specialists. But frequently, the ideas for these campaigns come from the members themselves. Patel presides over 52 full-time staff worldwide, some of whom spend their days sifting through thousands of members’ campaign suggestions. Avaaz then polls wider groups of members to see which ideas have the most currency. “My members are my boss,” claims Patel, “and I don’t think they’ve ever made a bad call.”

They also now fund the entire project. Since 2009, Avaaz has not taken donations from foundations or corporations, nor has it accepted payments of more than $5,000 (£3,100). Instead, it relies simply on the generosity of individual members, who have now raised over $20m (£12.4m). Much of this money goes towards specific campaigns. This year, $1.5m (£900,000) was raised to supply cameras to citizen journalists throughout the Arab world; as a result, much of the footage currently coming out of Syria was filmed on equipment provided by Avaaz.

Closer to home, Avaaz’s Murdoch campaign may have been so far, so successful, but the team isn’t letting up just yet. Avaaz is planning a US-based campaign in the next few days that will aim to get Murdoch to testify to Congress. In the UK, the team want members to push for a change in media regulation, to give the Press Complaints Commission back its teeth, and to ensure that no single party owns more than 20% of British media. But will the campaign maintain its pace? In the end, it’ll be down to the appetite of the members.

“I’m still working out if I believe in the wisdom of all crowds,” says Patel. “But I definitely believe in the wisdom of this one.”

How Avaaz picks its battles
Campaign ideas are submitted by Avaaz’s members in the first instance. But once an idea is settled on, it still has to pass a rigorous selection procedure. First, a tester email is sent to a random selection of 10,000 members in a particular country. Any “tester” that doesn’t encourage at least 10% to open it is generally discarded.

Test emails that pass this threshold then need to ensure around a 40% conversion rate. Here, they’re testing the email’s contents. If the email’s going to fly, at least two in five of those who opened it need to go the extra mile: to click through to Avaaz’s website.
A campaign with promise will encourage more than 80% of those people to sign the petition. Emails that achieve this ratio – around 6% of the original audience – will then be rolled out to Avaaz’s entire membership in the relevant country.

Patrick Kingsley / The Guardian