How to Use Social Media for Social Change

Did you participate in the Twit-Out yesterday? Do you even know what that is? To get you up to speed, a handful of Twitter users, fed up with the regular outages of their favorite service, decided to band together to show Twitter some tough love by boycotting the service for a day. (Unfortunately, despite having fewer users on the service, Twitter still went down). However, in light of recent world events, it's a shame that the cause the tech community has chosen to rally around is that of Twitter's instability. Aren't there more important things going on right now? Instead of watching Twitter's ups and downs, we the members of the tech community could be using our social media super-powers to make a real difference in the world. We know how to spread news fast, share images and videos, organize our friends, and empower others all by using the same social media tools that we use in our every day lives. Isn't it time we put them to use towards a good cause? Below are some great examples as to how that can be done.

Use Your Mobile Phone to Spread News, Make Change Happen

As we reported in April, a UN report showed that mobile technology is changing the way that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) work, using mobile technology to overcome humanitarian challenges. According to Timothy E. Wirth, President of the United Nations Foundation, the technology is being used to "connect families separated by disaster, help emergency relief workers respond more quickly, empower health workers with data to help combat disease and epidemics, track the impacts of climate change, and even help in the resolution of civil conflicts." The technology is also heavily used today to get information from citizen journalists to the mainstream media. For example, during last year's wildfires in California, major news outlets like NBC San Diego and CNN's i-Report each received around 2,000 submissions of photos and video from people who sent in submissions via their mobile phones. In fact, CenterNetworks reported that the spread of information didn't even stop there, but that other social media sites like flickr, YouTube, Twitter, and others were also used to get the word out. And if you want to get involved with mobile activism, there is MobileActive.org, a site that is an all-volunteer community of people and organizations using mobile phones for social impact. Their aim is to promote the use of mobile technology, which can help NGO's better serve their communities.

Use Viral Marketing Techniques to Send a Message

A recent spinoff of the infamous "Hot or Not" web site launched by MTVs college network and the non-profit Kaiser Family Foundation, is www.posornot.com. The questionably tasteful but well-intentioned site is an educational effort on the subject of HIV. Disguised as a game, visitors click to guess whether the people in the photos shown are "Pos" (positive for HIV) or "Not." The message, obviously, being that you can't tell just by how someone looks.

Social Network for Social Good

A post on the Online Spin blog focuses on how social media can be used for social good. Featured in the article are numerous sites that harness the power of social connections for good causes, like Charity Water for example, which aims to get the word out about the need for clean drinking water worldwide, and Jessica Biel's social network, the "Make the Difference Network", where she uses her celebrity status to get people involved. There are other great sites you can get involved in, too, like Idealist and Change.org.

Time For Change

Even on a smaller scale in the tech community, we have "internet celebrities" of our own. If they chose do to so, they could influence their fans and followers to do much more than just sign up for the next greatest web app. All across the social web, you'll find sites where members of the tech community are helping non-profit organizations help leverage the power of the social web to do good. Sites like NetSquared and NTEN, for example, are great resources for helping non-profits. And here at RWW, we put together a Web Toolkit for Non-Profits, which included tools for creating a web site, communication, fund-raising, recruiting, and more. Have you been inspired to do good via social media? Let us know how in the comments.