How do media trends and innovations affect the methods and tools of community organizing?

2 Media and community mobilization

Media can enable and enhance community mobilization by facilitating coordination, collaboration, and action among community members. Media can also amplify and spread the messages, demands, and achievements of communities to wider audiences and stakeholders. However, media can also hinder or undermine community mobilization, such as by co-opting, distorting, or suppressing the narratives and goals of communities. Media can also create slacktivism, cynicism, or apathy among potential supporters and allies.

3 Media and community communication

Media can improve and diversify community communication by offering multiple modes, formats, and styles of expression and interaction. Media can also enable and encourage feedback, dialogue, and deliberation among community members and between communities and other actors. However, media can also impair or disrupt community communication, such as by creating noise, misinformation, or manipulation. Media can also generate conflicts, misunderstandings, or mistrust among community members or with other parties.

4 Media and community representation

Media can enhance and empower community representation by providing opportunities, platforms, and resources for communities to tell their own stories, shape their own images, and assert their own identities. Media can also challenge and change the dominant or stereotypical representations of communities in mainstream or alternative media. However, media can also diminish or disempower community representation, such as by appropriating, commodifying, or tokenizing the cultures, experiences, and values of communities. Media can also reinforce or reproduce the existing or oppressive representations of communities in media.

5 Strategies for effective media use

As a community organizer, you can use media strategically and critically to support your community organizing efforts. You should begin by identifying and analyzing your media environment, including the media sources, platforms, audiences, and influencers that are relevant to your community and your issues. Then, select and use the media tools and methods that best suit your community's needs, goals, and capacities. Create and share compelling and credible media content that reflects your community's values, perspectives, and aspirations. Engage and mobilize your community and your allies through media by inviting participation, feedback, and action. Finally, monitor and evaluate your media impact and outcomes by tracking metrics or indicators or conducting surveys.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?