Aaron Manire (amanire@indiana.edu)
Mon, 29 Mar 1999 14:13:43 -0500 (EST)
For the edification of the list, I took this message from Phil Agre's
website. I highly recommend reading it in it's entirety.
Easy,
A Dario
==========================
Designing Effective Action
Alerts for the Internet
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by Phil Agre
Graduate School of Education and Information Studies
University of California, Los Angeles
La Jolla, California 90095-1520
USA
pagre@ucla.edu
http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/
Version of 23 December 1998.
Copyright 1994-1998, all rights reserved.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is an updated version of an article from the January 1994 issue of
The Network Observer.
Acknowledgements.
I appreciate the comments and suggestions of Steven Cherry, Nathan Newman,
Steven Snedker, and Larry Yates. Jillaine Smith of the Benton Foundation
did the HTML markup as part of her Best Practices Toolkit.
An action alert is a message that someone sends out to the net asking
for a specific action to be taken on a current political issue.
Well-designed action alerts are a powerful way to invite people to
participate in the processes of a democracy. Having seen many action
alerts in my twenty years on the Internet, I have tried to abstract some
guidelines for people who wish to use them. Even if you do not plan to
construct any action alerts yourself, I do not recommend that you forward
anybody else's alerts unless they conform to at least the spirit of these
guidelines. If I sometimes seem stern or didactic in my prescriptions,
please forgive me. It's just that I've seen badly designed action alerts
do an awful lot of damage.
Although an Internet action alert should always be part of an issue
campaign with a coherent strategy and clear goals, I won't discuss the
larger strategic questions here. Instead, I will simply divide action
alerts into two categories, single messages and structured campaigns.
Single alerts are broadcast in the hope that they will propagate to the
maximum possible number of sympathetic Internet users. Structured
campaigns are typically conducted through mailing lists specially
constructed for the purpose, and their intended audience may include
either the whole Internet universe or a narrower group of already-
mobilized partisans.
Both types of action alerts are obviously modeled on things that have been
happening on paper, through telephone trees, and lately via fax machines,
for a long time. What computer networks do is make them a lot cheaper. A
networked alert can travel far from its origin by being forwarded from
friend to friend and list to list, without any additional cost being
imposed on the original sender. This phenomenon of chain-forwarding is
important, and it behooves the would-be author of an action alert, whether
a single message or a whole campaign, to think through its consequences:
1. Establish authenticity. Bogus action alerts -- such as the notorious
"modem tax" alert -- travel just as fast as real ones. Don't give alerts a
bad name. Include clear information about the sponsoring organization and
provide the reader with several ways of tracing back to you -- e-mail
address, postal address, URL, phone number, etc. Including this contact
information makes sense anyway -- you want people to join your movement,
and this means establishing contact with you. One way to establish
authenticity is by appending a digital signature, presumably using PGP.
Few people will check the signature, though, and many people will remove
the signature when they forward your message to others. So there's no
substitute for clearly explaining who you are and giving people a way to
reach you.
2. Put a date on it. Paper mail and faxes get thrown away quickly, but
action alerts can travel through the Internet forever. Even if an alert
seems to have faded away, it can sleep in someone's mailbox for months or
years and then suddenly get a new life as the mailbox's owner forwards it
to a new set of lists. Do not count on the message header to convey the
date (or anything else); people who forward Internet messages frequently
strip off the header. Even better, give your recommended action a clearly
stated time-out date, e.g., "Take this action until February 17, 1998". If
you think there will be follow-up actions, or if you want to convey that
this is part of an ongoing campaign, say so. That way, people will contact
you or look out for your next alert.
3. Include clear beginning and ending markers. You can't prevent people
from modifying your alert as they pass it along. Fortunately, at least in
my experience, this only happens accidentally, as extra commentary
accumulates at the top and bottom of the message as it gets forwarded. So
put a bold row of dashes or something similar at the top and bottom so
extra stuff will look extra. That way it will be very clear what you and
your credibility are standing behind.
4. Beware of second-hand alerts. Although it is uncommon for someone to
modify the text of your alert, sometimes people will foolishly send out
their own paraphrase of an alert, perhaps based on something they heard
verbally. These second-hand alerts usually contain exaggerations and other
factual inaccuracies, and as a result they can easily be used to discredit
your alert. If you become aware of inaccurate variants of your alert, you
should immediately notify relevant mailing lists of the existence of these
second-hand alerts. Explain clearly what the facts are and aren't, implore
the community not to propagate the misleading variants, and provide
pointers to accurate information including a copy of your own alert. This
action has two virtues: first, it may help to suppress the mistaken
reports; and second, it positions you (accurately, I hope) as a
responsible person who cares about the truth.
5. Think about whether you want the alert to propagate at all. If your
alerts concern highly sensitive matters, for example the status of
specifically named political prisoners, then you will probably want to
know precisely who is getting your notices, and how, and in what context.
If so, include a prominent notice forbidding the alert's recipients from
forwarding it.
6. Make it self-contained. Don't presuppose that your readers will have
any context beyond what they'll get on the news. Your alert will probably
be read by people who have never heard of you or your cause. So define
your terms, avoid references to previous messages on your mailing list,
and provide lots of background, or at least some simple instructions for
getting useful background materials. In fact, you might consider making
the e-mailed alert relatively short and include the URL for a Web page
that provides the full details. Your most important audience consists of
people who are sympathetic to your cause and want to learn more about it
before they can take action. Write your alert with that type of reader in
mind, not the complete insider or the apathetic stranger.
7. Ask your reader to take a simple, clearly defined, rationally chosen
action. For example, you might ask people to call their representatives
and express a certain view on an issue. In this case, you should provide a
way to find that representative's name and number, and explain how to
conduct the conversation: what to say, how to answer certain likely
questions, and so on. The purpose of such a script is not to impose your
thinking but to help people to learn a skill that might otherwise be
intimidating. Decide whether to ask for e-mail messages (which can be huge
in number but near-zero in effect), written letters (which will be fewer
but more effective), or phone calls (which fall in between). Consider
other options as well: perhaps the sole purpose of your alert is to
solicit contacts from a small number of committed activists, or to gather
information, or to start a mailing list to organize further actions.
8. Make it easy to understand. It is crucial to begin with a good, clear
headline that summarizes the issue and the recommended action. Use plain
language, not jargon. Check your spelling. Use short sentences and simple
grammar. Choose words that will be understood worldwide, not just in your
own country or culture. Solicit comments on a draft before sending it out.
9. Get your facts straight! Your message will circle the earth, so
double-check. Errors can be disastrous. Even a small mistake can make it
easy for your opponents to dismiss your alerts -- and Internet alerts in
general -- as "rumors". Once you do discover a mistake, it will be
impossible to issue a correction -- the correction will probably not get
forwarded everyplace that the original message did.
10. Start a movement, not a panic. Do not say "forward this to everyone
you know". Do not overstate. Do not plead. Do not say "Please Act NOW!!!".
Do not rant about the urgency of telling everyone in the universe about
your issue. You're not trying to address "everyone"; you're trying to
address a targeted group of people who are inclined to care about the
issue. And if the issue really is time-critical then just explain why, in
sober language. Do not get obsessed with the immediate situation at hand.
Your message may help avoid some short-term calamity, but it should also
contribute to a much longer-term process of building a social movement.
Maintaining a sense of that larger context will help you and your readers
from becoming dispirited in the event that you lose the immediate battle.
11. Tell the whole story. Most people have never heard of your issue, and
they need facts to evaluate it. Facts, facts, facts. For example, if you
believe that someone has been unjustly convicted of a crime, don't just
give one or two facts to support that view; most people will simply assume
they are getting half the truth. If your opponents have circulated their
own arguments, you'll need to rebut them, and if they have framed the
facts in a misleading way then you'll need to explain what's misleading
and why. On the other hand, you need to write concisely. Even if you are
focused on the actions, good explanations count more. After all, one of
the benefits of your action alert -- maybe the principal benefit -- is
that it informs people about the issue. Even if they don't act today, your
readers will be more aware of the issue in the future, provided that you
don't insult their intelligence today.
12. Don't just preach to the converted. When you are very caught up in
your cause, it is easy to send out a message in the language you use when
discussing the issue with your fellow campaigners. Often this language is
a shorthand that doesn't really explain anything to an outsider. If you
really care about your issue, you'll take the time to find language that
is suitable for a much broader audience. This can take practice.
13. Avoid polemics. Your readers should not have to feel they are being
hectored to go along with something from the pure righteousness of it.
Some people seem to associate non-polemical language with deference, as if
they were being made to bow at the feet of the king. This is not so. You
will not succeed unless you assume that your readers are reasonable people
who are willing to act if they are provided with good reasons.
14. Make it easy to read. Use a simple, clear layout with lots of white
space. Break up long paragraphs. Use bullets and section headings to avoid
visual monotony. If your organization plans to send out action alerts
regularly, use a distinctive design so that everyone can recognize your
"brand name" instantly. Use only plain ASCII characters, which are the
common denominator among Internet character sets. Just to make sure, do
not use a MIME-compliant mail program to send the message; use a minimal
program such as Berkeley mail. MIME is great, but not everybody uses it
and you don't want your recipients getting distracted from your message by
weird control codes. Format the message in 72 columns or even fewer;
otherwise it is likely to get wrapped around or otherwise mutilated as
people forward it around the net.
15. DO NOT use a chain-letter petition. A chain-letter petition is an
action alert that includes a list of names at the end; it invites people
to add their own name to the list, send in the petition if their name is
the 30th or 60th etc, and in any case forward the resulting
alert-plus-signature-list to everyone they know. This idea sounds great in
the abstract, but it really doesn't work. The problem is that most of the
signatures will never reachtheir destination, since the chain will fizzle
out before reaching the next multiple of 30 in length. What's even worse,
a small proportion of the signatures will be received in the legislator's
office many times, thus annoying the staff and persuading them that
they're dealing with an incompetent movement that can never hold them
accountable.
16. Urge people to inform you of their actions. If you are calling on
people to telephone a legislator's office, for example, you should provide
an e-mail address and invite them to send you a brief message. Explain
that you'll use these messages to count the number of callers your alert
has generated, and that this information will be invaluable when you speak
with the legislator's staffers later on. Only do this, though, if your
mail server is capable of handling 50,000 messages in a short period. You
might want to check this out with your service provider beforehand.
17. Don't overdo it. Action alerts might become as unwelcome as
direct-mail advertising. Postpone that day by picking your fights and
including some useful, thought-provoking information in your alert
message. If you're running a sustained campaign, set up your own list.
Then send out a single message that calls for some action and include an
advertisement for your new list. If you must send out multiple alerts on
the same issue, make sure each one is easily distinguishable from the
others and provides fresh, useful information. Above all, don't spam. Post
your message only where it belongs. When in doubt, ask the maintainer of a
given mailing list whether your alert is appropriate. And include a phrase
like "post where appropriate" toward the beginning so that people aren't
encouraged to send your alert to mailing lists where it doesn't belong.
18. Do a post-mortem. When the campaign is over, try to derive some
lessons for others to use. Even if you're burned out, take a minute right
away while the experience is still fresh in mind. What problems did you
have? What mistakes did you make? What unexpected connections did you
make? Who did you reach and why? Which mailing lists was your alert
forwarded to, and which of these forwardings actually caused people to
take action? Good guesses are useful too.
19. Don't mistake e-mail for organizing. An action alert is not an
organization. If you want to build a lasting political movement, at some
point you'll have to gather people together. The Internet is a useful tool
for organizing, but it's just one tool and one medium among many that you
will need, and you should evaluate it largely in terms of its contribution
to larger organizing goals. Do the people you reach through Internet
alerts move up into more active positions in your movement? Do you draw
them into conferences, talk to them by phone, meet them in person, become
accountable to them to provide specific information and answer questions?
If not, why do you keep reaching out to them?
20. Encourage good practices. The Internet is a democratic medium that
provides us all with the time and space to do the right thing. So let's
use the Internet in a positive way and encourage others to do the same.
You can help by passing these guidelines along to others who might benefit
from them (including people who have sent out badly designed alerts), and
refrain from propagating alerts that do not conform to them. Remember,
forwarding a badly designed action alert actually harms the cause that it
is supposed to support. Modeling thoughtful, constructive action on the
Internet, however, provides everyone with a living example of democracy in
action.
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