BREAZE

Online blogs and social networking media are a great way to spread information and get people involved in your campaigns.

Blogs

According to wikipedia, a blog is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular commentaries, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or videos. Many blogs will publish comments on a particular subject, others are personal blogs that function more as online diaries.

While you might want to host your own blog on behalf of your group, the best thing about blogs, or ‘blogging’ from a Climate Action Group point of view is that you can comment on them. A number of online newspapers now have blogs attached to their websites where readers can comment on the bloggers original article. Online papers also often have space for readers to comment at the end of articles. Many of these papers are able to judge as to which articles are the most popular (and therefore the most important to keep publishing), by the number of comments or ‘blogs’ in response. A number of blogs, particularly those on the Herald Sun and The Australian websites have been dominated by climate sceptics, so it’s worth climate activists posting to these blogs to balance the debate.

All sorts of groups and organisations including environmental groups host blogs on their websites. If the blog receives lots of comments, groups are able to show that they are engaging the community.

Try to make sure that if you are reading newspapers online or visiting the websites of environmental groups that you blog your comments on articles and features to show that the community is engaged on climate action.

Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Social Networking

Facebook, Twitter and MySpace are popular forms of social networking that allows people online to set up a profile and contact their ‘friends’ or ‘followers’.

This can be particularly useful for campaigning by allowing you to spread information through your online networks, that can then be spread further by people connected to you. If your CAG wants to set up a Facebook group or event etc, it’s best to allocate the job of setting it up to one person who has the online skills and interest to keep it up-to-date.