Blog | TechChange | The Institute for Technology and Social Change

In the last decade, social media has spread quickly across the world and has grown not just in terms of number of users on popular platforms, but also in terms of new niche platforms tailored for specific populations.

With Facebook’s 1 billion active users, the 500 million tweets that flood the Internet daily via Twitter, and the 6 billion hours of YouTube videos available online, it is clear that social media has been integrated into the daily digital lives of many people globally. Combine that with the fact that 85% of the world’s population has access to the Internet – and to many of these social networks – and you’ll find a tool that has revolutionized the way groups around the globe interact with each other.

As popular as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are, the diversity of social media platforms and the way people interact on these platforms are as diverse as the different cultures of these users. According to the social media API aggregation company, GNIP, 49% of tweets in 2013 were in a language other than English. Facebook is also available in several dozen languages.

Source: GNIP / New York Times

This “World Map of Social Networks” from Vincos.it shows how the dominant social media sites have changed since 2009.

Facebook has clearly become a global leader, but its prominence can be deceptive – many more country-specific social networks have grown rapidly with extremely active user bases. In countries like China, where Facebook and Twitter are banned, sites like RenRen and Weibo, which have similar user interfaces and features, have sprung up. According to a recent article by Forbes magazine, Tencent, the parent company of China’s leading social media platform, is poised to overtake Facebook in terms of average monthly users.

Source: We Are Social / MediaBistro.com

Alternative social networks are also popular in countries in which Facebook is legal. ZingMe, for example, is extremely popular in Vietnam among teenagers and young adults and Yookos is an emerging network in southern and sub-saharan Africa; the amount of existing social media platforms worldwide is in the thousands.

Social media is designed to bring people together in different ways; it connects governments and organizations with the public and allows for the diffusion of information across the world quickly and efficiently. The limits of social media and its uses are still being defined; issues such as privacy and freedom of speech – and the lack thereof – have been repeatedly debated around the world.

We can neither confirm nor deny that this is our first tweet.

— CIA (@CIA) June 6, 2014

If social media is used differently across the world, what does this mean for social media campaigns for social causes? How do we know what the best tools are to use for targeting specific audiences? Defining and understanding who your target audience is is one of the first steps of designing an effective social change campaign. The ever-evolving social media landscape will be important to understand in order to communicate the right messages, on the right platform, for the right people, and in the right way, to be effective.

How is social media used in your country? Let us know in the comment section below or tweet us @TechChange.

Check out some of the additional resources we’ve come across that visualize the global diversity of social media:

Come and join us in our discussion about the global diversity of social media and more in our upcoming Social Media for Social Change online course, which begins this Monday!

With social media technology changing daily, it can sometimes be challenging to keep up with the latest platforms and their newest features, and the seemingly endless stream of content, information, and campaigns.

Recently as we’ve been preparing for the Social Media for Social Change course, we’ve been focusing on the power and limits of “hashtag activism” by examining examples such as #BringBackOurGirls and #YesAllWomen.

Check out the Montreal-based CJAD news radio talkshow interview from last week featuring TechChange’s Director of Marketing, Nancy Ngo, on hashtag activism here:

Hashtags aren’t the only way social media users are advocating for causes. We’ll be analyzing a variety of campaigns and social change movements that have used various social media tools in different ways in our second round of our Social Media for Social Change online course, which begins on Monday, June 16. A very dynamic group of guest expert speakers will join us from organizations such as Change.org, the Resolve LRA Crisis Initiative, Uber, and more. Lawrence Grodeska from Change.org who will share how Change.org has revolutionized online petitions in campaigns such as advocating justice for Trayvon Martin. Resolve LRA Crisis Initiative’s Michael Poffenberger will share his experiences from the Kony 2012 campaign to capture Joseph Kony and draw comparisons with the recent BringBackOurGirls campaign. Alex Priest of Uber will discuss ways that Uber utilizes social media in optimizing urban logistics.

Several participants from many countries including Czech Republic, Jordan, Mexico, New Zealand, Thailand, and across the U.S. have already enrolled in this round of this course, representing organizations such as World Bank Group, USAID, ICRC, World Green Building Council, Oxfam, AARP International, Cornell University, Abt Associates, Chemonics International, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, and many more. All of these participants will be bringing their own perspectives as both social media users and social change advocates for their respective organizations and initiatives.

What’s your take on hashtag activism and social media advocacy? Do you agree with Nancy? Join the conversation with these social media experts and participants across the world to learn more about social media’s role in catalyzing social change. Enroll now in our Social Media for Social Change course here.

Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to work with hundreds of talented educators from all corners of the world. Two in particular who have had a tremendous impact on my life and approach to education at TechChange are Daryn Cambridge and Mohit Mukherjee.

Take a few minutes and watch both of their talks below. You’ll be glad you did!

Mohit and I met in the cafeteria line at the University for Peace back in 2005 while I was a student there and he was working for an organization on campus called the Earth Charter. I’ve been proud to call him a colleague and a friend ever since. I’ve taken many of his workshops through his center on topics like nonprofit leadership, social entrepreneurship, and education for the 21st century – they were all extremely useful and had tremendous impact helping to shape our approach at TechChange.

Watch his amazing TEDx talk below on Educating ChangeMakers.

Daryn and I met as he was finishing his Masters at AU and I was running an organization called DCPEACE, prior to TechChange. DCPEACE was a practical and comprehensive peace education program for elementary school students in Washington DC. He ran a series of teacher trainings for the program and worked as a teacher mentor. Over the years he and I have taught courses together, collaborated on various online learning activities, and more. He’s one of the brightest minds working in peace education today. Daryn currently works at the US Institute of Peace. Check out his phenomenal TEDx Talk below on Teaching and Learning Peace Online.

Thanks to Daryn and Mohit for sharing their thoughts on education via TEDx. We’re proud to work with you both!

What does the rise of #YesAllWomen mean for social change?

In our last post on #BringBackOurGirls, we examined whether social media activism could free girls who had been kidnapped in Nigeria. With the rise of #YesAllWomen, it’s worth exploring whether social media can improve the lives of women and men everywhere in shifting social norms around gender.

Less than a week after the killing spree at the University of California Santa Barbara, a torrent of more than two million tweets have been shared containing anecdotes, stories, and outcries against misogyny, sexual harassment, and violence against women.

Source: Topsy

Why has #YesAllWomen gained so much media attention? It can be argued that the #YesAllWomen hashtag has built off continuing momentum of other initiatives that have women (and some men) speaking out against misogyny in its many forms. A provocative article from TIME Magazine in April 2014, nearly a month before the UCSB murders, was a critique of the #NotAllMen argument, setting the stage for women to share how sexual harassment and misogyny are frighteningly common experiences that women face on a regular basis. Foreign Policy’s piece on “What do #YesAllWomen and #BringBackOurGirls have in common?” highlights:

“[…]the global Internet has during the last month seen an incredible outpouring of support for the full equality of women. Even if the two hashtags fail to end misogyny and free the kidnapped schoolgirls, they surely represent a step in the right direction in advocating for a better reality for women.”

Here is a heat map visualizing the use of #YesAllWomen hashtag on Twitter, showing the start of the hashtag in the U.S., in comparison to Nigeria, where the #BringBackOurGirls hashtag began.

Related campaigns using the hashtags #everydaysexism and #rapecultureiswhen have both been used in similar efforts to shed light on misogyny, as discussed in CNN’s article on “Why #YesAllWomen took off on Twitter.” Campaigns across U.S. campuses have also been pressuring universities to address sexual assault on campuses, as mentioned in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

What will be the ultimate impact of #YesAllWomen? Will this social media momentum change ingrained cultural norms of sexism across society? It did, at least for Kenneth Curtis, a man who described his reaction to the #YesAllWomen tweets:

“The courageous voices I saw on #YesAllWomen burst my bubble in all the good ways. They shed a light on my ignorance. They also shed a light on the work we men have to do. This is how change happens. Shed a light on the problem. Now let’s rally to fix it.”

But what about the societies where women cannot speak out as openly on social media due to censorship or lack of access to technology? With #YesAllWomen, social media has succeeded again in being a tool for raising awareness on a social issue, but it will continue to be a long journey to shift entrenched cultural norms.

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Interested in this topic and how social media can be used to create social change? Enroll now in our upcoming Social Media for Social Change course.

With a domain that ends with [dot] org, TechChange is sometimes mistaken for a non-profit organization. However, we are actually a for-profit social enterprise business that is focused on market-viable solutions that bring both profit and positive social impact. As we continue on our journey from a start-up to a small business, we’re proud to be a registered B Corporation, a category of social enterprises that also focus on double bottom line values.

Being this type of small, yet growing, online learning business based in Washington, DC brings its own unique set of challenges, recently featured in this Forbes article, “When And How To Scale: DC Startup At Crossroads.” Launched in 2010, TechChange remains a bootstrapped social enterprise. Unlike other high-growth startups in the edtech space that have received an injection of venture capital funding, scaling for us is less straightforward than more employees, bigger offices, and lunchtime perks.

“To scale does not always mean bigger. A thought that seems to get lost in the relentless drive to scale businesses across continents.”

For a social enterprise, scaling offers different incentives than a traditional for-profit business that focuses primarily on maximizing profit. In our case, part of the challenge in scaling is codifying our business priorities and establishing social impact as a core value of our business.

TechChange CEO, Nick Martin, presenting at a meeting on social entrepreneurship at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Affairs (SAIS) in Washington, DC.

Check out the full article on this link here.

What do you think? What is the best way for TechChange to scale our impact while growing as a business? Who are the best investors that are looking for organizations that promise both financial and social impact returns?

In a timely visit to Washington, DC that aligned with the 25th Anniversary of the World Wide Web, one of the handful of inductees in the Internet Hall of Fame, Marc Andreessen, dropped by 1776 for a fireside chat earlier this week. The co-founder of VC firm, Andreessen Horowitz, who has made early investments in high-profile tech companies including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Airbnb, chatted with The Atlantic’s Editor-in-Chief, James Bennet, and members of the DC tech community on a wide range of technology topics including the future of “Silicon Valley(s)”, bitcoin, drones, MOOCs and online education, and how technology will impact the developing world.

Here are five highlights of his views on the future of online education:

1. The world will be a better place when everyone is educated and online using cheap smartphones. According to Marc Andreessen, what will most profoundly change the world is for every kid on the planet to have a world class education. The developing world will benefit most from high quality education as this content becomes accessible via cheap smartphones, which we’ve already begun seeing earlier this year. The global economy could be growing faster if more people were educated.

2. In 20 years, online learning will completely dominate education of all levels.
With the exception of elite academic institutions such as the Ivy League (which would only continue to exist as a luxury good), online learning will take over many traditional schools. New software and educational content will be delivered online with the help of new devices. Also, for-profit businesses will play a big role in driving innovation in this space.

3. Great teachers and professors will continue to be central to online learning.
Despite all current and future technological developments in education, quality education will always depend on great teachers. With online education and edtech, the best teachers in the world will become available to more students. Marc Andreessen sees online education scaling like Hollywood, in that the best professors (as content producers) will be like the “Steven Spielbergs” of specialized topics that can reach huge audiences, or student populations.

4. Hybrid learning models have tremendous potential to make e-learning more social & engaging.
Marc Andreessen also spoke of the potential of hybrid learning models that could make the educational experience engaging. One of the best benefits of bringing education online is the ability to connect students via an online platform, regardless of where they are in the world. Experienced students of courses could tutor new students, which we have seen time and time again with the TechChange learning model when course participants become guest experts, and even course facilitators like Timo Luege. Other examples of engagement that can happen online with platforms like TechChange include crowdsourcing past study resources, video conferencing (which we do with our “Live Events”), and online social networking.

5. Successful online learning will require long-term investments
The opportunity for MOOCs and online learning is gigantic, but it won’t happen overnight. Andreessen Horowitz has been some in investment in Sebastian Thrun’s
Udacity. Marc Andreessen sees online education as a long-term investment.

What do you think? Can online learning really be scaled comparably to Hollywood? What are some examples of how online education in the developing world has already made an impact? What are the best hybrid learning models? Let us know in the comments, or tweet us @TechChange.

To check out the entire one-hour recording of the Marc Andreessen interview, please see the recorded session, courtesy of The Atlantic LIVE and The Atlantic Exchange here.

For many people in the world, it is difficult to imagine what life was like without the World Wide Web. In the last quarter century, the Internet has fundamentally changed the way people across the world access, share, and use information. The Web is increasingly integrating into more and more aspects of our daily lives and work. For example, it has played an important role in empowering citizens with a digital platform for civic engagement, and spreading knowledge on disease prevention to boost global health.

Join us and USAID’s Global Development Lab in celebrating the 25th anniversary of the World Wide Web, and the extraordinary opportunities it presents to helping people in the most remote places in the world. Check out this animation video the TechChange creative team produced in partnership with USAID featuring Rajiv Shah, Andy Sisson, Priya Jaisinghani, Sascha Meinrath, Dr. Ndemo, Judy Payne, Ann Mei Chang,and Adam Slote.

In the next several decades where we can expect the expansion of broadband connectivity, cheaper smartphones, the increase in data, and business models that serve more underserved populations, we are hopeful for a future where extreme poverty no longer exists.

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If you’d like more information on TechChange’s animations and our creative team’s work, please email us at info@techchange.org.

We’re excited to announce that TechChange president Nick Martin was selected as the runner-up for the 2014 Andrew E. Rice Award for Leadership and Innovation by a Young Professional in International Development.

The winner of first place for the Rice Award for 2014 was Diana Jue of Essmart, a U.S. Corporation and India Private Limited company that “brings essential, life-improving products to all people, no matter who they are or where they’re from”. Diana’s company is doing great work to create better distribution and supply channels of existing consumer goods to hard-to-reach places in the developing world.

Nick received a certificate of distinction at the 2014 SID-Washington Annual Conference, “Delivering Results in a Changing World,” on May 20th, in Washington, DC. Thanks to the team at SID-Washington for organizing the award and event.

Please join us in congratulating Nick!

Read more about the SID Rice Award here and consider applying next year.

Taking the 2014 annual report from the U.S. Government’s largest food security initiative and condensing it into an engaging 3-minute video is no easy task. But that’s exactly what the creative team at TechChange did when it partnered with Feed the Future last month. In just four weeks, TechChange worked with Feed the Future to develop the script, storyboard, narration and artwork that culminate in the video below:

As an outreach tool, the video will help Feed the Future raise awareness of the importance of global food security. Across the world, 800 million people suffer regularly from hunger, making food security one of the biggest challenges that the world faces today. However, with programs such as the U.S. Government’s Feed the Future initiative, we’re on the path to ending world hunger.

Through the Feed the Future program, the U.S. has been partnering with small-scale farmers, researchers, local and country leaders in developing countries, and both local and multinational corporations to embrace technology in scaling solutions to farming and food production challenges. This program is also helping to make developing countries more resilient in the face of natural disasters.

Through measurable results striving toward reaching the Millennium Development Goal of reducing world hunger by half by 2015, Feed the Future is making some important strides. For example, in Bangladesh, rice farmers improved fertilizers, boosted crop yields, and ultimately increased sales from $33 million to $57 million. In 2013, Feed the Future helped nearly 7 million farmers and food producers improve their productivity and yields on more than 4 million hectares of land… and reached more than 12-and-a-half million children through nutrition interventions.

For more information on Feed the Future, please visit feedthefuture.gov

In our modern times of media cycles fighting for our short attention spans, it is easy to ride the momentum of a highly visible campaign that can quickly fizzle out once another competing story emerges. Since the kidnappings of approximately 300 Nigerian girls by militant Islamist group Boko Haram last month, the international community has embraced the hashtag, “#BringBackOurGirls”, in a very vocal and visible social media campaign demanding action to rescue the Chibok girls. But one month since the mass kidnapping without the rescue of the girls, do we need to take a different approach? Will #BringBackOurGirls be just another campaign we forget about once the next celebrity scandal becomes breaking news?

#BringBackOurGirls goes global starting in Nigeria

Most of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign activity has been highly visible on Twitter, Facebook, and international media outlets. In this fascinating Twitter heat map created using the tool, CartoDB, featured in TIME Magazine, we can see a time-lapsed digital map of how the hashtag, “#BringBackOurGirls” spread globally, starting organically from within Nigeria in mid April.

(We’ll be touching upon CartoDB, and other digital mapping tools in our upcoming Mapping for International Development course later this month.)

The #BringBackOurGirls hashtag has been embraced widely by many public figures and has garnered wide support across the world. Michelle Obama, David Cameron, and Malala Yusafzai have posted images with the hashtag, along with celebrities such as Ellen Degeneres, Angelina Jolie, and Dwayne Johnson. To date, nearly 1 million people signed the Change.org petition. Countries including the USA, UK, China, Israel have pledged to join the rescue efforts, and other human rights campaigns have joined the #BringBackOurGirls Twitter momentum, as seen on this Hashtagify map.

Is #BringBackOurGirls repeating the mistakes of #KONY2012?

A great example of a past campaign where this happened was with the KONY2012 campaign, which brought some albeit short-lived urgency to addressing the child soldiers recruited by Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). Michael Poffenberger, who worked on that campaign, will join us a guest expert in TC110: Social Media for Social Change online course in June 2013 and compare it the current #BringBackOurGirls campaign. Many have drawn parallels to both campaigns and warned of the false optimism that hyped social media messages can bring when context is not fully considered and understood.

According to Lauren Wolfe of Foreign Policy magazine, “Understanding what has happened to the Nigerian girls and how to rescue them means beginning to face what has happened to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of girls over years in global armed conflict.” To some critics, this hashtag trivializes the weaknesses of Nigerian democracy that have been exposed. Critics of using social media in advocacy campaigns have used the term “slacktivism” to describe the passive, minimal effort needed to participate in these movements. Others have cited such media waves being exploited for individual gain, as opposed to genuinely benefiting the girls. Florida State University Political Science professor, Will H. Moore, argues that this hashtag activism is not only hurting the larger cause of rescuing the kidnapped girls, but actually helping Boko Haram. Jumoke Balogun, Co-Founder of CompareAfrique, also highlights the limits of the #BringBackOurGirls hashtag impact.

Hashtag activism, alone, is not enough

With all this social media activity and international press, what actual progress has been made in rescuing the kidnapped girls? If the objective is raising awareness of the issue, yes, the hashtag has been successful. If the objective is to rescue the girls, we still have a long way to go, even if the hashtag campaign has been part of a multi-pronged approach to galvanize resources into action.

The bottom line: social media can be a powerful tool to bring visibility and awareness to a cause, but a hashtag alone is not enough to bring about social change. There are a myriad of resources that must be coordinated to effectively implement this rescue mission, which will only become more difficult as more time passes. However, prioritizing and shining a sustained light on the problem, instead getting distracted by competing media cycles on celebrities getting into petty fights, is the first step toward a solution.

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What do you think about the impact of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign? We’re only scratching the surface here on the topic of social media for social change and invite you continue the discussion with us in our upcoming Social Media for Social Change online course which runs June 16 – July 11, 2014.