The Agitator

OK, summer is over, you’ve had a week to get back into work mode, and so The Agitator is ready to offer some heavy lifting this week. We’ve been saving up some important stuff on social media. First up is a new report from the Pew internet Project, called The Internet & Civic ...  Read more

I’ve been thinking about this video ad from Medicins Sans Frontieres, which has stirred up quite a bit of controversy on the Chronicle’s Give & Take blog and elsewhere. Here are my observations. First, a piece of advertising needs to be assessed against its objectives. If the ...  Read more

At the risk of signaling my age, I’m pleased to report that all those Saturday mornings of watching Mr. Wizard on black & white TV paid off. I just scored 100% on Pew Research Center’s science quiz. Mr. Wizard would be proud! You can take the quiz here. Of  greater ...  Read more

If you’re in the biz of targeting online ads for member acquisition, fundraising or issue persuasion, here are two articles that illustrate the data-driven capabilities that exist. The first deals mainly with the Republican Party’s use of voter registration data to help target GOTV ads ...  Read more

Happy to hand the megaphone today to Guest Agitator Janice Christensen, for her thoughts on the powerful mobilizing — and through that, fundraising — role of Twitter. Janice is the former Director of Campaigns of Amnesty International USA, a board member of the Torture Abolition and ...  Read more

Here’s an interesting column from Stuart Elliott of the NY Times regarding anger as a motivator in commercial advertising. It seems that commercial marketers are traditionally quite skittish about tapping into the palpable anger people feel about the economy. But the times might be ...  Read more

Much has been written about candidate use of online tools in the 2008 election. But here’s one of the best pieces I’ve seen regarding sophisticated use of the internet for issue campaigning. The focus was California’s Proposition 8, which sought to ban same-sex marriages ...  Read more

Here from Pew Research is — for my money — the definitive report on the role of the internet in last year’s election. Below are some topline findings from Pew’s report, but you should treat this as "must read" if you are serious about engaging folks online around ...  Read more

First, the good news. A recent "must read" data memo from the Pew Internet Project reports that 35% of American adult internet users have a personal profile on an online social network site … four times as many as three years ago. More detail on the percentages of online folks who ...  Read more

Two reports were issued amidst the pre-election buzz that deserve the attention of nonprofit communicators, especially those working in advocacy organizations. The first study, from Pew Research Center, shows that the internet now surpasses all media except television as a preferred source for ...  Read more