Connecting to the World
As the Kony 2012 online campaign demonstrated, the Internet offers huge opportunities for engaging the public with global issues but it also presents huge challenges. The proliferation of online content makes it increasingly difficult to gain people’s attention online – and it’s so much easier to move on to something else the moment you lose interest.
For NGOs, the public sphere presents particular challenges. They need to find the right tone and produce content which audiences want to share. In this report, for the first time, we look at how global campaigners can be more effective in engaging online audiences.
In chapter 1, Charlie Beckett argues that in the new networked public sphere NGOs must learn to communicate in a way which is radically different from the way in which they have communicated in the past, both with their supporters and with the general public.
In chapter 2, Alice Fenyoe presents the findings from focus groups conducted with activists and the public to discover how audiences respond to NGO content. She, too, concludes that there is urgent need for change.
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