Posts Tagged ‘twitter’

@amnestyuk vs @shelldotcom

29th July 2009 by ben 30 Comments »

Tags:
Categories: Shell




A simple Twitter message, repeated by just a few hundred users, and the world’s biggest company was scrambling to set up an online dialogue.

The request was for an opportunity to discuss Amnesty’s recent report ‘Petroleum, Pollution and Poverty’, which highlighted human rights abuses in the Niger Delta, where despite vast profits for oil companies, 31 million people are living in poverty.

The details were soon finalised. It was to happen on the Shell Dialogues site, with a parallel and open chat right here on Protect the Human.

On one side was Shell, with a panel of five senior staff, a slick introductory video and a well-oiled PR machine. On the other, the 445 individuals who had registered to take part, including experts from Amnesty, the Remember Saro-wiwa campaign, Friends of the Earth and local organisations based in Nigeria.

The stage was set.

What followed was an endless stream of questions about Shell’s human rights record, including why they continue with gas flaring despite a government ban, why they haven’t published their environmental assessments, and why they have failed to adequately clean up oil spills.

It didn’t take long before cracks began to appear in their positive PR machine, with country chair Basil Omiyi admitted that ‘Yes’, Shell does believe that pollution and environmental damage associated with the oil industry has contributed to poverty and conflict in the Niger Delta. Their assertion that ‘the oil industry’s footprint is impacting on small parts of the delta’ was an understatement of epic proportions, and their claim that ‘Shell is giving all spills immediate attention’ was completely dismissed by those working in the Niger Delta.

We should give Shell some credit for at least being willing to discuss these issues, though their rose tinted view fooled no one.

The next step is to watch this space, for a promised transcript of the dialogue, along with answers to the questions they didn’t have time to answer. In the meantime we are analysing their answers and plotting our next move.

If you’ve not yet sent an email to Shell’s new CEO, please take a moment to do this. If you have, why not send a message to @shelldotcom on Twitter, asking them to respond to the 3500+ emails that have been sent.

Comment on this post

The Shell web chat

16th July 2009 by fiona 40 Comments »

Tags:
Categories: Site News Social Media & Campaigns

Thanks to everyone who took part in the Shell webchat. We’ll be analysing Shell’s responses over the next few days, so watch this space!

If you were involved, please add your thoughts as a comment below.

The background

Thanks to you, and the hundreds of messages you sent to Shell via Twitter, we got them listening.

Shell agreed to host a webchat on their site Shell Dialogues about the Niger Delta. We took this opportunity to ask tough questions about Shell’s human rights and environmental practices in the Niger Delta.

We pulled together a bunch of information, from key facts all the way through to our full report to help you ask some hard questions, like “Will Shell commit to cleaning up all oil spills in the Delta?‘

Full Report (PDF) |  Summary (DOC)

NEW: 20 questions Shell won’t answer (DOC)

Find out more about our campaign

Bookmark and Share

Comment on this post

So, how did it go?

11th March 2009 by fiona 9 Comments »

Tags:
Categories: Social Media & Campaigns violence against women

Friday morning, waiting for 1:10, was nerve-racking;  When we asked all of you to change your status updates or tweet simultaneously, we really had no idea how it would go. As the time came however, it became apparent that it would all be okay, as the tweets started to mount up.

As we sat and relentlessly clicked refresh on  our Twitter search screens, we were astonished by just how many of you chose to take part. We’ve been busy crunching some numbers since then, trying to find ways to quantify this online action and see its real world results. We’re not quite finished yet, but here are just a few things we’ve already discovered.

Twitter

The effect of our action was most apparent on Twitter. Using data from sites like TwitScoop, we think people mentioned ‘oneten’ around 3000 times over the course of the day. We quite liked this graph that demonstrates the bubbling activity and peak in the hours surrounding 1:10.

It was fascinating to watch as the message spread and how it was amplified when Twitterers such as @Dave_Gorman and @JemimaKiss with larger followings than our own picked the message up.

Blogs

We also owe quite a few bloggers a big thank you as they were instrumental in helping us get the message out.  It was also on the blogs that we saw the most heated debate. Our own blog has received over 75 comments  debating the ins and outs of the campaign or just pledging support. The fiercest debate however took place on BoingBoing and Liberal Conspiracy and it was great to see such an engagement with the campaign.

Results

I’m also thrilled to be able to say that this campaign didn’t just create a noticeable moment online, it also referred over 8,500 to oneten.org.uk to learn about the issue and how they could make a difference.

We’re still waiting for final figures on how many people went on to email their MP, but will be sure to share that as soon as possible. What we do know is that the amount of actions taken via ProtectTheHuman.com trebled from its usual weekly average and a vast majority of the actions being taken were part of our Stop Violence Against Women campaign.

This is a fantastic result so far, and all of us at Amnesty UK would like to say an enormous thank you to everyone that took part, who spread the word, or who debated the issue. Hopefully we’ll be able to tell you even more about how your actions have helped over the coming weeks, so stay tuned.

What next?

Right now there a few things you can do to help this campaign further:

  • Did you email your MP? Have they replied to you? Let us know in the comments on this blog.
  • Let us know how you think the campaign went, what could be done better next time?
  • To take further action on our Stop Violence Against Women campaign, or any of our other campaigns, then sign up to ProtectTheHuman.com and add your voice to an active online human rights community

Thanks again to all of you who have taken part already. We’re putting together a case study of what we did, why and how so keep posted for more news, stats and updates soon.

Comment on this post

Each year, around 1 in 10 women in Britain experience rape or other violence

27th February 2009 by agnes 94 Comments »

Tags:
Categories: violence against women

Image of the MAp of Gaps website

One in four local authorities leave female victims of violence without the specialised support they need.  Scary, isn’t it?

Find out how the flashmob went to spread this message for International Women’s Day

Make a difference – email your MP now

Image of the MAp of Gaps websiteOf course, this campaign has a concrete action.

End Violence Against Women’s new website ‘Map of Gaps’ shows exactly which services for women escaping violence are lacking where.

See what services are missing in your local area, and email your MP directly on Mapofgaps.org – it’s that easy to make a big difference.

Want to do more to help?

Violence against women affects women globally, cutting across boundaries of wealth, race, and culture.  Here are a couple of actions relating to women outside the UK.

The most common impact of conflict on women is the use of rape as a weapon of war. In fact, it is now more dangerous to be a woman than to be a soldier in modern conflict.

Justine BihambaJustine Masika Bihamba and her family have been attacked because of her work as coordinator of a women’s human rights organisation in the Congo. Although they can identify the soldiers, they have still not been arrested. Take action now

Women in Iran are second-class citizens in the family and before the courts – yet more than 60% of university students are women and they work in all kinds of jobs.

Member of the Iranian Campaign for EqualityMany Iranian women want to challenge this discrimination and they have asked the international community to support them in their struggle. Sign the petition to end discriminatory laws in Iran

To do even more or to take action on our other campaigns then register at ProtectTheHuman.com

Comment on this post

Snowmen for human rights

9th February 2009 by fiona 1 Comment »

Tags:
Categories: Social Media & Campaigns

Snow, snow, snow. I know it’s all anybody has talked about all week but I’d like to chip in with Amnesty UK’s own snowy adventure.

As some of you may know, we’ve been getting quite into Twitter of late (along with everyone else and his dog) and have been using our slowly growing network as guinea pigs whilst we trial the idea of offering all of our followers one small way to help, every day. The idea is simple, if we have 1000 plus followers, and each of them has between 10 and 100,000 of their own, when we post an action its potential impact is huge. This is good news for human rights.

Some of the actions we’ve been trying out have been fairly standard. You know the sort; send an email, sign the petition, and so on. Sometimes they’re more about getting the word out and just occasionally we have the chance to do something that is a bit more fun.

So back to the snow.  London ground to a halt and our office was shut. As I started to work from home, all I could think about was the ankle-deep blanket of the stuff sitting just outside my front door. What excuse could I possibly have to play in the snow whilst working? Then it dawned on me. Snowmen for human rights.

I was half-joking when I emailed the rest of the team, but a quick collective approval sent me into action. Having been following the #uksnow tag on Twitter since the previous night, I knew that was my first port of call.

The reaction to the idea was fantastic and within a few hours we were in the top three most re-tweeted posts on Twitter. A first! From there the idea snowballed (excuse the pun), messages were sent on Facebook and members of the team headed out to their local parks to see what they could rustle up.

It wasn’t until the next day, when we made it back into the office, that a few photos began to emerge. After they were uploaded to ProtectTheHuman.com, I excitedly shared them on Twitter.  The Guardian then picked up on the idea and mentioned it in their live snow blog.

This, to me, is a great example of why Amnesty and Twitter can be a great match. It gives us a space to be part of conversations we otherwise wouldn’t be, as well as the chance to engage our supporters in new ways. Whilst this action wasn’t a direct one, the effect was a growth in our network. This means that the next time we have an urgent action; the number of people taking action and sending an email will hopefully increase.

We’re already seeing the effect of this in cases such as that of Larry Ray Swearingen and Bahman Salimian. Both were due to be executed and in the final 24 hours before their execution dates we asked our network on Twitter to send an email calling for them to be halted. The reaction was fantastic and around 400 emails were sent across the two cases with both being granted a last minute stay. Whilst the emails might not have been the deciding factor, they could have been, and as the volume of emails we can send at a moments notice increases, so does the effectiveness of our campaigning.

Comment on this post