A Perpetual State of Anxiety
Posted by Allison Fine on September 5, 2007
The Overbrook Foundation yesterday released a report that I wrote entitled “Web 2.0 Assessment of The Overbrook Foundation’s Human Rights Grantees.”
You can download the report and the survey instrument that we used here on the Overbrook website’s Resource section. The primary goal of the effort was to explore the ways that Overbrooks US-based human rights grantees are adopting to the new interactive age of communication tools and network strategies, as well as better understanding the ways in which grantees are struggling, plus the ways that the Foundation can ease their burden and anxiety.
The key findings of the study include:
• Overall, the grantees are firmly entrenched in the Web 1.0 world, meaning that grantees use the web largely as a source of information rather than interactivity.
• A small handful of grantees, for instance Witness, the ACLU, Breakthrough, WYNC Public Radio, are using social media in spectacular ways to engage their constituents in conversations.
• Most grantees are not taking advantage of easy-to-use social media tools effectively. The first is the fact that only half have blogs, and that only half of these groups allow comments on their blogs.
• Survey respondents and group discussion participants often felt a “common struggle” in understanding which tools are critically important to their work and were at a loss as to where and how to get help for selecting and using new social media tools.
I’d love to hear your reactions, and, in particular, please let me know the results if you use the survey.
