Is it any different when your Advocacy Campaign is happening solely online?  Let’s check this excellent video podcast by the broadcasting service Deutsche Welle (DW), on the effectiveness of online protest movements.

As mentioned in the video, to have a successful online campaign and affect public opinion and raise awareness, you need:

• To use a momentum
• To tell a story
• To tailor content to your platform

But to make real impact online protest movements and online advocacy campaigns should be merged with offline activities. As stated in the video, limiting yourself just to social media to advocate for change, you limit yourself to platforms driven by profit and not driven by the need for social change. 

For the hybrid model of (online and offline) advocacy campaigns we recommend checking The 21st-Century Advocacy Playbook by Mobilisation Lab, an organisation born inside Greenpeace International in 2011. They made a checklist to evaluate if a team is ready to win a campaign and make a change. 

Practical activity 

As mentioned in MobLab Playbook (2011): “Creating change in the world will require courageous acts. Signing a petition will not alone be enough to stop climate change. Making a donation will not save all the forests. Every one of us will need to find the courage to do things we have never done before to shape the future.”   

Check and reflect on one (or more) of these relevant movements:  

1. Blog post about The world's best youth campaigns - and why they worked by Plan International and comment one.

2. One of the courageous and tech-savvy hybrid protest movements is the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests, also known as the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement. Read this blog post by Civic Hall experts, detailing the tools, services, and methods Hong Kong protestors used to organise their protest and build movement around it. 

3. Another relevant and timely example of hybrid protest movements is also 2020-21 Belarus protests against rigged elections. You can read how the use of digital technologies supported organisation of protest movement and Belarussian advocacy campaign for a change of government.