- September 13 & 21: for people in Africa, Asia, MENA, Europe, Oceania
- September 27 & 28: for people in the Americas
90 min session | Times accessible to all time zones | Interpreted to 5 languages | Recording available to all who attend live
Two members of the pro-democracy movement in Thailand (Tantawan “Tawan” Tuatulanond and Orawan “Bam” Pupong) started their severe hunger strike in January 2023 after this action calling attention to the up to 15-year jail terms for hundreds of young activists accused of speaking ill of the monarchy. After 53 days they stopped the hunger strike to live and fight on. (Photo: T. Rath)
All of us face the effects of disinformation in our work. This is false information that is deliberately distributed to mislead, influence public opinion and obscure the truth. Sometimes this is speech that is divisive and abusive; sometimes it’s false narratives designed to manipulate and mislead. All of us are well aware that social media algorithms have intensified the virality of disinformation. And now A.I. is making it easy to create fake content for these campaigns.
This session focuses on how to combat disinformation.
We’ll cover:
- How to spot disinformation targeting our communities and networks, particularly how to conduct social listening to identify narrative patterns getting a high response
- Examples of effective counter-narrative campaigns developed in real campaigns worldwide
- Examples of organizing quick response networks to combat disinformation
- How to train members to combat disinformation and what has been learned about effective ways to engage online
- How to use social media platforms’ complaint channels; its usefulness and limits
- A template for developing your organization’s Combatting Disinformation Plan
If you have experience combatting disinformation that you think can be useful to others, please share it here.
Instructor: Alistair Alexander, SMT Staff Partner
Alistair has worked extensively on projects investigating technology, disinformation and online harms. He led Tactical Tech’s award-winning The Glass Room Project, where he developed the Misinformation Edition. He has led online training programmes on disinformation for civil society actors, and developed a free self-learning course on disinformation for LGBTQI campaigners. Other projects have included: Resonant Signals data sonification workshops with Berlin Libraries, Green4Europe Hackathon for tech sustainability projects in Eastern Europe, supporting climate activists to build their digital resilience, and workshops on technology networks for ecological repair. With SMT Alistair works with groups needing support to combat disinformation.
Session times & language for global access
- September 13 & 21: for people in Africa, Asia, MENA, Europe, Oceania (instruction in English interpreted to French, Arabic) See your timezone here.
- September 27 & 28: for people in the Americas (instruction in English interpreted to Spanish, Portuguese.) See your timezone here
Cost
In order to support a movement organization learning space, SMT trainings are for activists, and staff of non-profits – NGOs, unions and electoral campaigns. Trainings are not for consultants or agencies. Consultants & agency staff who register will have their registrations refunded. Alternatively, on demand trainings are available to all on SMT’s course platform.
No one will be turned away due to inability to pay. Contact [email protected] to access this training at no cost.
Requested contribution to cover preparation and instruction, language access, and outreach costs:
| Region | Organizational Budget (USD) | Early Bird
(Ends Sept. 1st) |
Outreach Partner Referral (Ends Sept. 1st) | Regular |
|
North America
& Western Europe |
$2M+ | $80 | $40 | $100 |
| $500K-2M | $72 | $36 | $90 | |
| Under $500K | $64 | $32 | $80 | |
| Global (outside North America & Western Europe) | $2M+ | $64 | $32 | $80 |
| $500K-2M | $56 | $28 | $70 | |
| Under $500K | $20 | $10 | $30 | |
| If unable to pay, contact [email protected] for free access | Free | |||
Testimonials
I implemented lessons on personal narrative, public narrative and emails directly into my campaign, so this was an instant gratification. I loved learning from the other Digital Campaigning Certificate Program participants who came from around the world, working on different topics.I found a lot of value in this Certificate Program that I use in my everyday work: from using social media effectively; significantly growing accounts and activating people online, pressuring targets in campaigns, and running Twitterstorms. Even when using other tools, I still apply the principles I learned!
I strongly recommend SMT. Their strong organizing background, preparation and thoughtfulness made our strategy assessment with them enjoyable and really helpful.
Our staff took a lot of SMT courses – including the intensive Digital Campaigning Certificate Program. It helped us take our digital campaigning and collectivizing actions to the next level! We used various tools to increase our follower base and successfully target authorities to take action at the village and municipal levels in India.
The Design Apprenticeship course helped me become bolder in my design choices. I became confident enough to push for a more systemic approach to design in the team, developing templates and guiding other creative colleagues. This program was pivotal in my development as a designer!Without SMT we would not have been able to move our organizing from the field to the digital arena during COVID. They helped us set up systems, coached and trained our folks, helped us troubleshoot and launch digital outreach efforts all in crucial campaign moments. Can’t speak highly enough about what their help meant!
Working with SMT was easy and collaborative. The training helped our Greenpeace Southeast Asia team get new insights into campaign best practices across the globe.SMT helped us create a social media presence to expand our cannabis worker organizing campaign. Our organizers have enhanced their social media capabilities. We have succeeded beyond our expectations. Working with SMT has been a great experience. They really understand organizing and communications.SMT has worked with us to develop and implement a broad and integrated social media strategy. They helped our leadership understand the importance of such a strategy and taught our activists the basic skills to execute it. From website maintenance to targeted twitter campaigns, they are there when you need them and they understand that it is all about movement building.We’re starting our third straight year providing grantee partners with Social Movement Technologies training and coaching…our grantees are in good hands.The SMT trainings I’ve taken have helped us mobilize and deepen engagement in our communities. Through Twitterstorms, phone banking, and other tactics that I learned through SMT’s trainings, we succeeded in our call to #ExtendtheReg for a million young people who would otherwise be disenfranchised by anti-poor COVID policies.SMT coaching enabled us to expand our presence within human rights spaces in Kenya beyond an LGBTIQ audience. It helped us use Twitter to connect with allies in the environmental justice and land rights movements. It was amazing to have someone to work with who knows our work and give us templates just when we needed them.We’ve heard really good things from our grantee partners. SMT has a strong, grantee-focused way of working.SMT’s training on using WhatsApp to activate our bases helped us activate more leaders by creating conversational WhatsApp groups for members and assigning different leadership roles to volunteers.
SMT helped GAIA use LinkedIn to reach a key constituency we were having trouble reaching - thousands of people who play a specific role in the waste management industry. We got responses from key players.I really liked the A.I. custom training session, especially the parts tailored to our workstream and with examples pulled from our staff. It really helped to situate the tools in our work and open our team's minds to the possibilities.
I took the workers organizing in the digital age training. We really need this kind of training in Finland, which people in the US have had access to for some years. The training was effective to start organizing for instance on Twitter.SMT's coaching was incredibly supportive, encouraging and accessible. SMT had a huge impact on evolving La Semilla's storytelling program. Through SMT coaching, we diversified our digital communications. Having SMT as a source of resources and as a thought partner has been incredibly impactful to our work.
The program gave my team the tools and time to strategise how our grassroots migrant organising translates to a digital context. I picked up tools like source codes, which then enabled us to see that more people were registering from Instagram than through any other platform and caused us to adapt our strategy. We also became SMT an Outreach Partner to enable our network to benefit from trainings at lower pricesSMT has been a great partner to co-design and launch a set of offerings that meet the growing digital and remote needs of the organizations we support, including bilingual access for our Spanish-speaking partners. The team is relatable, attentive and knowledgeable and their use of case studies helps to make complex information accessible!The trainings are terrific–geared for every level of experience. And being rooted in social change movement, especially helpful to organizers.We have had a fantastic experience with SMT…they have been highly responsive to the needs of our grantees.Our coach was an everyday reminder of what we needed to do. He checked in and followed up on us. It really helped us activate Twitter in our campaigns and tighten up digital security. We moved from just having a Twitter handle to building on a hashtag that saw a jailed human rights activist released from prison.
Having access to experts through the certificate program was amazing. The course is so practical. I set up google ads for the first time and created our digital security policy and implementation plan. Our whole team uses the campaign strategy template now. Now we know how to improve our email deliverability and started a texting program.
SMT's training helped me use my journalistic skills effectively to highlight people's struggles and create change. Using Twitter more effectively, we supported Syria's refugee camp hospital to get more media attention and raise funds to respond to the hospital's needs as well as build visibility on the issues affecting refugees.SMT is the only training I know of that speaks our language of activism and uses the tools we use everyday in the field. They are a go-to resource to help raise the bar for communications in the labor movement.SMT helped us craft an effective public narrative for our campaign to get a mine closed. SMT helped us finalize a campaign strategy and come up with an effective plan to raise visibility and engage the public. Our campaign led to a pause in the mining. We will keep fighting!
