ICT4Advocacy Online Campaigning Training Session

With the advent of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) such as personal, networked computers, mobile telephones, Internet and email, many civil society organizations have started realizing the potential use of ICTs for advocacy work. Especially the internet plays a crucial role in advancing social development, but digital tools in general are powerful means to give disadvantaged access to information and resources.

The ICT4Advocacy Working Group is working under the ICT4Advocacy Community of Practice (CoP), one of the five CoP’s of the Digital Human Rights Lab: the CoP. The ICT4Advocacy Working Group comprises eight organizations with the common goal to collectively use ICT to address human rights issues through advocacy in Uganda:

• SEMA
• Pink Movement
• Great Lakes Center for Strategic Media Studies
• Sanyuka Women at Risk
• UICT Nakawa (ICT Training)
• TokPower Uganda
• Amara Hub
• Encrypt Uganda

The ICT4Advocacy Working Group uses existing online platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, etc.) to run advocacy campaigns. The online campaigns focused on; 

1. Advocating for online safety and security of children in Uganda especially during this COVID-19 crisis when many children are learning from home and relying on the internet to aid their learning (#ChildSafetyOnlineUG).
2. Advocating for the mutual and harmonious cooperation between media practitioners representing bloggers, Journalists, Radio & TV personalities and government agencies such as; Police, Army, Ministries, etc. (#DontShootTheMessengerUG).

The online advocacy campaign’s major objective is to remotely train ten people from the eight organizations. They will be trained in how to organize successful online campaigns by developing a five-day remote training program on organizing specific online campaigns with the hashtag #ChildSafetyOnlineUG, and #DontShootTheMessengerUG. The training dubbed “Organising Successful Online Campaign” was remotely conducted between July 30th and August 5th, 2020.

Online Advocacy Campaigning Training Agenda

On day one participants were introduced to Online Campaigns and understanding cyber security. Trainees were taken through the cyber space and why there is need to ensure the safety of information in the campaign processes and the Legal framework governing online campaigns was highlighted.

During the second day participants were taken through on how to use social media tools, for example Twitter for campaigning. The focus of the training was to leverage influencers and the different stakeholders on how Twitter can be used to popularize an online campaign. Participants were also taken through how to organize a Twitterthon (a virtual dialogue) platform. 

On day three, Facebook as a tool for online campaign was discussed and participants were taken through the understanding on how to use “Facebook analytics” and use it to decide on how to tailor their campaign messages; target the age groups, the gender, their level of engagements and as well why other posts perform better than previous day. 

On the fourth day participants were made to understand the importance of stakeholder’s engagement and management in the process so that campaigns achieve their intended aims and objectives in a stipulated time frame. 

Day five was the last session full of practical ways of developing and popularizing online campaigns with an interaction on key steps to a successful digital campaign; the mistakes to avoid and general use of real-time analytics to help inform decisions in the middle of the campaign processes.

The training was attended by a total of 12 individuals from the working group and more than the target of 10 individuals were trained which widened the knowledge base for influencers in the campaign process.