It’s not that Twitter is a utopia by any means. However, the power structure is still in flux. So a collaborative effort between progressives, youth, feminists, women of color, LGBTQ activists — across the US and internationally — has a chance to make a big difference.

One simple way to start is to set up a new shared hashtag for the different groups to collaborate. In Seth Godin’s terminology, the users of each hashtag can be viewed as a tribe; we need a place for the tribes to get together to discuss how to work together effectively.

We propose #p2 (for "Progressives 2.0") as a shared hashtag. The name is a hat-tip to the #fem2 hashtag as well as Web 2.0 social computing technologies.

The #p2 hashtag and strategies for progressives on Twitter, Tracy Viselli and Jon Pincus on The Exception, February 13

 At the Fem2.0 conference in February 2009, a presentation by linkfluence highlighted the asymmetrical relationship between the larger "progressive blogosphere" and feminist and womanist blogs. It’s the latest in a long line of work including Shelley Powers’ Guys Don’t Link, Susan C. Herring et. al.’s Women and Children Last, and many more discussions of diversity issues in the blogospheres.* After seeing the rapid spread of information about Twitter Vote Report via the "women in technology and politics," the success of #motrinmoms, and the #fem2 work, Tracy and I started to believe that Twitter provides an opportunity to engage with communities marginalized by the "progressive blogosphere."

In the four months since we started it, #p2 has steadily grown to be the largest progressive hashtag on Twitter. According to wthashtag, over 1300 people have tweeted in the last week. The steady stream of LGBTQ activism on #p2 and our experiences working together with #fem2 on #fairpay and #diversityfail/#diversitywin are both strong indications that we were on-target about the opportunity for engagement on Twitter. The Paycheck Fairness Act activism on April 28 was a particularly vivid example of this: while the "big blogs" conspicuously ignored it, #p2 members helped out on Twitter and in the blogosphere.

How can we build on these early successes?

How can we improve things that haven’t gone as well — for example, the representation biases and ongoing sexist comments on the #p2 hashtag?

Thanks to fem2pt0 for inviting us to host the June 21 Father’s Day Twittercast on this subject — Sunday, 7 p.m. Pacific/10 p.m. Eastern! No need to wait until then to start the discussion, though. Please use this thread for ideas, discussions, criticisms, questions, and suggestions.

Here’re a few ideas to kick things off:

* Coordinate on flash activism efforts like #fairplay, with joint work on retweeting tactics, tweeting points, highlighting blog posts, and Digging. By combining the strengths (media and activism expertise,networks, well-respected blogs) of the people involved in #p2 and #fem2, we can be an incredibly powerful force.

* Work to bring feminist, womanist, and other diverse perspectives to multipartisan issues like privacy as well as "progressive issues" like EFCA.

* Continue to put effort into creating a progressive discussion space where women and women of color are fairly represented. #p2 chats are typically about 40-45% women; in the "raw" discussions on the hashtag, though, 80% or more of the tweets are from men. (There are detailed statistics and discussion here and here.)

Thoughts about these? Other ideas, discussions, criticisms, questions, and suggestions?

Please discuss!

jon

* Diversity Online, on the #p2 wiki, has a short bibliography; more about my own perspectives in the gender and diversity categories on my blog Liminal States.

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