Advocacy, Activism, and the Internet Community Organization and Social Policy

This groundbreaking new book illustrates how the internet and other electronic resources are currently affecting social work practice. Rapidly emerging technologies have facilitated economic globalization and created a host of new issues for social workers to address. At the same time these technologies have become key tools for social activism and advocacy. Practitioners must understand the changes in social policy advocacy and community activism that these technological advances bring and learn to formulate new skills to utilize them to their advantage. Advocacy, Activism, and the Internet discusses the use of the internet as a tool for instigating social change at the local, state, national, and international levels. The authors show how technology affects social work practice directly through new methods and indirectly by affecting the communities that practitioners serve. It provides channels for e-advocacy as well as a thorough exploration of the major theoretical, practice, and research perspectives that inform electronic activism. This book solidly integrates new on-line advocacy skills with traditional methods and unites research on internet communities with macro social work theory.

Foreword: The Internet, Society and Activism
Preface
Chapter 1 Communities and Advocacy on the Internet: A Conceptual Framework
Part 1 Community Organizing and Advocacy and the Internet: An Introduction
Chapter 2 Social Work Advocacy and the Internet: Research Findings and Future Directions
Chapter 3 Can You Have Community On the Net?
Chapter 4 Public Policy, Technology, and the Nonprofit Sector: Notes from the Field
Chapter 5 The Role of The Internet in Educating Social Work Practitioners as Online Advocates
Part 2: Organizing for Social Change
Chapter 6 Organizing for Social Change: Online and Traditional Community Practice
Chapter 7 NetActivism 2001: How citizens Use the Internet
Chapter 8 Environmental Activism on the Internet
Chapter 9 Organizing Women of Color Online
Chapter 10 Dial Up Networking for Debt Cancellation and Development: A Case Study of Jubilee 2000
Chapter 11 Online Collaboration, Information and the Resourceful Community
Chapter 12 Technology-based Groups and Flash Campaigns
Part 3 Social Policy and Community in an Information Society: Implications for Advocacy and Organizing
Chapter 13 Social Policy Advocacy in Cyberspace
Chapter 14 Social Policy and Social Change in the Post-industrial Society
Chapter 15 Tele-democracy: Re-inventing Governance for Social Welfare
Chapter 16 Inequality and the Digital Divide: Myths and Realities
Chapter 17 The Global Information Divide and Online Organizing for International Development
Chapter 18 Cyberadvocacy as Social Work Practice: The Continuing Challenge to Reinvent the Profession