Advocacy, Activism, and the Internet

Book excerpt: 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.