e.politics: online advocacy tools & tactics

Saving Seals in Second Life

April 25th, 2007

Kevin Reid with IDI wrote in yesterday to highlight an ongoing series of Second Life events that the International Fund for Animal Welfare is holding to try to mobilize public opinion against Arctic seal hunting. I’m normally a bit of a Second Life skeptic, but this is the sort of mass-appeal campaign that’s most likely to get some benefit from venturing into the virtual wilds. Cute seals! It’s hard to beat charismatic megafauna for getting attention, though in the Second Life context they can get a bit distorted: it looks in one of the photos as though there might be some delegates on hand from a Furry convention. The site has a transcript of a prepared statement, and I’d be curious to see how many questions came in from participants.

I’ve heard of other groups that use Second Life as a virtual meeting room to allow people from around the world to participate — an example of using the strengths of the medium rather than trying to force it into being a mass-communications device.

– cpd

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