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#Oklahoma P&P Board rarely recommends mercy, but it did for 4/12 execution of Garry Allen. http://bit.ly/GZ4H2w 2 take action! #deathpenalty
Dear Fellow Abolitionists,
We've all heard how the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt last year were driven by on-line social media like Facebook and Twitter. They say that outrage about the killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida last month also took off because of Twitter. The night Troy Davis was executed, the "hashtag" #troydavis was "trending," meaning it was one of the most-talked about things in the universe of people who use Twitter, which is millions.
So, can tweets help stop executions? (Did you click on that link and sign the petition?)
Wait. What is a tweet?
A tweet is message sent using an application called Twitter. Limited to 140 characters, it is seen by people who are also users of Twitter who either sign up to "follow" the tweets of a particular person or organization, or who search in Twitter for a particular word or phrase. Let's dissect this tweet the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty sent yesterday:
#Oklahoma P&P Board rarely recommends mercy, but it did for 4/12 execution of Garry Allen. http://bit.ly/GZ4H2w 2 take action! #deathpenalty
Using a hashtag (# - the number sign) in front of a word makes that word searchable. Hashtags for Troy Davis were #troydavis and #toomuchdoubt. In the above, we used #Oklahoma and #deathpenalty so that people who search on either of those terms would find this tweet.
...P&P Board rarely recommends mercy, but it did for 4/12 execution of Garry Allen.
This line tells the story. When limited to 140 characters, you learn to abrieviate. Anyone who doesn't get what P&P means here will learn what it means if they follow though by clicking the link - we urge you to do so.
http://bit.ly/GZ4H2w 2 take action! #deathpenalty
Hmmm. How did we get that to be so short? There are a number of URL shorteners available. This is important because a very long URL would eat up too much of the 140 character limit. NCADP used bit.ly to make http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/206/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=9984 into http://bit.ly/GZ4H2w. They both go to the same place (and please do go sign that petition), but one is so much shorter!
One more thing. When you see @ in front of name, that is that person or organization's Twitter address. Ours is @ncadp. If you include that in a tweet, you are "tweeting at" someone, such as in this:
With that primer out of the way, today the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty shares with you some recent tweets of our own, as well as some of our partners in the movement that we "re-tweeted." Check them out, follow the links, and of course, click @ncadp to follow us on twitter!
Yours in the Struggle,
--abe
Abraham J. Bonowitz, Director of Affiliate Support
P.S. Please consider becoming an NCADP Torchbearer with your monthly pledge. To learn more, click here.
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