Utilizing Digital Advocacy in Community Organizing: Lessons Learned from Organizing in Virtual Spaces to Promote Worker Rights and Economic Justice

This article discusses the usefulness and challenges associated with utilizing social media technologies in the context of community organizing practice, often referred to as digital advocacy. We ground the analysis of digital advocacy in the context of a recent organizing effort undertaken by social work academics, grass roots organizers, and allies to support the boycott of Hyatt Hotels in San Antonio, Texas, by marginalized hotel workers and labor unions through advocating that the Society for Social Work Research relocate their 2014 conference from the Grand Hyatt, San Antonio, and to work toward better conference planning procedures in the future.