You may have heard people talk about building a progressive ecosystem online. But what does that actually mean?
You may have heard people talk about building a progressive ecosystem online. But what does that actually mean?
Something big has shifted in UK politics over the last decade.
The far right have realised something crucial: social media isn’t just another communications channel. It’s where narratives are born, media agendas are set, and political power is built.
Take Operation Raise the Colours.
It started with a few people fixing flags to lampposts and filming it. Photos and videos spread through Facebook groups, WhatsApp networks, influencers, livestreams and podcasts.
Thanks to this online ecosystem, the stunt quickly spread throughout the UK and was reported on by TV, radio and newspapers, and reacted to by politicians and pundits.
The momentum was then channelled into the Unite the Kingdom rally, where Tommy Robinson addressed a crowd of more than 100,000 people:
“Just three years ago… there was no momentum. There was no movement. The country was broken. Look where we’ve come in those three years.”
Thanks to their social media ecosystem, ideas that would have been dismissed as fringe just a few years earlier were now shaping the national conversation.
As Robinson put it, “the Overton window has been obliterated.”
The same playbook is visible around the world. In the US, right-wing influencers like livestreamer Nick Fuentes have helped push debates that were once considered unthinkable into the mainstream of Republican politics.
Meanwhile, most progressive organisations are still operating in a different mode: slower, risk-averse, built around single-issue campaigns, sign-off processes and polished outputs.
This isn’t a talent problem. It’s an infrastructure problem.
Progressives need to face up to this new reality.
The challenge is not to invest a bit more in content.
It’s to build a movement that can spot opportunities, create social-native content and stunts at speed, and work together to amplify these stories until they break out of social media and shape the mainstream agenda.
Social media is about people, not organisations
One reason the right has been so successful online is that they understand a simple truth: People follow people.
Audiences want to follow people who speak to them like fellow human beings, not polished brands. They want content that feels human, relatable and authentic.
Social media is about people, not organisations
That’s why creators are so powerful
The most compelling creators make videos from their own personal perspective. They don’t have scripts written by committee or watered down in sign off. They can move quickly meaning they can be first to jump on a breaking story.
That’s why they can quickly build huge communities, who want to hear from them specifically.
We won't win the influencer bidding war
Some people look at this and conclude that progressive movements simply need to hire more influencers.
And yes we should be paying creators properly, to produce more videos.
But political creator Maria Comstock recently shared that she was approached by both left and right-wing funders to create content.
For the same format, audience size and production effort, she said the progressives offered $2,000 and the right wing account offered $36,000.
Our opponents’ pockets are deeper. In the speech above Tommy Robinson thanked billionaire Elon Musk for making it all possible.
If we can’t outspend them, we will need to outsmart them.
Luckily I’ve seen firsthand how people can do things.
Build content engines, not just campaigns
When it comes to social media, we can learn a lot from My Voice, My Choice, the campaign fighting for safe and accessible abortion in the EU.
Through working with them, I saw that they don’t just produce the occasional viral video.
Case study
My Voice, My Choice
They instead have built an in-house production line of content, which pumps out 60 Instagram posts a day and has generated 500 million impressions a month.
They have fewer staff and resources than many NGOs, but they took risks, and built in-house presenter skills and creator relationships.
Their content didn’t just generate views, it helped get over 1.2 million signatures for their European Citizens’ Initiative and a big breakthrough in access to abortion funding across the EU.
Unlocking potential presenters
I’ve seen time and again there is huge untapped talent in our movement.
There are lots of people who have the potential to become great presenters, but just haven’t been supported to.
At Greenpeace UK we delivered workshops and consultancy to help staff create fast, social-native videos. One staff member, Anthony, went from having very little on-camera experience to create a video in the workshop that generated 300,000 views.
But the bigger impact wasn’t any individual video. It came from helping Greenpeace experiment with more reactive formats, develop their in-house presenter talents and build stronger partnerships with creators.
In the year following the training, Greenpeace generated more than 157 million Instagram views, reported a 189% increase in reach, and doubled campaign actions.
I’ve run dozens of training days over the last year, and I’m always blown away by the creativity people have, when they’re liberated from sign off and risk averse culture.
The real challenge is building organisational systems that develop and harness that creativity, rather than stifling it.
Supporting members and staff to become creators
The TUC has taken a different approach. Rather than focusing solely on organisational channels, they saw the power of helping their staff and members to become creators themselves.
Craig Stewart works at the TUC but had never made videos before April last year when he started posting 3 videos a week on his own channels, speaking out on the climate and against the far right.
We helped provide coaching around formats, hooks and virality, and his content began reaching audiences that many campaign organisations struggle to connect with.
Case study
TUC
In just over a year, he’s achieved over 15 million views, has 35k followers and has launched a podcast.
We helped TUC to build on that success by delivering training to more than 500 workers around the country and supported a cohort to launch and grow their own social media accounts.
We’ve been working with other figures, like Tessa Khan, from Uplift, to help build her own social media output.
Convening and empower creators
The final piece is bringing creators together.
Earlier this year I worked with the amazing Democracy Hub in São Paulo, where 40 creators from around the world came together to learn about the Anti-Authoritarian Toolkit and create content around its ideas.
I helped run workshops to create videos about the toolkit, where talented creators made 15 videos together. The videos they made have already generated more than 700,000 views.
What struck me wasn’t just their amazing content skills. It was the appetite for collaboration and to use their voices to resist authoritarianism.
Case study
Democracy Hub
Forty creators from around the world came together to learn about the Anti-Authoritarian Toolkit and create content around its ideas.
Together, they made 15 videos that have already generated more than 700,000 views.
What stood out most was not just their content skills, but the appetite to collaborate and use their voices to resist authoritarianism.
The real challenge is coordination
All of these examples point to the same conclusion.
We don’t have a shortage of talent. We have a shortage of infrastructure.
While we don’t have their billionaire backing, we do have something better. Each other. Instead of trying to figure this out on our own, wasting time reinventing the wheel in isolation, we need to share what we’ve learned.
We need more practical tools; in-person training; ongoing support; capacity building; and networks to connect organisations with resources, creators and filmmakers.
There’s clearly an appetite. When I ran a webinar on video strategy last year with Sam Wockner from Greenpeace and India Thorogood, 400 people signed up to learn lessons from our projects.
And while our work with individual organisations and creators have been successful, we need to scale up, to bring different organisations and creators together at a .
I’m also working to scale up VideoRev’s outputs so that we are part of the strategy that builds a global movement by developing a programme to train and connect multiple campaign groups and creators to fight the far right. Together with Gabriella Zutrau, we’re developing a project to provide scalable training to progressive political parties around the world.
Want to build a stronger content ecosystem?
VideoRev helps organisations develop creator talent, rapid-response systems and high-impact video strategies.