Rape Crisis Scotland – a voluntary organisation working to raise awareness of issues relating to sexual violence – has launched a site on Second Life – within Non-Profit Commons, to raise awareness of its campaign to Second Life dwellers.
With Second Life now having over 19 million registered users, there is potential to reach an international audience, with campaigning organisations such as Rape Crisis Scotland (RCS) increasingly making use of new technology to reach wider audiences.
The development of the RCS Second Life site follows on from related developments within Rape Crisis Scotland, with the organisation considering how it can use new media and social networking sites to assist in its awareness raising work.
In the recent Scotland-wide public awareness campaign on rape – ‘this is not an invitation to rape me’ – RCS established a facebook group for the campaign, which, at time of writing, has 2061 members. The group allows people to join to show support for the campaign, debate the issues it raises and invite others to join to promote awareness of the campaign. RCS also established an interactive campaign website, which in a six week period from the campaign launch in October 2008 attracted over 23,208 unique visitors. The interactive element of the website – which allows people to post comments on the campaign – has been well used, with over a thousand comments being posted to date.
Second Life provides a further forum for the organisation to raise awareness of issues relating to sexual violence, and one which enables it to take a participatory and interactive approach.
The RCS site is primarily intended to be an awareness raising tool, rather than the provision of a direct support service. It will be used to highlight both the ‘this is not an invitation to rape me’ campaign, as well as more general issues around rape and sexual assault.
Visit the site here!: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Aloft%20nonprofit%20commons/30/33/22/
Rape Crisis Scotland website:
http://www.rapecrisisscotland.org.uk/index.htm
Campaign website:
http://www.thisisnotaninvitationtorapeme.co.uk/
Facebook site:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=30082237828
Written by: RCS1