OK then!:Retro smile: I'm reading Clay Shirky's stuff at the moment (
Everyone is Connected and
Cognitive Surplus) about how the internet has changed social activism (among other things).
One of the things he says is that elected representatives used to think that a letter from a constituent represented 1,000 people who also felt strongly on the issue but who couldn't be bothered to write; similarly for petition signatures. However, now that we have the internet, where sending an email with a quick cut-and-paste of someone else's text and multiple recipients is quick, easy and free, those Congresspeople don't make that assumption. A letter or signing a hard-copy petition took effort; the electronic versions don't, so each signatory stands for very few other people.
Shirky mentions arecent successful "petition" that he believed succeeded because participating clearly had a cost, though small. One consisted of mailing peanuts to the executives of the SF show "Jericho" to try to get it continued; as this interesting
blog post about Shirky's stuff says, "peanuts are not easily deleted" and the studio realised that it had taken real effort for individual fans to send the peanuts; the show was resigned.
One of the things we do here on PR and that is a possible for the XMRVsite is petitions, and Judderwocky has done some great stuff writing and coordinating; but are they effective? Do things like sending a box of peanuts, or a bunch of flowers (as in another protest) have the effects that petitions used to have before the internet? And if so, do we need a critical mass of activists to agree to send them (e.g. via
PledgeBank.com)?
Just a thought - I see a lot of energy going into petitions and I'd like to think that they work but in these internet days, maybe the message stage of the protest needs to be sending a physical object, not some electrons.
I hope this is a helpful question, Judderwocky - I certainly don't want to discourage any efforts but think we maybe need to think about the means. Any views, anybody?
out of curiosity... what kind of engagement have you had with public advocacy?
... all i can say is that I have worked for a couple organizations doing "e-organizing"... HRC and Planned Parenthood, both organizations rely very heavily on electronic campaigns, but they do resort letter writing campaigns if they have the interns to generate the letters ( if... lol). both can be highly effective. at HRC we only did one letter writing campaign and that was for a military funding issue related to DADT... it was (obviously) not successful. in my opinion the physical letters are more like icing... not the essential part of the cake, but very important in their own way....
its signifigantly harder to organize these kinds of letter writing campaigns, its hard to track who has done what and its harder to go in with a show of force to a legislatures office and say "well, we're assuming you got our letters, so were assuming your going to meet our demands"... the only time its really effective is when you organize a bunch of college students to sit around and eat pizza and write letters... you mail the letters out, you know exactly how many went out, and you can gauge your wording with the officials when you go in their office...
I would say the electronic campaigns actually have a greater effect for a couple of reasons. First of all you can say explicitly... "we have X people in your district, if you want their vote their vote then you will do y and Z for us".... its also much more uniform and can help you to present a good show of force...its also MUCH easier for the officials. they have to pay interns to open letters... with email though, they can organize everything by header, look at the total number of senders and then just tabulate the results for the officials. they are concerned about theatrics for the most part... mailing everyone a pound of flesh is good for generating publicity for your cause... but the officials only care about ONE THING... the total number of people doing it... (aditionally while it is true that it is easier and more simple to submit a petition... you are OVERLOOKING the fact that this applies to spam and nonsense in the internet as well.. politicians know that if a campaign sitting in somebodies inbox stood out from all the spam, it must be important to them. )
which is one of the benefits from e-organizing... you get more people , and can have a more accurate presentation to the official of their constituency... we ran a bunch of petition and email campaigns at planned parenthood... i would say from my personal experience (both at the national and state level on this) that they were highly effective in every situation that I have been in. even when the official was definitely opposed to an issue, their posturing and media response can be tempered by a well coordinated e-campaign. These national organizations you hear about pay (literally) millioins of dollars establishing software and databases to manage their electronic campaigns... you really have no idea how much money goes into consulting companies...
at the state level it was not uncommon for us to pay between 10,000 and 20,000 to a consulting firm to design a single campaign (custom formatting, custom videos, custom petition language, demographic testing etc). This might sound excessive, but these organizations spend the money because IT WORKS. Most organizations do a cost/benefit analysis of their spending on e-campaigns.... trust me, it works and they know it. they go where the money is.
you are probably not aware of this (and they really try to hide this), (but to give you an idea of how effective a tool it has become in modern politics....) most of the "progressive" advocacy non profits banded together in the last election and created a "super database" that was shared amongst several hundred organizations.... i worked on this database system personally and you would be shocked at how much information it has... its sort of blinded to prevent your private data from getting out... but they purchased a whole bunch of information on THE ENTIRE COUNTRY from a credit and purchasing repository.... i'm not joking when i say I saw a technician pin point celebrities in the system and give us information about their purchasing history... i watched them do it. in addition to this they paid a team of statisticians and mathematicians to create thousands of prediction curves for their likelihood of voting, donating, and participation..... (over the last three years politicians have become more and more attuned to the effect of e-campaigns, several swing elections have been determined by outreach to social networking sites on both sides of the political isle...)
the system allowed them to do targeted advertising, petitions, etc.... and a number of organizations bought into this system. e-organizing has become the bread and butter for most of the non-profits in DC... over the last 5 years they have developed a new position niche that you can find in one form or another at almost every one ... "e-organizer" .... thats not to say that they don't also have regional organizers doing protests door to door work, etc... its just that the electronic side is becoming increasingly important, and most have been swapping regional organizers for electronic organizers....
The idea about sending something like a peanut in the mail can be an ok idea. We did something similar with whistles I think (it was a sexual assault issue if i recall correctly) ... its very important to pick something that isn't going to rot or cause the postal service problems. there is a very FINE line between "connecting" with your elected official, and pissing them off completely.
The problem however that you run into with CFS is that the patients, are the advocates. As result the advocates are sick, and have difficulty doing something more physically intensive. An e-campaign works just as good imo and its easier on the patients. if you want to write letters though, I can only encourage you and others to do so.... though from personal experience it usually takes a lot more "encouraging" to get these campaigns off the grounds.
also... if you want to know how to do community organizing i would suggest you go with someone that has actually done it. I looked up clay shirky becuase I had never heard of him before... it does not appear from his bio that he has actually ever done advocacy work. Shirky appears to have written a lot about activism and social networks... but he does not appear to have ever held a title directly involved in this. correct me if im wrong... according to his bio
"In 1986 he graduated cum laude from Yale University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in fine art. [6]
In 1990 he founded in New York City a theater company, Hard Place Theater, in which he created and directed several "non-fiction" theater pieces using only found materials such as government documents, transcripts and cultural records. One project titled "United Airline," included the transcript of the air-to-ground conversations during a plane crash, interspersed with quotes about flying and falling.[7]
During the 1990s in New York City he also worked as a lighting designer for numerous experimental theater and dance companies, including the Wooster Group, Elevator Repair Service and Dana Reitz.[8]
In the early 1990s, Shirky was vice-president of the New York chapter of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and wrote technology guides for Ziff Davis (
from another wiki article: The company (Ziff Davis Media) announced that it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on March 5, 2008[1] and emerged, following a court supervised corporate restructuring in July 2009.[2]) . He appeared as an expert witness on Internet culture in Shea v. Reno, a case cited in the U. S. Supreme Court's decision to strike down the Communications Decency Act in 1996.
Shirky was the original Professor of New Media in the Media Studies department at Hunter College, where he created the department's first undergraduate and graduate offerings in new media, and helped design the current MFA in Integrated Media Arts program."
so... frankly i don't find his views that pertinent.... IMO... i'm not saying he doesn't know what he's talking about... i haven't read him. all i can say is that my theology degree focused on religion and social justice... when i learned how to organize it was from people that had DIRECT experience doing it... frankly, playing the media is a game like any else. if you have never played golf, you probably shouldn't be a commentator on it.
i can say that many organizations that DO have this experience, and the data and records to prove it, utilize e-campaigns more frequently than any other.... (unless they have an endless supply of pizza to feed college students doing the door to door work)
