Contrarian thinking about online organizing
Sep 1st, 2008 by Jon Stahl
Here’s an idea that’s been tumbling around in my brain for a while, and popped out yesterday during a walk:
A lot of people think online organizing helps build enthusiasm about an issue or campaign, and thus holds tremendous promise for small, obscure campaigns. I think the promise is oversold, and that the most enthusiastic proponents of “web 2.0″ style organizing tend to reverse cause and effect.
The most powerful online campaign efforts — Obama ‘08, Dean ‘04, some of the early MoveOn antiwar stuff — were successful at tapping into already existing passionate enthusiasm, not in generating energy around issues/campaigns that previously lacked it.
In other words, online organizing can’t create energy, it can only tap the energy that already exists.
That’s bad news for small campaigns that need to “go big” to succeed, and are being told that online organizing offers a free pass to the big leagues, if only they figure out the right tools and tactics.
I think you’re absolutely right about this. It is an effect very similar to the way in which open source projects get developers. People who do not understand the social drivers behind open source tend to assume that if you just put some code up on SourceForge, a crowd of developers will flock to it and work on it. Of course this isn’t true. The social and organisational skills of a project’s founders are much more important in determining which projects survive and grow.
It is also similar to the way in which the Internet and blogosphere both help and hurt diversity of discourse and influence. Due to the sheer number of points of view available online, people naturally filter their intake of information in preference of things they already agree with. I read planet.plone.org, not a Java blog. An Obama supporter will not read a Republican blog unless he’s looking for ammunition.
However, the Internet does make it much easier to reach the people who are peripherally interested. Again, this is similar to open source. Many people who work on Plone, say, would not be open source developers at all, if they hadn’t first interacted with the Plone community as users or interested third parties, and found that they liked it there. Social networking sites like Facebook or aggregators like Digg or Reddit let people who already have converging views or interests follow a path of information within a network of people and ideas that probably overlap with their own preferences, and that process, may take them into new territory, perhaps getting them excited about something they didn’t know anything about before.
Absolutely agree. I participated very early in the Dean ‘04 process. Since then I have seen several attempts to replicate it among audiences less sold on their cause. It doesn’t work. The cause must already be in place. And the mechanism isn’t what attracts people to the cause.
Another I agree, Jon. I agree.
But I think that what those campaigns did (particularly Dean and MoveOn) was tap into an enthusiasm and “big” campaign that might have otherwise gone untapped. That is, they used a variety of web tools to help find and organize people who might not have had the same kind of opportunity to band together or to act on the big campaign in quite the same way.
Megadittos, Rush!
The only thing I would add is that the real value of online may be in helping an issue do what Geoffrey Moore called “crossing the chasm” — breaking out from the small-but-passionate early base into more general public awareness (the “peripherally interested” you spoke of), by providing an easy way for these less-involved folks to do something and get into the involvement funnel.
Though it’s probably important to note that online is really only the first stage in terms of chasm-crossing — usually you need your online campaign to break into the “traditional” media before you can truly reach the general public. So in that sense online is the “booster rocket” you can use to get your issue out of orbit and on its way to the moon.
Spot on and those of us doing online organizing and marketing with non-profit advocacy groups face this overselling dynamic all the time. Let’s create a Facebook cause and we’ll have a million fans. Let’s build a new website for issue X. It’ll be big.
It makes me think of something I heard David Roberts from Grist talking about last week at The Big Tent in Denver on a panel covering climate change messaging. His thought, boiled down, is that movements don’t alter circumstances but, instead, they need to respond to and take advantage of circumstances. We can debate the cause/effect of social change movements throughout history all day. But it taps into what you wrote here I think… Dean, Obama, MoveOn, “Drill Here, Drill Now” have been savvy in using online mechanisms (and much more) to build movements based on finding opportunities in the circumstances around them.
I’d love to help organizations build movements that change circumstances in this country. But most big groups are not going to do that as they are working on huge, complicated issues with media, messaging, funding, geopolitical factors that are beyond their ability to control.
It would be great to see organizations, big and small and in between, being more strategic about identifying circumstances and creating the online (and offline and social networking and whatever) campaigns that really fit the circumstances and goals.
That, and I think that “go big” isn’t really needed to make a change in most cases. The network effect of communications and decision making is such that we no longer need network news to talk about our issue. I’d like to have a President that says and does the right things and shows some leadership on “issue X” but I’m not sure that Americans are counting on (or need) Congress to act on big legislation, like climate change. Peer to peer campaigns, flipping the funnel and all that.
Jon (and all),
I think this is akin to the “put a donate button on your website” thinking from back in the day. And we know how that turned out for most.
Or like thinking Salesforce or Plone will solve your data management or your content management, somehow, without you entering, and interacting with those tools.
Truth is – the tools only help when we also engage our brain and community power. Great to see some contrary words – there is too much hard work to do to engage in wishful thinking!
Looks like I’m a little late to the party, but still want to applaud your thinking here, Jon. I see a lot of organizations putting tools first instead of doing the marketing (for lack of a better word) thinking first. Tools and tactics always seem to be sexier, or maybe just easier to understand.
People so often say to me “I want a brochure [web site, blog, etc.]” — before figuring out who they were trying to reach and why, and what those people care about. Just use the available tools to push your message out …
Well, that makes it a lot harder than it has to be. As Aldous Huxley put it, “It is not very difficult to persuade people to do what they are already longing to do.” People long to make a difference. The task is to make it possible for them to do so, in ways they find meaningful. Big mindset shift for a lot of groups that prefer to focus inward.
Hope that didn’t make it to “rant” status. I can go on and on about this stuff. Thanks for an interesting blog!