How MoveOn-Style Advocacy Works

Seattle.
The next speaker at AoIR 2011 is Dave Karpf, examining the MoveOn effect. There are two robust findings around Internet politics in the U.S.: the idea of organising without organisations is well established, and the re-emergence of political elites in mass activities online. A third level which has been largely ignored, however, is the organisational level of politics: organising with different organisations.

The labour protests in Wisconsin provide an interesting example for this. What happened here was a rapid cooperation by Net-root organisations, from MoveOn through political blogs and fundraising sites to community Websites. All of them are Internet organisations, and different from legacy advocacy organisations. Three ideal types exist here: a hub-and-spokes model (like MoveOn, orchestrated by a small central staff), a neo-federated model (coordinating strong affiliate groups around the country), and online communities of interest (with an online membership coming together through the site itself).

MoveOn, for example, were founded in 1998, emerged as an important voice during of the anti-war movement in the early 2000s, and now has 5 million members. It raised some US$90 million in the 2008 election and organised some 900,000 volunteers, but still has fewer than 50 staff and no dedicated offices.

Membership of such organisations is very different; it is sedimentary: people are most likely to engage with issues that are currently in the media, rather than with long-term issues around which the organisation has been developed. Cost-scaling is marginal (the size of an email mail-out does not change its costs); they chase headlines by targetting their appeals to current issues; and they engage in A/B testing by running small trial campaigns with sections of their membership to see which messages cut through most effectively. Staff numbers are small, there are few if any offices, and there is a large phantom staff of temporary support staffers which are brought in for specific major campaigns.

Legacy organisations have taken their old general mail appeals online, and left it at that; new organisations are focussed closely on specific appeals (fundraising for specific commercials or candidates), and have moved well beyond e-petitions and other forms of simple clicktivism – notably also including local action. This is disruptive innovation in the advocacy group sector; old groups aren’t adapting particularly effectively, but rather, new groups are emerging here.