Alex White » activist

Is “Clicktivism” ruining left activism?

Alex — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 00:51:23 +0000

Micah White (no relation) in The Guardian has a provocative article that makes the case that online activism (“clicktivism” or “slacktivism”) is ruining left-wing activism because of an obsession with “opens, clicks, actions, sign-ups, unsubscribes, bounces and referrals”.

Is Clicktivism Ruining Left Activism?

Gone is faith in the power of ideas, or the poetry of deeds, to enact social change. Instead, subject lines are A/B tested and messages vetted for widest appeal. Most tragically of all, to inflate participation rates, these organisations increasingly ask less and less of their members. The end result is the degradation of activism into a series of petition drives that capitalise on current events. Political engagement becomes a matter of clicking a few links. In promoting the illusion that surfing the web can change the world, clicktivism is to activism as McDonalds is to a slow-cooked meal. It may look like food, but the life-giving nutrients are long gone.

Exchanging the substance of activism for reformist platitudes that do well in market tests, clicktivists damage every genuine political movement they touch. In expanding their tactics into formerly untrammelled political scenes and niche identities, they unfairly compete with legitimate local organisations who represent an authentic voice of their communities. They are the Wal-Mart of activism: leveraging economies of scale, they colonise emergent political identities and silence underfunded radical voices.

Digital activists hide behind gloried stories of viral campaigns and inflated figures of how many millions signed their petition in 24 hours. Masters of branding, their beautiful websites paint a dazzling self-portrait. But, it is largely a marketing deception. While these organisations are staffed by well-meaning individuals who sincerely believe they are doing good, a bit of self-criticism is sorely needed from their leaders.

The truth is that as the novelty of online activism wears off, millions of formerly socially engaged individuals who trusted digital organisations are coming away believing in the impotence of all forms of activism. Even leading Bay Area clicktivist organisations are finding it increasingly difficult to motivate their members to any action whatsoever. The insider truth is that the vast majority, between 80% to 90%, of so-called members rarely even open campaign emails. Clicktivists are to blame for alienating a generation of would-be activists with their ineffectual campaigns that resemble marketing.

Micah harks back to a time when activism really meant something – and were “genuinely radical movements”. This Golden Age thinking seems to ignore the many controversies and debates that occurred before the “interwebby” was invented – the use of mass-media, zines, glossy paper vs risographs, one-on-one conversations, and so on. The quaint notion that the “power of ideas” could “enact social change” is laughably utopian. Activists from bygone eras, like Saul Alinsky, knew the importance of the hard slog and nitty gritty of activism.

The role of technology in progressive movements has been ever-present. In fact, left-wing activism has often been at the fore-front of technological innovation. From movable type and portable presses, to bulletin boards and email, technology has assisted progressive causes greatly.

More recent technology has simply taken what we used to do manually and slowly, and made it quicker and easier. Left activism has always cared about metrics, but until now we haven’t had the technology to truly benefit from it. Attendance sheets at mass-meetings, rollodex cards of activists, contacts and supporters, databases kept in filing cabinets have been replaced with online databases, email lists, CRMs, and event registration iphone apps. Much more civilised.

With scarce resources, left activists have to make sure that everything they do is useful, strategic, and makes best use of what they have, whether money, people or time. The metrics – the clicks, opens, and A/B testing – helps left-wing activists to not waste time, effort or money on things that don’t work. Far better to find out that the message you’ve developed doesn’t work early on in a campaign – so you can rejig it – than at the end, having activated no one and achieved nothing.

There is something to what Micah says about transparency. Progressive activist organisations need to be more honest about the failures, as well as the successes. We need to stop pretending that something was fantastically successful because of its great online metrics – clicks, views, donations, list signups – if the purpose of the campaign wasn’t fulfilled. We shouldn’t inflate our numbers, or pretend that the 1000s of people on our email list are all activists themselves (unless they really are). Transparency helps accountability – and activist organisations (and especially their leadership) should be accountable to its members and supporters for the success and failure of campaigns.

Micah is also right that online activism that has no “real world” outcome – that does not change something - is pointless. Even online marketing by the nastiest company in the world has a real world outcome: they want to you buy their product or service. Activists should make progressive change, and an online campaign that doesn’t have that as its goal is truly pointless.

Michael Silberman from EchoDitto makes this case clearly:

Let’s stop declaring victory in our online campaigns while we lose the very battles that many of these campaigns and their sponsoring organizations are setup to fight. My colleague Allyson Kapin compiled a wonderful list of some of the most innovative online campaigns of 2009 here at Frogloop (and we catalogued a few of our own here) — but at what point will we stop calling campaigns successful if they wowed us with cool tech or participation numbers but failed to move the needle? What role are these campaigns playing in bringing the change we seek?

Increasingly the metrics we use to gauge success online will need to incorporate or connect to overall impact. Total eyeballs or unique visits to a campaign site will only matter insomuch as that’s an audience of eyeballs that a decision-maker is truly concerned about pleasing.

To some extent, Micah White is arguing against a straw man. There isn’t really anyone out there who advocates that slick online marketing should replace real-world activism – rather that it should support, encourage and augment it. No one is arguing that clicks, retweets and likes can, in and of themselves, change anything, but they can help activist organisations engage with and activate supporters.

Micah’s problems with the corporatisation of activism – the rise of PR companies advising NGOs like WFF, Greenpeace and Oxfam (such as the Tcktcktck campaign) are separate issues to online campaigning and communication. In my view, tactics are (mostly) ideology-free. A good tactic (such as one-on-one conversations) is not left-wing or right-wing by its nature. It’s what you use the tactic for. It’s purpose and goal.

The fact that large PR forms and advertising agencies have good ideas and good tactics that can assist progressive, activist organisations is not necessarily bad. If those activist organistations compromise their values or goals as a result of working together – that is bad. But if those PR and advertising agencies help achieve something and change something for the better, then good!

I for one will continue to use online tools for the campaigns I am involved in. I think they are valuable tools, but the medium should not be the message (to cribb from Marshall McLuhan).

What do you think? Has clicktivism destroyed activism?

The Murray Darling Basin Plan

Alex — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 11:09:47 +0000

The debate around the Murray Darling Basin Plan is deeply disappointing, not least the political debate, which is characterised by opportunism and meekness respectively. It doesn’t help that the Basin has been a political football for decades, most recently in 2007 when Howard tried to use the Basin to buttress his non-existent environmental credentials through the “National Plan for Water Security”.

I’ve done a bit of policy work on the Murray Darling Basin (MDB), looking at water trading. Australia urgently needs action in the MDB, and I would argue that water trading is an important part of the solution to the current long-running crisis. I wrote this back in 2007:

The Murray-Darling Basin is Australia’s largest river catchment, and extends from Roma in Queensland to Goolwa in South Australia, and runs through New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT. Two million Australians rely directly on the Murray-Darling Basin, and a further one million are heavily dependent on its resources. Forty per cent of Australia’s gross value agricultural production is derived from the Basin, which accounts for seventy per cent of Australia’s water usage.

Australia is now experiencing one of the most prolonged and severe droughts in its history, the result of which has seen the levels of the Murray River and Darling River drop to record lows. The Murray-Darling Basin, as at June 2006, was at sixty per cent of its previous minimum levels. This drought has resulted in serious water shortages for agricultural use and environmental flows, and placed domestic use at great risk.

Until recently, most environmental use of Australia’s water resources have been seen by public policy makers as ‘wasted water’. The water that runs from rivers into the oceans or evaporates in wetlands, were viewed to have had much more productive uses. There is now recognition of the essential need for environmental flows as a public good: environmental flows help sustain vital ecosystems that benefit society and the economy, such as the fishing and tourism industry, and also help improve the quality of drinking water.

It would appear that the Basin is still very much a political football.

The Plan that is being attacked by conservatives inside and outside Parliament is required by the Water Act – and received bipartisan support – twice!

The scare campaign that is being run is simply aimed at spooking the ALP – who have proven themselves very skittish. Irrigators are using this as an opportunity to put their hand out. Over the past decade we’ve had around a 70 percent decline in water, but only a 0.12 percent decline in the economic value of irrigation production – this shows that our farmers can innovate and get more value from the water they use. Since 2007, billions have been spent on water efficiency measures, like fixing leaky pipes.

In Australia there currently exists a public mood for change on the issue of water. A recent poll showed that 80 percent of Australians agree that water should be returned to the Murray Darling Basin. Water restrictions and the drought have raised this as a priority issue for many Australians. Populated areas must be guaranteed drinking water.

Business and industry needs security and certainty of water access. Our agricultural sector must be made drought-proof and more suited to Australia’s climate. Environmental flows are needed to relieve stressed river systems. Without environmental flows keeping the Basin alive, there won’t be an agricultural industry.

Engaging the progressive grass-roots in the UK

Alex — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 04:19:27 +0000

The UK Labour Party have been widely decried as being on their last legs, out of ideas, dead ducks, etc. However, behind the scenes, a growing movement of vibrant progressives is building and organising. Much of it is being supported and encouraged by the Labour Party.

This rise of progressive online political action also coincides with the decline of the Tories polling – with Gordon Brown and Labour now in with a chance to win the election.

While I could talk about 38 Degrees (the UK version of Get Up! and Move On), the example that I really want to highlight is MyDavidCameron.com.

This is an example of Labour engaging with progressive grass-roots activists without trying to seize control. It challenges the traditional monopoly that the Tories have had on internet campaigning in the UK. MyDavidCameron taps into activists who aren’t necessarily pro-Labour, but who are deeply skeptical about David Cameron and the Tories, and do not want them elected.

CLARIFICATION (15/04/10): The MyDavidCameron website is independent of Labour, and was set up “by a left-leaning graphic designer… the Labour party quickly adopted its template.”

The point of my highlighting this is to show what can happen when a political party lets go control of their online space. They have successfully engaged with a group of online activists, who are now spreading the anti-Tory message. It’s a particularly simple, yet effective method, by asking progressive activists to come up with their own slogans to replace Tory propaganda.

This site shows that with political courage and risks comes great rewards. Remember – it could have all gone wrong. So kudos to the Labour strategists who had the foresight to allow this website to go ahead.

For a more detailed analysis, there’s a good article by WeAreSocial – a social media strategy company in the UK – who’ve written about MyDavidCameron.com.

Postscript: This blog post on MyDavidCameron.com shows the natural limit for this campaign, and also why it is probably most powerful during the 30 day campaign than necessarily the hard slog of continuous campaigning.

Oh, those naughty Tories. Stealing our ideas about co-ops (and messing them up in the process) was bad enough. But stealing our ideas about spoof posters (and messing them up in the process) is simply unpardonable.

Shortly after we spoofed the first Tory election poster, I acknowledged that this project had a limited shelf-life. And so the fact that the Tories are now trying to get in on the joke can only suggest one thing: we’ve reached our sell-by date.

There is a lot of talk in the online community on this site that most of the spoof posters have a shelf-life of 1-2 weeks at most. This seems to me to underline why this kind of campaign sight is most effective during the actual campaign period. It is during campaigns that most people become politically engaged, and there is also a large amount of Tory (or Liberal Party) material to spoof.

Despite this, the site was by all measures, a massive success. There are scores of spoofed posters, it received lots of mainstream media coverage, as well as coverage in blogs, Twitter and Facebook, and the website itself received over 250,000 unique visitors.

Five effective political lobbying tools for unions

Alex — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 04:41:09 +0000

Unions and union members are the largest voluntary associations in Australia, representing millions of workers in tens of thousands of work places. Legislation can have a profound impact on the rights and entitlements of working people, such as changes to occupational health and safety, tax, industrial relations, and trade and industry policy.

It is therefore entirely natural for unions and union members to lobby parliamentarians. Over the last few years, many unions have increasingly sent delegations of members to Canberra or State Parliaments to meet with key Members of Parliament, Ministers and advisors.

With the Federal election coming up this year, and state elections in Victoria in November 2010, it is timely to consider some effective lobbying tools. I’ve written here about two tips for union members to lobby their MPs – which is pretty general advice. Below are five more concrete tools for unions and union members to lobby their MPs.

1. Direct Contact

Direct contact covers a range of different tools, including letters, phone calls, emails, and faxes, urging a certain position on a specific issue.

Letters: Letters are fairly effective, but only if they are written by local constituents. Members of Parliament tend to ignore letters from people outside their electorates. They also tend to ignore “form letters” – since it is obvious that they are from the same campaign. Far better to get union members to write their own letters but provide “taking points” or an issue briefing so that members can easily see the main issues, but write the letter in their own words.
Phone calls: Again, phone calls are only valuable from constituents (this will be a theme), and it is unlikely that any callers will be able to personally speak to the MP. However, the electorate officers will take notes of calls, especially if there are lots of calls about the same issue. Unions considering this should provide talking points for their members, as well as some simple Q and As so that the members can rebut any party or government lines.
Emails: Email campaigning was originally thought of as revolutionary. Supposedly you could get hundreds or thousands of people to press a button and send an email to a boss or politician. However, recently it’s become clear that for email campaigns to succeed, the volume of emails must by truly massive. Eric Lee suggests that an email campaign needs a minimum of 5,000 or so emails, and from my experience in organising several email campaigns, this is about on the money. Politicians get so many emails that its easy for them to ignore email campaigns of any size except the truly massive. Filtering technology allows MPs to easily partition their inboxes to that it doesn’t impact their work. Similarly, by emailing MPs, Ministers or a boss, you hand over the contact details of your supporters. In several cases, I’m aware of Ministers and bosses emailing each of the protesters back with a carefully written rebuttal of the campaign. Unions should be aware of this eventuality and plan for a contingency. Nevertheless, email campaigns are great ways to build your email lists. Personal, custom written emails from your supporters are far more effective, and a letter has more power than an email.
Fax: This is a fairly old-school lobbying technique, and mass-fax campaigns do little except waste paper. I’ve spoken with several MPs who’ve been subject to fax campaigns, and in each case they advised me that their electorate officers disposed of the mass faxes. The net impact: zero.

The general advice, which is fairly standard, is that personal emails, letters and calls from constituents are more effective than form emails and letters. Phone calls are more effective than letters, which are more effective than emails. Faxes (in my view) are least effective.

2. Personal Intercepts

Personal contact is most effective of all. The contact need not be with the politician, but can be with their electorate officers and advisors. There are several places that this personal contact can occur: meetings in the MP’s electorate or parliamentary office, at fundraisers, debates, or public events like street-stalls or town-hall meetings. Unions in Australia can also try to make contact with Labor MPs or advisors at branch meetings or policy committee meetings.

This kind of contact can be either union members, or officials. In either case, the person making contact should be properly briefed on the issue, and, most importantly, seek some kind of commitment. This could be a formal meeting, a pledge (see below) or some kind of assistance or statement.

Contact can then be followed up – and the union should consider whether this follow up can be made public. For example, the union could write a letter to the local paper reporting on the meeting and any outcomes. They could write a blog post on their website. Or they could get the union member to call the local talk-back radio to recap the encounter. Of course, the union and union members should make sure that they are not revealing discussions that they undertook to keep confidential.

3. Pledges and Surveys

This is a tactic used often in the USA, and sometimes by conservative groups in Australia. They are surveys or pledge letters sent to MPs asking them for a public statement on their position on a particular issue.

The pledge can be useful for both political persuasions. For example, the union could send a pledge asking the candidate or MP to pledge that “I, candidate X, pledge not to vote to to remove the rights of working people…” If the candidate or MP responds in an unfavourable way (or does not respond at all), that is an opportunity to get some local news.

Similarly, MPs or candidates that respond positively can be future allies on that issue, and could be followed up with a letter or personal visit.

4. Social Media

I’ve written extensively on how unions can use social media. During elections, social media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube can be useful as both a media aggregator for campaign media stories, and also to disseminate key messages.

In my view, email is the most effective way to get your message out and to have supporters actually do something in the real world. Email is also useful in building a following on Facebook or Twitter. Analytics can ensure that you can see how effective your efforts are.

Importantly, social media is not a magical solution, but it can make a small campaign look much larger than it really is.

It is also useful platform to get free media. Political parties do this all the time by releasing a campaign advertisement on YouTube rather than on television. This ad nevertheless gets played on prime-time news, amplifying its effect much more than it ever would by itself. A key element to ads like this is production quality – the YouTube ads should be television quality in both sound and vision.

5. SMS/Text Messaging

Smart phones are becoming ubiquitous and almost everyone with a mobile phone knows how to send and receive text messages. The technology to use SMS effectively is also becoming affordable, giving supporters and union members instantaneous updates, event details, campaign messages and links to online campaign websites.

Similarly, unions can also encourage members to send text messages to MPs or bosses.

It boggles me that the ACTU Rights at Work campaign doesn’t have an iPhone app or apps for Android or Blackberry phones (UPDATE: I’m advised that work is being done on an iPhone and Android app – although there is not one currently). Similarly, I’m aware of no Australian political party with an iPhone app (although that’s the subject of another post).

Iphone apps for unions could have a range of uses, including making campaign videos and other media available on a member’s phone, as well as make facts and figures available immediately, and allow members to be directly “patched” to an MP’s office to have a phone conversation. Iphone apps could also allow union members to sign petitions and send emails on the go.

Most of the tools I’ve gone through here are fairly standard and mostly low-tech. I hope to see some innovation from the union movement, both in Australia and for the mid-term elections in the United States.

With most Australians online and owning mobile phones, even unions that cover blue collar industries, or low-paid service sectors will find that their members have regularly checked email addresses, Facebook accounts and oft-used SMS capable phones.

The problem of crowd-sourcing campaigns

Alex — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 06:04:36 +0000

I’ve written previously about a very successful grassroots campaign – Save VCA – and how it brought together a diverse group of people. A key element to the success of this campaign has been its coordination at an early stage.

There is a very interesting discussion about the No Clean Feed movement by Mark over at Larvatus Prodeo, discussing the limitations of the campaign so far:

It’s a bit of a case study on the limitations, as well as the benefits, of crowdsourced campaigning.

Alex Schlotzer, an ACTU online campaign officer and senior Greens Party member has a good analysis of the No Clean Feed movement to date:

The kind of fundamentals a campaign needs to sort out before launching into the next wave of protest emails; electronic petitions and rallies.

This isn’t about a brand, marketing, customers or what halo strategy should be employed; this is about cold, hard politics. It’s about finding the right kinds of messages and ensuring a focussed, evolving and sustained dialogue with Australians so they either get on board and help make their marginal MPs paranoid and/or they change their vote. (The first is probably easier to do since an election makes all MPs a little paranoid at the best of times.)

Then there has to be a coordinated effort of engaging and organising concerned Australians through a combination of online and off-line methods. What happens online and off-line should compliment each other.Â It is truly amazing that for so-called Internet geeks and social media professionals that what matters politically is totally ignored in favour of the fancy, pretty approach and more banging on (analysis some will call it) about the evils and flaws of Conroy’s Internet censorship regime. A lot has to be done to make sure that the Government doesn’t use a victory in the next federal election, as fodder (read “mandate”) to push through with something that only serves to further erode and impinge on our civil liberties and human rights.

Who cares which of the 4 (to-date) anti-internet-censorship website looks the best or is the most plugged in to web2.0 or SM, when the basics for any political campaign are forgotten at best and completely ignored at worst.

So before the Australian Interwebs embarks on its next un-coordinated and ill-conceived round of “campaigning” with poorly timed rallies, can there first be a single coordinating group formed, with a single focussed message and a real plan for political action?

I’ve seen today that Electronic Frontiers Australia, the online liberties group, have appointed Peter Black as a campaign manager for the No Clean Feed campaign (which will be getting a name change soon).

Peter Black is a lecturer and lawyer from Queensland. I wish him well, and hope that can turn the NCF movement into a organised, coordinated campaign.

Explaining cap and trade

Alex — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 22:21:33 +0000

An interesting little video from the creators of the Story of Stuff, this has an explanation of how “cap and trade” (emissions trading) works, and the major pitfalls with the system.

Unfortunately, the video is one of those preachy, moralising videos that is full of criticisms but no solutions. The closest it comes is proposing a “simple carbon tax”, without recognising that a carbon tax has as many policy hurdles as carbon trading (just look at tax avoidance and minimisation by big companies as it stands).

LabourStart Photo Competition

Alex — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 07:28:44 +0000

For all you inspired unionists out there, I strongly encourage you to enter the LabourStart Photo Competition.

It’s a great initiative, and there are already some really good photos that have been submitted.

This year I entered the photo you see here.

It’s a picture I took in December 2008 of a protest out the front of the Victoria University Council meeting in the Melbourne CBD, following the University’s announcement that it sacking hundreds of jobs.

Needless to say, there was an enormous outcry and public campaign to stop the job cuts – the largest ever in Australian university history. The job cuts were stopped, thanks to threats of industrial action by staff, and the community campaign that was run in support of staff and students at VU.

Link: Friends of VU.

Online social activism and Twitter

Alex — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 08:07:27 +0000

A large part of my job is online communications: blogs, social networking, and new fads like Twitter.

A big challenge is how to use these tools in a meaningful way to support the campaigning and organising activities of the union. How can we engage our members and supporters using the social networking tools they are comfortable with?

A new service, called Twitition (Twitter + Petition) may aid in this.

Twitition allows Twitter users to create and sign short petitions. These petitions can be easily re-Tweeted by friends and followers.

The goal of so many not-for-profits using the Internet and social networking is the Holy Grail of “viral”: a video, email, image or similar that takes on a life of its own and receives massive circulation.

A service like Twitition could help not-for-profits to make their campaigns go viral.

To experiment, I created a Twitition calling on Rudd and Gillard to abolish the ABCC. We’ll see how well that goes.