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Defining Digital Activism: Part 3 – Where Are We Going?

So we come to the end of our journey  (well, this series anyway).  We’ve answered the first two of Gauguin’s existential questions.  In the first post we asked “Where do we come from?” and realized we’re Builders, Doers, and Thinkers (graphic below).  In the second post we investigated “What are We (Thinking)?” and found we operate in a mish-mash of terminology that make effective discussion of technology and activism difficult.  Now we come to the final question: “Where are we going?”  This is the most interesting question and also the most perilous, as prognostication always is. Rather than attempting to look into the crystal ball only two be proved wrong in three years (or three months), I’ll talk about the factors that will determine the future of digital activism: what activists actually do and what people think about those action.

The Knowledge Loop: How Digital Activism Improves

Digital activism is nothing more than a series of practices and our interpretations of those practices.  Digital activism practitioners (Doer group) use a Facebook group to organize, publicize a cause on Twitter, create a group blog.  These activities are at the heart of digital activism, but our perceptions of this field are formed in large part by the interpretations put forth by the Thinkers (mainstream media, bloggers, trainers, scholars).  These interpretations in turn influence our practices, particularly in the case of an influential Thinker.  I call this feedback cycle of practice > interpretation > new practice the digital activism knowledge cycle and in order to explain it I will use the examples of two bloggers: cyber-optimist and digital activism promoter Beth Kanter of Beth’s Blog, and cyber-pessimist and digital activism critic Evgeny Morozov of Net Effects.   Each approach to interpreting digital activism implies a different future for the field.

Beth’s Blog is probably the most widely-read and respected blog on social media use for nonprofits.  A couple of weeks ago, Beth wrote a post on how nonprofits can improve blogger outreach.    I’ll use this post to illustrate the digital activism knowledge loop: outreach practices occur, Beth observes outreach and writes post making recommendations for improvement, some nonprofits read this post and implement her improvements leading the new practices, then the cycle begins again.

In this example, digital activism is validated and the goal of interpretation is to improve that practices of activists and advocates.  Negative interpretations of digital activism have their effects as well.  Evgeny Morozov is a well-known critic of digital activism.  His widely-read blog, Net Effects, focuses on the destructive and ineffective aspects of digital activism:  the “spinternet” of government propaganda, cyberwars, and ineffectual online “slacktivism.” Evgeny is an excellent analyst of the political uses of the Internet and his arguments on these issues are sound.  Nevertheless, because of the influence of these ideas, there is the potential for self-fulfilling prophecy.  If funders, nonprofits, and activists read these negative posts and come to see the digital activism as primarily a realm of manipulation, crime, and ineffectiveness, funders will be less likely to pay for digital activism trainings and nonprofits and activists will be less likely to use digital activism in their campaigns.

In a recent post on slacktivism, Evgeny finished his critique with recommendations for making activism more effective.  I hope Evgeny and critics like him will use their influence to make digital activism more effective rather than simply dismissing it.  Either future is possible.   This is the power of the interpretation step in the knowledge loop and of the Thinker group.   Activists (the Doers) make decisions on technology use based on knowledge of the practices of other Doers which they gain from the interpretation of the Thinkers.  Some digital activism practices work and some fail utterly, for a variety of reasons.  There is no doubt of that.  However, if these failures are interpreted by the Thinkers as opportunities for improvement then Doers will be inspired to change their tactics and try again.  If Thinkers interpret these failures as signed of the inherently flawed nature of digital activism, then Doers may abandon the practice, leading to a withering of digital activism, despite its potential.  Through our action, we will create the future, and it will depend on our current beliefs.

Knowledge Ecology: Intellectuals, Trainers, & Media

Of course, bloggers are only a part of the larger knowledge ecology.   There are many other actors that determine how digital activism will evolve in the future.  According to the framework laid out in the first post of this series, the actors that make up the field of digital activism is made of Doers (practitioners), Thinkers (interpreters), and  Builders (creators of infrastructure).    There are multiple types of actors in each group, as show in the graphic at left.   Though knowledge passes through all actor groups, the principal conduits are not surprisingly in the the Thinker group, particularly Public Intellectuals, Trainers/Consultants, and the Mainstream Media.   Bloggers like Beth Kanter and Evgeny Morozov fall in the Public Intellectual group (Beth is equally well-known as a trainer).  Public Intellectuals absorb and interpret both the practices they observe (as shown in the knowledge loop graphic above) and the interpretations produced by other Thinkers, be they scholars, entrepreneurs, members of the mainstream media, or other bloggers.  Public Intellectuals interpret this information for consumption for all three groups.  Sometimes this information is simply re-consumed by the Thinker group, creating closed loops of elite knowledge.  Ideally, as in the case of Beth’s Blog, knowledge is interpreted to be accessible to Doers and thus improves practice.  Let’s look more closely at the other two important knowledge conduits: Trainers/Consultants, and the Media.

Trainers and Consultants can be considered together since their profession is knowledge transition to practitioners.  They differ in that trainers tend to create generalized solutions for groups whereas consultants created customized solutions for individual clients.  Also, trainers tend to focus on transmitting their own knowledge to the client/trainee, whereas the assumption in hiring a consultant is that the knowledge differential between consultant and client will remain largely intact and the client will pay the consultant for using their intellectual property to create solutions to technology problems identified by the client.  The knowledge flows between Trainers/Consultants and clients in the Doer group are shown below.  The width of the line refers to the amount of knowledge transmission and the size of the arrow refers to the relative direction of the flow.

NOTE: The Entrepreneur group has been removed to clarify the relationships in this diagram

As you can see from the diagram above, one of the principle differences between Trainers and Consultants is who they share their knowledge with.  Trainers are most likely to work with nonprofits, while Consultants are also likely to work with political campaigns.  Neither group is likely to work with grassroots activists because most grassroots activists do not have the financial resources to attend a training and certainly not to hire a consultant.  It is very rare for a political campaign to hire a general trainer and trainings occurs in the political tech realm mostly through non-profits like the New Organizing Institute, which seek to generally build capacity for progressive candidates in the US.  In addition to gaining knowledge from their experiences with clients (indicated by the size of the arrow tips), both groups also gain information from public intellectuals and the media.

Trainers and Consultants are key conduits of knowledge on how to use digital tools for campaigning, but their reach is limited by hard financial constraints.  While the cost for participation is lower for a training that to hire a consultant, activists who receive the benefit of this kind of knowledge dissemination either have their own funds available to pay for the Trainer/Consultant’s time or are selected by a donor to receive the funding.  This leaves most grassroots activists out in the cold.

By far the largest conduit of knowledge about digital activism is the mainstream media (MSM) : TV, radio, and print.  The MSM is the principal source of information on digital activism to the general public and also influences the ideas of Doers, Builders, and the other members of the Thinker group.  Though there is some value gained by these groups from reading MSM accounts of digital activism, the principle flow of knowledge and value is out of the digital activism ecosystem.  Journalists package tales of digital activism as entertaining vignettes for the general public, not to increase knowledge or understanding of the field.  Most stories come from the field of grassroots activism (think of the “Twitter Revolution” stories from Moldova and Iran).  Some, like reports of Barack Obama’s online fundraising prowess (disclaimer: former staffer), are about politics, but most political campaigns get no press about their web efforts.  Most ignored are the thousands of social media campaigns run by nonprofits and advocacy campaigns, few of which are able to successful hook the news cycle.  Journalists who cover digital activism are rarely experts in the topic (it is a new field, after all) and are thus likely to misinterpret what they are seeing. Even when they seek commentary from those in the Public Intellectuals category, they may not know who to ask and may print the quote that best fits their story or that gives the most controversial interpretation.

There is certainly a value to mainstream media coverage of digital activism: unlike all the other Thinkers,the MSM has a massive reach and thus can critically raise awareness of digital activism among the global public.  Awareness of digital activism is the first step towards participation in it.  However, the mainstream media does not disseminate actionable information to digital activism practitioners, not that it is even trying to.

How to Move Digital Activism Forward

In order to move digital activism forward by increasing adoption of effective digital activism practices, I recommend the following steps:

1. Create a Knowledge Loop Beyond Tools: In order to disseminate best practices of digital activism, we must first determine what they are.  We need to make the knowledge loop more effective. There are several great people in the Thinker category interpreting activism best practices from a tools perspective (how to use Twitter, how to use Facebook), but few are looking at the underlying dynamics: the common characteristics that unite disparate tools, the strategies for which tools are incidental and interchangeable.  The tools perspective traps both Thinkers and Doers in an eternal race to evaluate the constant barrage of web-based applications that rise and fall in prominence at a dizzying speed.   By showing the forest beyond the trees, an understanding of the underlying mechanics of digital activism would allow all groups to more effectively evaluate new tools and improve their implementation of digital activism.
2. Better Dissemination of Best Practices: In the current knowledge ecology, the way most activists learn about digital activism is through a news story, a training, or a colleague or friend.  All three methods are limited: the first because of the shallowness of analysis and the lack of actionable advice, the second because of prohibitive cost and the difficulty of scaling, and the third because the colleague or friend is also unlikely to have high-quality information.  Once broad guidelines of best practices have been developed, both new and existing networks media and peer networks need to be leveraged to disseminate this information.
3. Connect Activists:  This post focuses primarily on how Doers are informed by Thinkers, yet in order to truly scale digital activism, we need both strong dissemination networks for getting information to activists, and strong peer networks for activists to share information with one another.  While these networks already exist among nonprofit organizations in the rich world (I am thinking of networks like NTEN), these networks are lacking in many other countries not only for financial but also for security reasons.  Repressive regimes where effective digital activism is most needed are the most likely to stamp out even incipient knowledge-sharing networks.  The solution will not be through large hubs and centralized solutions like Sesawe, but through a thousand shadow networks that shift location to evade detection.  New technology platforms may be needed to build these networks, which must be free, light, secure, and easy to operate.
4. Let’s get together: Where are we going?  The future of digital activism could move in many different directions.  In our current state we are divided.  Not only are we using different terminology to talk about what we are doing, knowledge is cordoned by financial limits on the scalability of dissemination.  Knowledge sources that have scale lack depth (the mainstream media) and knowledge sources that have depth lack scale (niche blogs, trainers and consultants).  Only if all actors in the field come together – Doers, Thinkers, Builders – and agree to work together will we succeed.  There are many ways to come together – an organization, a conference, even a listserv.  The key is to see a common task.  There are many futures of digital activism.  Our opponents are working strategically to oppose us through misinformation, censorship, and financial superiority.   Will we unite to create the digital activism future we want to see?