[UPDATED] I’ve been arguing recently about how digital activism is misunderstood but I admit, it’s partially my fault. Hell, the term itself is problematic. “Digital activism” implies that the activism I am interested in is only happening in digital space when, as researchers like Zeynep Tufekci of the University of North Carolina and Alix Dunn and Christopher Wilson of The Engine Room have pointed, digital and physical space are integrated in contemporary activism. What’s interesting to me is how digital tools are used in activism, but it is never a purely digital story. The full story of digital activism is a story of the integration of these two worlds.

This post proposes a new way of thinking about the integration of digital and physical activism. Below is a chart that moves through the steps for implementing a single tactic. (You can click the image to see it enlarged.) Activists can (and do) mix digital and physical tactics according to which is best suited to their needs at any given moment. I’ve called it a “choice matrix” because at each point the activist has a choice of whether to act in physical space, digital space, or a combination of the two. Let’s move through through the process:

Whenever digital technology is used for any activist purpose, the digital context matters: what technologies do citizens have access to and what apps do they use (or know how to use)? How free is their ability to both access and disseminate information?

These digital contextual factors are part of the overall context in which the tactic is carried out, including many macro factors in physical space, like the nation’s political system, economics, and demographics. All these contextual factors will help activists decide which tactic to implement and will determine the success of that tactic.

Once the they move into the planning phase, activists have the option of working in digital or physical space and likely work in both. They will use email to coordinate a face-to-face meeting. They will use chat or Skype to meet if meeting offline is dangerous or impossible (for example, if the organizers are in different countries).

Mobilization is also likely to be carried out in both digital and physical space (what Tufekci calls the “world of bits” and the “world of atoms”). They can disseminate the call to action on their blog or Facebook page. Supporters can send SMS to their friends. Though the message will move more slowly, spreading a call to action via face-to-face encounters can also occur.

The action may be digital or physical. Fully digital actions include a DDoS (hacker) attacks or e-petition. Offline actions include protest rallies or holding a strike. An offline action can be mobilized digitally, and vice-versa. A protest rally can be mobilized quickly via SMS (and is called a flash mob). You can learn about an e-petition while talking to a friend in a coffee-shop. (More tactics here: tinyurl.com/CivilResistance20)

Hybrid actions are also possible. Unlike an e-petition or a rally, hybrid actions require both digital and physical space to be carried out. One example of hybrid action is a letter-writing campaign in which letters are submitted by supporters via a website, then printed out and hand-delivered to an elected official in paper form.

Once the action has taken place, the tactic is not over. Perception is extremely important to whether an action will succeed or fail. This is where amplification comes in. As in the mobilization stage, digital tools are used to broadcast information. However, in this phase the information is different: the content is documentation of the action itself rather than a call to action.

While the action can be amplified online or offline, more and more we are seeing hybrid amplification: a citizen takes a video or photo digitally and then sends it to a TV station or newspaper for traditional broadcast. This is how all of Al Jazeera’s footage of the Tunisian Revolution was collected for broadcast in 2011 since its journalists were forbidden from entering the country.

The only place where I see a real divergence in the importance of digital and physical space is at the stage impact. So far as I can tell, impact only occurs in physical space. Whether the action succeeds or fails to influence citizens (ex: a safe sex campaign), government (ex: a campaign for or against a law) or private institution (ex: an ant-corporate campaign), those impacts are all felt offline. This is because there are no individuals or institutions that exist only in the digital space. Not yet, at least.

Why do people who criticize digital activism launching many of their attacks at e-petitions? About once a month an article appears in my feed reader with a title like “Real Change Means Getting Offline,” “The Revolution will not be Tweeted” or “A Critique of Clicktivism.” These articles are written with great seriousness by people who think they are the first to realize that, like offline activism, online and hybrid activism often doesn’t work. (Thanks for the insight). They also often target e-petitions.

Why and How Cyber-Skeptics Attack e-Petitions

These authors tend to focus on e-petitions because e-petitions may be the easiest digital activism tactic to implement, and require the least skill and time commitment. Anyone can set up an e-petition it in a few seconds with absolutely no strategic forethought. Based on this low bar to entry, it’s likely that e-petitions have a high failure rate (I’m hypothesizing here). As such, they are an appealing to cyber-pessimists and cyber-skeptics looking for an easy digital activism target. These polemicists set up this false syllogism:

The False Logic of e-Petition Attacks

1. IF e-petitions = digital activism (This is false. In fact, digital activism encompasses a wide variety of tactics and tools, of which e-petitions are just one example)
2. AND e-petitions are ineffective (This is false. Sometimes they are ineffective, sometimes they are effective. It depends on context.)
3. THEN digital activism is ineffective (This is false. Even if e-petitions are often ineffective, they are but one example of digital activism. You cannot defeat the whole by defeating a part.)

Dissecting an e-Petition Attack

Yesterday’s editorial in The Stanford Daily, the university’s student newspaper, is an example of this type of attack. The article’s title, “Activism is More than Clicking a Button,” fits the cyber-pessimist paradigm perfectly in that it makes a statement that seems totally reasonable and at the same time grossly misrepresents what digital activism is. It defines its target, digital activism, as narrowly and weakly as possible (as “clicking a button”) in order to make it easier to knock down. In rhetoric, this is called building a “straw man argument” (portraying an opposing argument in weak terms so it is easier to defeat). It’s lazy and inaccurate.

Let’s look at how the article uses this misleading rhetorical trick to make it’s argument. The final sentence paragraph is “How effective is this new form of digital activism?” This is a totally reasonable question and an important one. However, the Editorial Board (no individual authors are named) are not asking the question directly, they are asking it rhetorically, which means they propose that the answer is evident. Since the answer to this question is not evident, how do they make it seem so? Here’s one sentence from the paragraph:

Change.org, one of the larger online sites for generating “e-petitions,” has a dizzying array of topics subject to online activism: Apple’s labor practices in China, MPAA movie ratings, North Korean refugees and more.

First of all, if you want to challenge the legitimacy of an idea, put it in quotes. We don’t put quotes around “e-mail,” so putting quotes around “e-petitions” is simply a rhetorical device to make the technology seem new and unproven. For example, I might write that the activists of the Occupy movement are seeking to create change. Or I could write that the “activists” of the Occupy “movement” are seeking to create “change.” It’s a nifty trick for making your target seem inherently questionable since the quotes imply the phrase “so-called”: The so-called activists of the so-called Occupy movement….you get the picture. The author also calls the array of petition options “dizzying” in order to make them seem chaotic and slightly addled.

Assigning Causation is Difficult in All Activism, Not Just Digital Activism

This article is more honest than most because it does provide arguments from the opposition:

Change.org certainly believes in the efficacy of online petitions: It cites a number of examples of petitions that have arguably led to companies and governments amending policies. For instance, after an online petition drive at Change.org and a mass exodus of customers, Bank of America decided not to implement a new $5 per month banking fee. Verizon similarly dropped a proposed $2 online payment fee after highly negative Internet coverage and 130,000 Change.org signatures.

Now, these are indeed cases of what would be considered successful e-petitions, but the authors don’t present the evidence in that way. They present this evidence as a “belief” of Change.org, not objective evidence that e-petitions can work.

They reason they give for being skeptical of this evidence is that it is unclear “how critical… the online petitions [were] in achieving these ends.” Now, maybe the authors do not understand this, but in many instances of activism it is unclear what tactic actually caused a given outcome. This is true of offline as well as online activism. The fact is simply that most social and political change outcomes are multi-causal. It wasn’t just the protest, it was also the decrease in oil prices, the elite lobbying, the dissent within the leader’s political party, the international pressure… again, you get the picture. The problem of assigning causation to a tactic does not mean the tactic was not successful, it means that causation is difficult to assign because multiple forces are at play. (Zeynep Tufekci’s has an excellent post on the problems of assigning causation in digital activism, for those who are interested).

Why Digital Activism is Likely to Increase – not Decrease – Engagement

The authors then take another page from the cyber-pessimist playbook, by referencing the buzzword slacktivism and stating:

Citizens who may have otherwise engaged in effective advocacy, such as writing their representatives or protesting, might instead feel content signing online petitions without realizing that each signature has a minimal effect on the policymaking process.

Now please, I beg you, show me one empirical study that demonstrates this dynamic. Show me one study that shows that digital technology makes politically active people less politically active. To me the more convincing argument is that social media activism, because it is so painfully easy to take (yes, by clicking to join a group or sign a petition) would make the biggest impact by engaging the previously inactive and politically apathetic, since it provides the smallest incremental step between doing something and doing nothing.

It is then up to online organizers to mobilize these people up the ladder of engagement to more and more meaningful activism. As Amy Sample Ward of the Nonprofit Technology Network noted recently on this blog. There is no such thing as meaningless digital activism:

It’s true, that “liking” a post on Facebook isn’t going to “do” much. But, it shows us two things: First, that… supporters are listening and paying attention…. Second, that supporters are standing by to take the action you promote…. We should take those two messages as an opportunity to call our supporters to a bigger action.

Even the smallest action is at the very least a statement of interest that identifies people to be mobilized. The authors ignore this.

e-Petitions Amplify the Problems of Democracy, But They aren’t the Cause

Then, unsurprisingly, the authors give examples of spectacular failures of e-petitions: the pro-marijuana petition to the President voted up on the WhiteHouse.gov petition site in 2011 (clearly not the most pressing issue the President should be dealing with), or the anti-Road Tax petition in the UK that forced down a sensible proposed tax in 2007. This is totally fair. Sometimes petitions succeed, sometimes they fail. (Causation, by the way, is difficult to assign in both cases.) I would not argue if this was their argument.

But they go a step further, they start arguing against petitions because they are democratic. The authors write:

In addition to doubts about the efficacy of online petitions, the Editorial Board questions whether effective online petitions are even desirable. In the span of a few months in 2006 and 2007, the Road Tax petition managed to accumulate more than 1.8 million signatures in a nation of just 60 million; the British government was, according to the Westminster study, subsequently forced to scrap its road tax plans that “many considered an unpopular but necessary path to safeguard the environment.” When government steps in to make difficult decisions…. the ease and swiftness with which online petitions can garner the appearance of massive public opposition to a measure may kill legislation aimed at the long-term, best interests of constituents.

Wow, that is really the argument you are going to make? You are going to argue against e-petitions because they quickly and dramatically demonstrate public demands, and public demands are sometimes stupid? (With 1.8 million signatures you cannot claim that the petition was creating by some narrow interest group.)

Sometimes the people are wrong. Sometimes they vote and lobby against their own self-interest. Sometimes governments are unable to effectively explain the long-term benefits of short-term pain. But this is a problem with democracy, not with e-petitions. E-petitions didn’t make people short-sighted and tight-fisted. Let’s at least assign blame only where it is warranted.

Sensible Guidelines for Judging an e-Petition

The authors give two examples of successful e-petitions but dismiss them as being unpersuasive. They present two examples of unsuccessful e-petitions and find them very persuasive, without stating why. They finish their article by stating: “the Editorial Board suggests to readers that they do more than sign a petition if they want to bring about change.” I don’t think anyone would argue with that.

But they also state that “the overall efficacy of such petitions has not been convincingly shown.” Fine, fair enough, but in order for an individual to decide if they are going to sign an e-petition, they don’t need to know the “overall efficacy” of the e-petition, they just need to know the likely efficacy of the one e-petition they are thinking of signing. Here are some rules of thumb for making that decision:

How to Decide Whether to Sign an e-Petition

1. Who is the petition aimed at (who is the target)?
2. What constituencies does this person care about (who has influence over him/her)?
3. Are you a member of one of those constituencies?

If you answered “Yes” to question 3, you are signing a petition with a real chance of success. If you answered “No,” your petition has less chance of success. This is why a petition to Bank of America by Bank of America customers worked and a petition to President Ahmadinejad by American college students does not work. It’s not rocket science. It’s a calculus of influence and identity.

This is a sensible basic rubric for engaging intelligently with e-petitions, but it’s not what the authors chose to put forward. They preferred to score rhetorical points, then throw their hands up and say “the jury is out.” Whether it fails or succeeds, digital activism is now a central mechanism of political action around the world. Let’s try honestly to understand it instead of making knee-jerk arguments.

The effect of digital technology on political contention is neither good nor bad, it is both. Yes, the Internet can help activists mobilize and re-frame public issues. It can also distract citizens and feed apathy. It can also help repressive governments watch and censor their citizens. The sooner we accept digital technology’s complex and contradictory effect on political power dynamics, the sooner we can move forward to answering more interesting questions about those effects. What contextual factors lead to these different outcomes? Why does one factor win out over others when all three are in play?

An article in the New York Times today shares interesting research by Navid Hassanpour, a political science graduate student at Yale. Navid’s research on the effect of cell phones black-outs during the Egyptian revolution revealed (through methodology not fully explained in the article) that decreased access to digital technology increased political engagement:

“The disruption of cellphone coverage and Internet on the 28th exacerbated the unrest in at least three major ways,” he writes. “It implicated many apolitical citizens unaware of or uninterested in the unrest; it forced more face-to-face communication, i.e., more physical presence in streets; and finally it effectively decentralized the rebellion on the 28th through new hybrid communication tactics, producing a quagmire much harder to control and repress than one massive gathering in Tahrir.”

These conclusions should not surprise anyone familiar with the revolution, as there was previous anecdotal evidence that the Internet shut-down forced people to seek information in the streets. However, demonstrating this phenomenon empirically is important.

However, the article’s author, the usually excellent Noam Cohen, makes an inaccurate conclusion from this evidence when he writes, “it is a conclusion that counters the widely held belief that the social media helped spur the protests.” Mr. Cohen still seems to be living in Dichotomy World: if turning off cell networks increased engagement, then their effect must previously have been exclusively distracting and apolitical.

It is far more likely that both conclusions are correct: digital technology facilitated both apathy and engagement. While the shut-down aimed to obstruct the work of activists already using the technology for resistance, and succeeded in that way by making the technology inaccessible, the countervailing effect of politicizing previously apolitical users overwhelmed the intended effect of stimying activists.

Figure 1: Effects of Digital Technology on Political Contention

We need to stop answering digital activism questions as if their answers are either/or dichotomies and start looking at them as continua where multiple dynamics have countervailing and contradictory effects. As the diagram above shows, digital technology can facilitate both apathy and political engagement, repression and empowerment. Even the distracting effects of the Internet, which I label “cyber-hedonism,” can run the range from the mildly repressive (consumption only / watching a pirated movie) to the mildly empowering (production of original content / lolcats). Some phenomena, like the nationalist hackers of China and Russia who attack opposition web sites in support of the government, fall in a confusing middle ground. Their actions empower citizens (themselves), but they are also indirect tools of government repression.

The purist arguments that digital technology has a uniquely positive or uniquely negative effect on political contention is becoming less and less viable. Understanding this phenomenon requires a willingness to deal with complexity. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that “the test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” This is what the field of digital activism demands of us if we are to understand it.