Digital Civil Society: Initial Thoughts

I’ve been starting to think beyond digital activism into digital civil society, beyond the digital actions take by civic actors to the system and institutions of which they are a part. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about how the use of digital technology:

  1. Changes the dynamics of existing nonprofit organizations, particularly with regard to fundraising and membership.
  2. Creates new types of fast, cheap, participatory, often ephemeral organizations with fuzzy organizational boundaries and networked structures.
  3. Changes the ways these organizations – and unaffiliated individuals – interact with one another.

I’ve put some of my initial ideas in the presentation below, which I gave in Chile a couple of weeks ago.


4 thoughts on “Digital Civil Society: Initial Thoughts

  1. Mary – this, and your table in the other blog post, is excellent. It reflects some of the things we’ve been thinking about for a bit in terms of the disruptive nature of the internet on voluntary organisations and how we ‘do’ social good. I’ll try and blog my thoughts in response, but my initial thought is it needs a bit more about data – the sort of stuff Lucy Bernholz has been writing about.
    Top stuff
    Karl

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