Digital Ladders of Engagement

So I’m onto more speculative grounds here, compared to the Seven Deadly Arts of offline campaigning, but I thought it at least interesting to brainstorm some of the options that I think are available to the digital campaigner.

The predominant action seems to be to send an email to a decision maker. Usually lot’s of emails, sometimes separated by constituency, sometimes just in a mad scramble, before they can set up their email filters to siphon them into a folder, where they can then weigh them. Or in many cases not weigh them.

Then there is the ask: to personalise that email, or at least to personalise the subject line to make it hard for the filter. On occasion I do this, but I reckon most of us, most of the time, don’t.

And then sometimes there’s a big old online petition, that you can add your name to, and at least has the advantage you can print the damn thing off, and give it to someone. Perhaps yet another visit to #10 Downing Street.

But also there are some interesting things I’ve seen out there:

1)      The functionality of they work for you, which allows you to send an email to your MP with some sort of gravitas / sense of responsibility

2)      The interesting idea behind the house of commons petition site – does the official nature of it make it more serious, or simply easier to bin

3)      The peculiar addiction that is Superbadger

4)      And then something I saw in passing, tied to the Newhaven incinerator campaign (now lost), which was a random campaign letter generating program.
You simply clicked to generate your letter, every letter was different, and made up of generic campaign text where the paragraphs worked in any order. Cool eh?

Of all of these Superbadger is the most interesting / perverse, as people generate more campaigning emails, not necessarily because they care, but because they want the points. Just what we need, more gubbins clogging up the internet.
It’s kind of fun though, and raise the question of what else you can do with a facebook application.

Finally all of these tools suffer, from what I reckon should be a maxim, that the impact of the action is entirely proportionate to the effort you put in. One click, is worth about er…. one click.

So back to the offline activist:

In the training day I’m running tomorrow, I’ll use one of my stock political anecdotes (originally a Frank Dobson), but that I’ve heard from many sources.

• An email or a campaign postcard is worth a vote in the next election
• A personal letter, devised with care and thought is worth 10 votes
• A personal visit, is worth perhaps 50 votes
• And a good piece in the local media, mentioning the MP by name, is worth more.

Since the anecdote started, I reckon the value of the generic email has dropped (it was some time ago) but the principles there. What you get out is what you get in.

So how can people do more online, to creatively use their computers, to magnify that impact? I came up with some ideas, which could form one of those ladders of engagement.

• Post something to your facebook page, tweet it to your friends, actively email something onto your contacts list, spam it on to your network.
• React faster to our asks, sign up to the campaign twitter feed, subscribe to the RSS feed, install a toolbar that includes rolling updates, read more, faster.
• Actively comment on the campaign blog (facebook page etc), or seek out a decision makers blog (facebook page, twitter account) and comment on that.
• Blog for us, setup a sympathetic blog, and use campaign news to generate most of the content. Similarly set up a facebook group, a You Tube channel, your own website, BEBO group or whatever else is in fashion.
• If you’re close to the organisation (i.e. we let you), write part of the content for the main site, especially if it has a devolved local group/network area.
• Seek out other sites, and post links back to our main site. If necessary ask the web editor, present an argument, deal with the details and help optimise the site / news story by pointing 1000 links at it.
• Join a rapid response team, coordinated online, that posts like crazy whenever something interesting happened. Get the story out there, fast
• Something more here (to follow) regarding greyer more distorted arts

And / or do more. Spend as much time doing activism online, as one might do offline, and then perhaps the energy one puts in will pay off. Well at least as much, as doing it in the real world.

Seven Deadly Arts of Campaigning

Several years ago I wanted a mechanism to introduce a brainstorm to Friends of the Earth staff, to try and coax out some new ideas about how to influence MPs as part of the campaign to get a UK climate change law.

The premise was based on what was/is conventional wisdom, that the crux of any campaign is identifying the key decision maker, bringing as much pressure to bear on that decision maker, until they make the decision you need to advance your campaign goals.

The corollary is a more holistic approach where I believe you make as much noise around the issue, where you aim to use that noise to engage as many people as possible, to change the Zeitgeist of the campaign consciousness, that the change happens organically. I’m not unconvinced, but have yet to be convinced.

So to spark the brainstorm I constructed the five deadly arts of campaigning.

1. The generation of 100’s (ideally 1000’s) of communications to the decision maker. Campaign postcards (e.g. constituents to MPs), lots of emails (clicktivism), signatures on a petition, facebook notes on the wall, personalised letters, tweets and whatever the next generation of tools might be.
2. 1to1 high quality communications, the face to face lobby, presenting, arguing, negotiating with the decision maker to do the right thing. Often the territory of think tanks and corporate lobbyists but done better, and more honestly, by ‘ordinary’ and 'extraordinary' folk.
3. Via the media, organising a stunt aiming to get the decision makers picture in the paper tied to the issue or at least his/her name. Never underestimating the power of local media, and the letters page, when the decision makers neighbours might comment.
4. Using public events, filling a room full of people and asking the decision maker to talk to them about the issue. Old school political hustings, public meetings, film nights anything where a decision maker is forced to make a stand, and to state and defend a position.
5. The power of the system, using the structures that exist (e.g. Judicial Reviews, or via the local planning system), and the rules of the game (often set by the same decision maker) to force them to make a decision in line with those rules.

Since the brainstorm I’ve pondered a few more, which are as yet unformed and 7 deadly arts would sound more mythic than 5, so

6) Indirect lobbying, mobilising celebrities, scientists and advocates to deliver that 1to1 high quality communication / face to face lobby on your behalf. Turning an esoteric campaign ask into a conversation in the pub the decision maker drinks at, or a topic of debate at his/her local golf club. Presenting the issue to the local scholl, where the decision makers children might happen to listen.

7) Non Violent Direct Action. Now originally I had included the idea as a sub set of public events, and to extent that is still true, but is tenuous enough that I’ve stretched it to the 7^th art.

Then the philosophy of NVDA varies, and of the categories that Greenpeace ideology uses, i.e.

• Direct Communications – where the objective is to communicate with the decision maker, often to deliver the evidence of the environmental problem to their door e.g. the delivery of a dead dolphin
• Direct Actions – to stop or start something happening, e.g. shutting down a coal power station
• Photo Ops – to generate the image, that the media will then transform reaching not only the decision maker but also the Zeitgeist, often yet another banner drop
• Protests – as an expression of popular approval, involving the coalition of the willing, the expression of frustration and the empowerment of the many. Classically the big march through the London, which still have their uses.

Finally perhaps direct comms can be folded into the 2^nd art, that of high quality (resource intensive) communications. Photo ops seamlessly fit into the 3^rd art, protests as a subset of the 4^th (especially if you can convince the decision maker to come), leaving only the ‘purist’ form of NVDA as the 7^th deadly art of campaigning.