Information, Action, & Community
It’s a mantra for Internet advocacy: Information, Action, & Community… IAC. Think of it as an escalating scale of how to use the Internet in an advocacy campaign. Whether you are advocating for an issue or a candidate, IAC is the key to getting the greatest bang from your Internet buck.
Information
Back in the early days, we used to talk about “brochure” websites. Lacking imagination and a clear understanding of the vast possibilities offered by the Internet, many companies and organizations simply put their printed brochures online. The content was static and clearly not written for the Web. Yet at its core, the brochure site offered important information about the organization to people curious enough to visit the website.
Today we say that “content is king.” While the bells and whistles, as well as the style, used to present this information have changed dramatically since the early days, but the focus is still on disseminating information. What has changed is our ability to deliver this information more effectively.
The modes of information delivery have increased. In addition to using basic websites and email to deliver information, we now have Blogs, discussion forums, chatrooms, RSS feeds, email lists, short message systems (SMS), wikis, and more modes on the horizon. Still, the focus is delivering information: facts, figures, and message.
Perhaps the biggest change the Internet brings to information dissemination is the capacity to provide all forms of communication dynamics. Rather than just offering one to many (broadcast) and one to one (telephony) dynamics, the Internet provides one to one, one to many, many to one, and many to many communication opportunities. The result is a fluid flow of information between and among an incalculable number of nodes of content producers and receivers.
For advocacy campaigns, these enhancements create new opportunities, strategies, and tactics for educating the masses, the media, and policymakers. The importance of effective information dissemination should never be underestimated. If Richard Viguerie’s analysis of how the conservative movement used direct mail and talk radio (and now the Internet) to shape how Americans talk about issues is correct, then an effective information delivery machine is the key to delivering electoral success.
But while information dissemination is the foundation of effective online advocacy, it is probably the least sophisticated of the Internet’s uses.
Action
Internet action alerts have become a staple of advocacy campaigns. Using a combination of email, websites, online ads (as well as offline communications), campaigns are able to send out calls to action, complete with the tools to take the actions. Whether the action is to donate money, send a letter to an editor, write Congress, buy a product, or join a mailing list, all we have to do is click on a link and we will be whisked away to a tool that lets us act immediately.
To understand how taking action is the next step up from getting informed, let’s look at the birth and growth of Capwiz, the grassroots advocacy software created by Capitol Advantage.
Capitol Advantage started as a publishing business, making customized, printed Congressional directories. The directories were a valuable source of information for advocacy organizations, activists, media, and policymakers. Around 1996, C-SPAN and Capitol Advantage collaborated to put these directories online. This simple idea made the information in them available to anyone with an Internet connection.
Now, of course, we all know that many Americans have no clue as to the names of their Representatives and Senators. And while the directory was arranged by state, looking up Representatives by Congressional District was not an easy task. Who really knows their District number?
So Capitol Advantage decided to integrate a ZIP code lookup system into their online directory. Now all one had to do was enter their ZIP code to find out who their Representative was. For those living in a ZIP code split between more than one district, adding either the 4-digit extension or a street address would resolve the problem and match a citizen up with the right Member. Thus, information was delivered in a manner uniquely digital and Capwiz was born.
The next evolution to Capwiz turned out to be a no-brainer in hindsight… why not add an email feature to allow citizens to write their Congressional delegation? With this addition, Capwiz was transformed from a tool that just delivered information to one that facilitated grassroots action…a clear step up in sophistication.
And this step up created a boon in citizen participation in government. Pretty soon, Congress was flooded by more than 100 million emails from tens of millions of citizens, many of who had never written to Congress before. And it didn’t stop with Congress. Policymakers at the state and local levels also started hearing more from their constituents, even if they had to use their normal email software to send it. The bug hit the country like an epidemic.
Thus, action tools now provide campaigns with the ability to mobilize citizens interested in almost any issue or candidate to take action in response to the information they get from the campaigns and the media. But this model of action facilitation is still mostly embedded in a one to many communications model. It does not full exploit the power of the Internet.
Community
I am often heard griping about people who call the Internet an information revolution. While it may be true, it sells the Internet short. I call it a communications revolution, mainly due to its ability to host all of those forms of communication discussed above. In this vision, information is a subset of the revolution, for communication is the dissemination of information. But it is who is disseminating, who is receiving, and how the information is packaged that matters in the bigger picture.
When conceived as a communication revolution, it becomes much easier to see that the true full manifestation of the Internet’s revolution is in the creation of communities that are no longer bound by the constraints of place and time. Because the Internet is accessible from anywhere in the world and because online communication does not require simultaneous participation, we are now able to build and nurture communities that could not be sustained before.
Imagine that there are 500 people in the world that share a common fascination with a particular insect. They live far apart from each other in many different time zones. Thanks to online discussion forums, websites, Blogs, and email, they can now share their fascination with each other, exchanging ideas and collaborating on projects. This is the new face of community.
And the new face of community is not only online. Thanks to the vision of Meetup.com, we now can use the Internet to coordinate offline meetings of people with shared interests who might never know they live ten miles apart from one another. Thanks to Meetup, one of these groups can connect with other similar groups across the world, sharing pictures, ideas, and budding friendships.
For advocacy campaigns, the community building capacity of the Internet poses a new opportunity for growing social movements. All a campaign has to do is provide a few online tools, such as discussion forums, Blogs, chatrooms, and email lists, to its activists along with the information and action tools they need to take informed action, and those activists can be coalesced into a true advocacy community. Of course, the campaign will have to be willing to give up some of its top-down control over the campaign, as a true community of advocates will generate information and action from the bottom-up.
Perhaps this is why corporate America and old school associations, non-profits, and candidates are so resistant to creating a real online advocacy community. The more private the interests of a campaign, the less likely the general public will be able to latch onto the cause and make it their own. Public interests, like clean air, good schools, and the like are much more amenable to an organic grassroots community.
Inform, Activate, and Build Community
So there you have it… a blueprint for using the Internet fully to support an advocacy campaign. With the vision and the courage to let go, a campaign can use the Internet to transform itself beyond the finite bounds of a campaign and out into the wild blue yonder of a movement capable of transforming the political landscape.