{"id":1756,"date":"2018-02-27T09:08:35","date_gmt":"2018-02-27T17:08:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.internautconsulting.com\/?page_id=1756"},"modified":"2020-07-17T23:39:50","modified_gmt":"2020-07-18T07:39:50","slug":"article-capacity-strategies-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.internautconsulting.com\/?page_id=1756","title":{"rendered":"Cooking with the Internet — A Recipe for Grassroots Success"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"slide3\"\u201cWhat this shows is that building and maintaining momentum with web-based tools and approaches does work. It\u2019s simply the key ingredient of leadership that promotes the breakthrough process of winning an issue by using this momentum to best effect. A movement with critical mass, technology and resources is lost without charismatic leadership, whether online or off. \u201d <\/em> (MediaChannel, March 2004)<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Forget the media post-mortems. Howard Dean\u2019s much-ballyhooed online campaign may have gone bust, but other web-based initiatives are still networking on. Just as the dot-com bust removed many of e-commerce\u2019s kinks, so, too, does the defunct Dean campaign offer important lessons about how to use the Internet to change the world in new and interesting ways.<\/p>\n

Successful online advocacy through social networking is about having the right ingredients to organize, communicate, and, most importantly, win the day. There are five main ingredients:<\/p>\n

1. A Salient Issue <\/strong><\/p>\n

This may be the most difficult part of the puzzle. You can\u2019t artificially contrive issues \u2014 they either capture people\u2019s attention and imagination or they don\u2019t. Each issue also has a ceiling for participation. There are only so many people interested in helping spawning salmon or the spotted owl. And there\u2019s only a limited number of people beyond these issues core adherents that can be whipped into rabid passion on the subject. But you might succeed in joining the spotted owl, salmon and even the baby seal adherents behind a single broad-based concern that affects them all \u2014 such as global warming. Only \u201cmega\u201d issues of immediate importance, like antipathy towards the war in Iraq and its far reaching implications that the Dean campaign tapped into, succeeds in bringing people with truly disparate interests together.<\/p>\n

2. Effective Organizers<\/strong><\/p>\n

Organizing is an art form and some people are truly more effective at organizing individuals and groups than others. The senior people working with the Dean campaign were effective organizers as well as Internet savvy. When these people were paired with the new technology tools available, a potent combination of skill and logistical support was achieved.<\/p>\n

3. An Efficient Platform for Organizing <\/strong><\/p>\n

The Internet excels as an organizing and advocacy technology because of the flexibility and immediacy it offers interacting with a geographically dispersed constituency. A variety of simple tools like Meetup.org, blogs, online signups, listservs, etc. can be used to quickly and easily \u201ccollect\u201d people across great distances and swathes of society, communicate with them and facilitate organizing and advocacy around salient issues. Yet one does not survive through an online existence alone.<\/p>\n

While the Internet allows people to reach out to each other on a broader and more efficient basis, in the end there is no substitute for real human contact. Large-scale actions cannot sustain themselves on a variety of disparate online platforms without some central \u201caggregator hub\u201d site (or sites) to help coordinate the activities once an action has reached critical mass either. Busy people wishing to engage in a variety of activities often require one-stop shopping online to learn what is going on and to connect with those disparate activities through some centralized links.<\/p>\n

4. Resources <\/strong><\/p>\n

This translates into time and money to pay organizers, develop particular technology platforms, and advocate effectively. By using the Internet and a number of free or low-cost online technologies, a campaign can find opportunities to create and build initial momentum. However, a serious, sustained national or international issue campaign needs substantial resources behind it for both online and offline advocacy.<\/p>\n

5. Charismatic Leadership<\/strong><\/p>\n

This ingredient is key, and unfortunately, all too often minimized as an important factor in deploying online social networking for advocacy work. Bricks and mortar stores were similarly, and mistakenly, minimized in importance during the dot-com boom \u2014 until their institutional presence in the equation was better understood. Human beings seek leadership and leaders on issues of importance to them. The decentralized approach of organizing through online networking doesn\u2019t negate the need for charismatic leadership even if the approach is the linear opposite of the hierarchical model one finds in traditional static organizations.<\/p>\n

The Internet is all about reaching out, communicating and connecting with others. It\u2019s simply a less personal way of making personal connections. Once those connections are made however, issues of direction, organization and leadership are just as important \u2014 regardless of what model you choose when advocating or campaigning.<\/p>\n

I would argue that the Dean campaign had the first four ingredients but lacked leadership \u2014 at least, leadership that convinced sufficient numbers of supporters to maintain his momentum as a candidate.<\/p>\n

Many people were already incensed by the war effort; that is, the issue already existed pre-Dean. The real question now is if the momentum Dean built upon can be shifted to another, more charismatic leader who can use it to greater effect.<\/p>\n

While some of the most popular grassroots advocacy sites have lost just about every major issue they\u2019ve organized around, (the Clinton impeachment, election 2000, media ownership regulation, etc.), they, nevertheless, have managed to attract and grow a critical mass of constituents.<\/p>\n

What this shows is that building and maintaining momentum with web-based tools and approaches does work. It\u2019s simply the key ingredient of leadership that promotes the breakthrough process of winning an issue by using this momentum to best effect. A movement with critical mass, technology and resources is lost without charismatic leadership, whether online or off.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Jonathan Peizer \u2013<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhat this shows is that building and maintaining momentum with web-based tools and approaches does work. It\u2019s simply the key ingredient of leadership that promotes the breakthrough process of winning an issue by using this momentum to best effect. A movement with critical mass, technology and resources is lost without charismatic leadership, whether online or <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1756","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P9GDC1-sk","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.internautconsulting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.internautconsulting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.internautconsulting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.internautconsulting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.internautconsulting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.internautconsulting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1756\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.internautconsulting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}