--- Begin Message ---
*Clicktivism By-passes Inside Track To Harry Potter Forest*
It may be nothing new to many readers of this *Newsletter* but ‘online
campaigning’ is eating into the political space until now dominated by
‘traditional’ campaign groups. Until recently, solely online campaign
groups have tended to focus on different (often newer) issues from large
established groups, and/or have serviced more activist, often younger
communities with a more ‘radical’ agenda.
The strategies of many of these groups, using the internet primarily for
‘independent’ media communication channels, and as an organizing tool, have
often been rather naive – and hence they have often been viewed by those
they seek to change, such as governments and large corporations, as less
seriously threatening than the more established groups which have multiple
channels of influence, and deeply embedded connections within the ‘policy
communities’.
The ‘clicktivist’ debate is one such example – (Google Gladwell and Guardian
and clicktivism for a quick sample) – only those with a very limited view of
how change works could think that it was a serious question to ask whether
purely online campaigns could replace all other forms of power or influence.
No well-informed ‘cyber campaigners’ seemed to think so but it entertained
the green media blogosphere for a while.
But recent developments in the UK, while not even in the same dimension let
alone the same league of seriousness as the nation changing developments in
Egypt or Tunisia, show that, as Gladwell might say, something of a ‘tipping
point’ may have been reached.
Back in January when I should have been writing you a Newsletter – I’m
sorry, I didn’t – I wrote in a piece [1] in ‘Charity Insight’ magazine:
*‘Web 2.0 provided people with the opportunity to generate their own content
and interact with others within a virtual context. Out of this, many
campaign groups have been founded such as
**38degrees.org.uk*<http://www.38degrees.org.uk/>
*, **MoveOn.org* <http://www.move-on.org.uk/>*,
**avaaz.org*<http://www.avazz.org/>
* and **getup.org.au* <http://www.getup.org.au/>*. They offer
campaign-organising systems which potentially threaten the slower-moving
NGOs that have been built on a model of in-house knowledge and expertise and
a largely passive supporter base’.*
*‘Groups such as these are enjoying much success in enlisting supporters,
having mobilised nearly 9 million people around the world. In the UK, since
its inception in 2009, 38 Degrees has facilitated nearly a million 'actions'
by 265,000 individuals on topics from health services to disclosure of
lobbying to factory farming (see poster). Like a political party or media
outlet, and unlike most conventional NGOs which sit in an issue-specific
silo, its attention wanders far and wide’.*
Sooner than I expected, that threat to conventional NGOs manifested itself
in a quintessentially British, highly domestic issue, in heartland territory
for some of the oldest, most established, highly conventional NGOs. The
subject? The proposed sell-off of Britain’s state owned forests.
Britain’s most venerable Environment Correspondent, Geoffery Lean almost
spluttered with annoyance in an article in the *Daily Telegraph *[2]:
****
*‘Even though environmental pressure groups successfully routed previous
attempts to sell off the forests, this time they have been nowhere to be
seen. Their absence speaks volumes about the increasing irrelevance and
near-terminal timidity of bodies such as Friends of the Earth (FoE), the
Ramblers' Association and the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) …’*
Lean allied himself to Jonathon Porritt – a former head of FoE – who accused
the groups of a "massive failure of collective leadership".
Tony Juniper – another former FoE executive director – told Lean: *"This is
the first major test of the Government's environmental credentials and
hardly an eyebrow has been raised by any of Britain's main green groups."*
CPRE, wrote Lean, was *‘once so strong and savvy that it seriously worried
governments, but *[is]* now ineffective and largely ignored …. WWF-UK (aka
the World Wildlife Fund) makes much of 2011 being the International Year of
Forests, but does not seem to have said a word about the threat to them in
England. The Ramblers' Association, which spearheaded a successful campaign
to scupper a previous privatisation bid in the 1990s, only posted its
(qualified) concerns on Wednesday…The Woodland Trust, the National Trust,
and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds have been pussyfooting
around’*.
Lean contrasted the near invisibility and silence of the established
campaign groups with the activities of 38 Degrees, Britain’s home grown
version of Avaaz:
*‘By contrast, the fast-growing internet action group, 38 degrees, started
campaigning almost immediately after the Government's plans was first
revealed … last October. How so? Unlike the complacent leadership of most
of the pressure groups, it listens to its members and encourages them to
suggest campaigns: it received more than 1,000 emails urging action within
hours of the story breaking.’ *
An *‘extraordinary public revolt’* was now going on wrote Lean, which *‘is
threatening to shake the Coalition’*. 80,000 people had signed a petition
against the sales [471,301 had signed when I checked while writing this *
Newsletter*] and *‘Britain's substantially resourced – and insufferably
self-important – environmental pressure groups have played no part in it.
Only now are they scrambling sclerotically to try to avoid being left
behind’*.
So was this the power of clicktivism? Well, yes and no. The threat to sell
off Britain’s national forests had alarmed and angered some well-heeled
local ‘communities’ across ‘Middle England’ because they foresaw a loss of
access, of care and of environmental quality. They had started their own
campaigns such as www.handsoffourforest.org working primarily in the Forest
of Dean (featured in the latest *Harry Potter* film), and 38Degrees provided
a lightning rod for national and local concern, which the old established
NGOs failed to do. Hence they were side-lined in the national conversation.
The larger older NGOs either didn’t see it coming or couldn’t organise
themselves to react.
According to Geoff Lean and Jonathan Porritt in the *Daily Telegraph* *‘The
green groups almost all respond that they have been "working behind the
scenes". This is "not true"’*. According to people have spoken to, this is
not quite right. The ‘green groups’, ie the established NGOs, had been in a
stand-off with the government. They met with government officials and told
them that they might be prepared to take on some discarded government assets
– both ‘forests’ and nature reserves (from the dismemberment of the agency
Natural England) but at a price. They simply lacked the resources to do it
alone. As reported in *The Independent* [3] the large NGOs had been
privately trying to bargain with the government about the terms of a partial
take-over since last autumn, and, I’m told, had agreed amongst themselves to
keep quiet about it. The local uprisings and the 38Degrees petition seem to
have wrong-footed them, as no terms had been agreed.
With a quietly English form of bedlam breaking out, the National Trust (3m
members) have since broken ranks, along with the Woodland Trust, in making a
public bid to set terms for what should be done – belatedly and much to the
annoyance of other major groups now left even more stranded by events. I
rarely say this but I agree with Jonathan Porritt, who told Geoff Lean, that
the establishment NGOs *“have made themselves look foolish and irrelevant”.*
The sale of Britain’s forest is a domestic concern of little interest to
most readers of this *Newsletter* (the great majority of you are living
elsewhere in the world) and scarcely measures up against the threats to
humanity or the environment that you are trying to grapple with but the
dynamic between the old established NGO model, publics, and government, is
well nigh universal in campaigning.
The take-out for the mainframe NGOs (a kinder word than the ‘dinosaur’ tag
which many of them even use themselves in private), is that the agile online
surfers and collators of public mood such as Avaaz and 38Degrees not only
can mobilise their own base constituency who live ‘inline’ but increasingly,
can step into the deepest, sleepiest hollows of old school politics between
the aristocracy of NGO-land and formal government, and ‘speak for the
people’, taking as much space from NGOs as they do from the media. They are
a rising phenomenon.
*
*
*Inglehart Your Time Has Come*
Readers of these *Newsletters* may remember pieces (eg # 54) on how Ron
Inglehart and his co-workers from the World Values Survey have long charted
how the shifting proportions of social values at the individual level, lead
to change at a national level. Anyone wanting to understand what has been
going on in Egypt, indeed across parts of the Arab would, ought to have a
look at *Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy: The Human Development
Sequence*, by Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel, (Cambridge University
Press, 2005). Not a light read but very interesting.
In a society like Egypt, I think they would say, we are seeing the political
expression of ‘self-expression values’: ie the demand in the political
sphere, for freedoms and self-determination which have been experienced in
other spheres, such as in commerce, careers, entertainment and arts. In the
end, democracy follows.
*
*
*Get The Benefits Right*
One of the campaign basics described at this website [4] and in the *Book
How to Win Campaigns* is PSB – being able to specify the Problem, the
Solution and the Benefit of a campaign ask or offer.
Quite often campaigners struggle to specify the ‘benefit’, that is, the
benefit as it applies to the audience of the moment – be they media viewers,
listeners or others. So thinking about ‘benefits’ is usually time well
spent. But ‘benefits’ can also lead us astray. Last year I was asked to
help re-strategize a campaign backed by an array of NGOs and civil society
organisations, seeking a change in a national law. They had identified a
range of arguments or reasons for what they wanted in ‘benefit’ terms, and
wanted to use these in recruiting a diverse range of supporters.
So far so good but the trouble was, the more you looked at it, the more
problematic these arguments seemed; the difficulty being that in almost
every case, while they did offer benefits, there were easier and more
reliable ways to achieve the benefit. So although benefits might occur, they
were unlikely to build a coalition, or even a majority, because there was
competition from other options for getting the same result.
The test for a useful benefit therefore has to be that the gain looks
certain, and it looks an easier and more reliable way to achieve that gain,
with lower costs, than other options.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* How to Win Campaigns: Communications for Change *(Edition 2, pub Earthscan
2010) is available at http://www.earthscan.co.uk/tabid/102418/Default.aspx
[1] Brave New World, *Charity Insight Magazine* 24 January 2011
http://www.charityinsight.com/features/strategy/brave-new-world_24_1_2011
[2] Green groups lost in the woods - Forest sell-off: the silence of the
Greens, Geoffery Lean, *Daily Telegraph* February 6 2011,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthcomment/geoffrey-lean/8304192/Green-groups-lost-in-the-woods.html
[3] Wardens plan to rescue 140 nature reserves, Michael McCarthy,
Environment Editor, February 2 2011,
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/wardens-plan-to-rescue-140-nature-reserves-2201500.html
[4]
http://www.campaignstrategy.org/book_extracts/constructing_raspb_propositions_1.html
The Campaign Strategy Newsletter - Copyright Chris Rose.
You are free to reproduce all or any part of this newsletter if you credit
the source.
http://www.campaignstrategy.org is a non-profit website on campaign
techniques & strategies, designed to help NGOs. To subscribe to this free
newsletter visit http://www.campaignstrategy.org.
To offer contributions or comments contact the author
[email protected]
HOW TO WIN CAMPAIGNS pub April 7 2005 Earthscan by Chris Rose see
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1853839620/ref=ed_ra_of_dp/202-6151204-2796606or
from
http://www.earthscan.co.uk/?tabid=102418
_______________________________________________
campaignstrategy mailing list
To subscribe / unsubscribe, visit:
http://campaignstrategy.org/mailman/listinfo/campaignstrategy_campaignstrategy.org
The Campaign Strategy Newsletter - Copyright Chris Rose.
You are free to reproduce all or any part of this newsletter if you credit the
source.
www.campaignstrategy.org is a non-profit website on campaign techniques and
strategies, designed to help NGOs.
To offer contributions or comments contact the author
[email protected]
HOW TO WIN CAMPAIGNS pub April 7 2005 Earthscan by Chris Rose see
www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1853839620/ref=ed_ra_of_dp/202-6151204-2796606
or at a discount from www.earthscan.co.uk
--- End Message ---
