Networked advocacy
While networked advocacy has existed for centuries, it has become significantly more efficacious in recent years due in large part to the widespread availability of the internet, mobile telephones, and related communications technologies that enable users to overcome the transaction costs of collective action.
Walter Lippmann coined the phrase "pseudo-environment" in his 1922 book Public Opinion to refer to the ways people make sense of their worlds based on what they have individually experienced, what he called "the pictures in our heads".
Olson suggests that "selective incentives," positive or negative inducements that affect only members of a particular group, along with coercive measures can play a part in overcoming the rational disinclination toward collective action.
"[16] She continues, explaining that, "ordinary people take advantage of incentives created by shifting opportunities and constraints…they transform social networks and cultural frameworks into action …the Internet and other forms of electronic communication are changing the nature of mobilization.
"[25] Keck and Sikkink's boomerang model is relatable to John Gaventa's assertion that routines and internalization of roles or false consensus lead to acceptance of the status quo by the dominated, simply because over time they become oblivious to their own conditions.
As they explain, the "emerging alternative model… applies increasingly to life in the late modern societies in which institutions are losing their grip on authority and group ties are being replaced by large-scale, fluid social networks.
As they explain, referring back to Olson and rational choice theory, new technology and the ability to easily engage with content can overcome individual resistance, the need for selective incentives and, thus, the costs of collective action.
Bennett identifies a trade off between this increased ease of mobilizing large numbers of people quickly and cheaply, and the fact that they are characterized by loose ties and less clear ideological interests – maybe even at the risk of "incoherence."
"[43] Bruce Bimber argues that Schattschneider's view that only wealthy interests can be represented in the pressure group system is largely irrelevant today due to the low transaction costs of using electronically enabled networks.
He lauds this ability to transition, which gives participants both, "possible face-to-face interaction, sharing the experience, the danger and the difficulties, as well as facing together the police and enduring together rain, cold and the loss of comfort in their daily lives.
While, social networks on the Internet allowed the experience to be communicated and amplified, bringing the entire world into the movement, and creating a permanent forum of solidarity, debate and strategic planning."
While he rejoices in the possibilities for digitally enabled communication and the creation of a new space where the elite and non-elite begin on a more even playing field, he clearly has a deep appreciation for the strong ties that come with sharing physical experiences – especially the risk and fear associated with public actions.
One of the most important devices used by activists in social movements, transnational advocacy networks, and other realms of contentious politics is the framing of issues and causes in ways that appeal to potential collaborators and targets.
Complex global networks carry and re-frame ideas, insert them in policy debates, pressure for regime formation, and enforce existing international norms and rules, at the same time that they try to influence particular domestic political issues.
[74] An important question that has been addressed in recent advocacy research is whether today's activists are using a new repertoire of contention or merely incorporating technological tools and advancements into the set of strategies and perspectives they have used in the past.
A new starting point, outside the typical functions and understanding, of how governance and collective action is used to provide for critical needs like public safety, clean water and health care, for example.
In their paper, "Information and Communication Technologies in Areas of Limited Statehood (2012), Livingston and Walter-Drop consider how ICTs can be used as a modes of governance to provide goods, protection or the enforcement of political decisions when states are incapable or hindered in ability to do so.
While Castells calls these spaces of autonomy, "the new spatial form of networked social movements (222)," Earl and Kimport also recognize a level of digital activism that exceeds this kind of supersized action.
Many argue that in 1976, Bill Gates signaled the beginning of the software-for-pay business with his Open Letter to Hobbyists, which referred to those people tinkering with the Altair BASIC system, which he developed with Paul Allen, criminals and guilty of copyright infringement.
Viral marketing relies heavily on networked communications, whether Internet bulletin board systems (BBS), chat rooms or social media services like Twitter and Facebook.
Those who see the Internet as having played a crucial role believe ICT reinforced portions of theoretical concepts behind networked advocacy in protests in Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and Iran.
[81] In addition, The Egyptian appeal to private businesses and Western governments is an example of the networked advocacy "Boomerang Effect," described as early as 1984 by Millard F. Mann of the University of Kansas[82] but popularized in the work Activists Beyond Borders by communications experts Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink.
While Keck and Sikkink mention some areas of limited statehood in the case studies presented in Activists Beyond Borders, their theory of collective action still focuses primarily on the interaction between nation states and non-state actors.
They hypothesize that "theory 2.0" will create an environment conducive to a "wide" range of protest areas, including "saving television shows, supporting boy bands and challenging corporate game producers.
It can illuminate problems, create communities with common goals, bring attention to injustice, and even redefine the idea of an "international" or "domestic" issue by simply showing the physical location of an event.
According to Meier, "Situational awareness is key to allocating resources and coordinating logistics… Gaining information like this straight from crisis zones is a game changer; these technologies didn’t exist just a few years ago.
Meier, by examining collective action in the realm of humanitarian disasters, sheds light on what might be a way forward in terms of how ICT can create digitally enabled modes of governance when he recommends a "more decentralized, bottom-up approach.
As Scott states, the technologies and capabilities now available to "enhance the legibility of a society to its rulers have become vastly more sophisticated, but the political motives driving them have changed little - appropriation, control, and manipulation remain the most prominent (77)."
If the overarching concern of the state's political, economic, or theologic regime is with self-preservation, then ICTs such as those discussed prior in the hands of a dictator or authoritarian ruler can be a powerful tool for quashing any sort of challenges.
Sensing, or experiencing collaboration and collective action on the part of a partial or full segment of the population, the state then leverages ICTs in order to track and monitor dissidents, to ensure a monopoly control over the data, and to generally secure self-preservation of the regime.
