Networked advocacy or net-centric advocacy refers to a specific type of 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.
The study of networked advocacy draws on interdisciplinary sources, including communication theory, political science, and sociology. Theories of networked advocacy have been heavily influenced by social movement literature, and refer to the preexisting networks used to create and support collective actions and advocacy as well as the networks that such actions and advocacy create.
History and scope of advocacy networks Examples of formal transnational advocacy networks date back to 1823 with the formation of the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Dominions. Other examples include the women's movement, the environmental movement,Keck, M.E. and Sikkink, K. (1998). Activists beyond borders. Advocacy networks in international relations Ithaca: Cornell University Press. and the anti-landmine movement. However, the number, size, and professionalism of networks, as well as the speed, density and complexity of international linkages between and within them, has grown dramatically since the 1960s.Keck, Margaret E., and Kathryn Sikkink. "Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Cornell University Press, 1998, p. 10. While advocacy networks as a whole have been able to grow in size in recent years, they nonetheless continue to vary in scale individually, with Keck and Sikkink noting that networks may operate transnationally, regionally, or domestically. One of the most important changes in recent decades has been in the ability of less formally organized or professionally run networks to grow and develop. Sometimes these networks eventually take on the characteristics of their more professionally managed counterparts, and other times they remain strikingly informal.
Networked advocacy, by its nature, is more likely to be conducted (and to be identified) in a transnational context than a domestic one. But the mistake should not be made of considering only transnational networks of activists to be networked advocacy. A transnational character makes it easier to spot networked advocacy, but an international context is not a prerequisite. Two examples of advocacy networks from different ends of the American political spectrum serve as good illustrations of this point. Tea party activists and the protesters of Code Pink, though advocating for opposing political views, both have a horizontal, loosely connected network structure. Each group comprises smaller nodes dispersed throughout the country that are loosely connected with one another on a national level. These nodes can share lessons, techniques, and even resources, and they occasionally come together for larger conferences or actions. Both of these groups are also primarily focused on U.S. policy, defying the assertion that networked advocacy can only operate in a transnational context.
Elements of networked advocacy
Imagined communities Benedict Anderson's 1983 book Imagined Communities defined nations as socially structured communities, and thus nationalism as something imagined by a group of people who perceive themselves as a part of that nation. By the time of Anderson's writing, social constructivism in the concept of nationality was hardly a new phenomenon. 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". In popular culture, and much more cynically, Kurt Vonnegut had coined the term granfalloon to refer to a group which claims to have a common purpose but is actually meaningless. Vonnegut's main example is the group of people who claim to be Hoosiers and hence believe themselves intertwined by common identity despite having no other social or material connection. What set Anderson apart from these two other writers was his description of the connection between modes of communication and the formation of the modern nation state. According to Anderson, the rise of print-capitalism came with a standardization of language and writing in the vernacular. The standardization of writing allowed for a common discourse to emerge between people who were separated by long distances and experienced no direct personal interactions. This, in turn, enabled common identities to form and "imagined communities" to arise.
Such imagined communities have significantly affected the nature of networked advocacy. The development of international networks concurrent with the rise of inexpensive yet sophisticated information communication technologies has allowed events of seemingly local significance to be scaled to global significance with fewer impediments. The implications of this change in the nature of international advocacy come in terms of both the scope of what organizations and individuals can accomplish and in the scale of their accomplishments. The inherently transnational nature of the associations and tools utilized in such efforts make it quite possible that new nations may arise without the identity of a nation state.
Collective action Collective action is the pursuit of a goal or set of goals by more than one person. A group coalesces around a single goal or issue and agitates for change. Collective action is made easier through networked advocacy because the search and information costs of organizing are lowered by new communication networks, especially the internet. The scale-free nature of many organizational networks allows for collective action to be at once organized and leaderless.
James Madison provided a gateway for thinking about collective action in his Federalist No. 10.Hamilton, Alexander; Madison, James; and Jay, John. The Federalist. Edited by Jacob E. Cooke. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1961. Madison was concerned with a faction of the population rising up and forming a mob. Madison saw collective action as the workings of factions: Men whose "instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into public councils, have in truth been the mortal disease under which governments have perished." He feared collective action and wanted to avoid and suppress it.
In order to limit the contagiousness of conflict, Madison wanted to raise the transaction costs required for collective action by expanding the size of the public. To Madison, the key to political stability was found in raising the barriers to collective action so that the aggrieved could not find others with similar grievances. Madison advocated for a polity containing a highly varied body of citizens from within a very large geographic entity, making collective action less probable. The model of extending the public sphere lowered the influence of factions, increased the transaction costs for groups attempting to mobilize, and decreased disruption of government affairs.
Transaction costs have had evolving identities since the beginning of their existence. James Madison speaks of transaction costs in Federalist 10. Transaction costs is the cost of the exchange and sharing of information so that individuals, groups and organizations can work together, communicate and achieve a common goal. During the time of James Madison, transaction costs were high. Information technology was crude in form and it took much time and energy to communicate ideas and information with others. Madison knew that this was to his advantage when it came to quelling conflict in the American masses. So long as transaction costs were high, people had less incentive to communicate common grievances with each other and start any conflict with the government or other groups of people. Transaction costs have since evolved and have played key roles in the mobilization of organizations and groups. With the expansion of information technology involving telephones and the internet, people are more apt to share information at low costs. It is now fast and inexpensive to communicate with others. As a result, transaction costs regarding communication and the sharing of information is low and, at times, free. Low transaction costs have allowed for groups of people to join in common causes. The growth of shared information, conflict can be socialized rather than privatized. As a result, people can become more involved in decision making processes and functionality of government and organizations. However, even though there are very low transaction costs among greater populations, there is still the growing issue of changing social capital.
Some scholars have suggested, however, that some elements of Madison's arguments in Federalist #10 need to be revisited. For example, by expanding the sphere, Madison has indeed raised transaction costs. But scholars like E.E. Schattschneider have argued that "the flaw in the pluralist heaven is that the heavenly choir sings with a strong upper class accent." The upper classes are the only ones in society who have the resources necessary for the "mobilization of bias", and thus Madison has unintentionally disenfranchised the lower classes access to political influence. Other holes in Madison's argument are that, in today's digital world of modern telecommunications and instant communication, geographical distance may be meaningless.
Mancur Olson might be called the father of modern collective action theory. His 1965 book, The Logic of Collective Action, takes an economics-based approach to studying when groups do and do not collaborate to achieve common goals. Starting with the assumption of individual rationality, Olson posits that rational individuals will always act in their own self-interest, rather than a collective or group good, unless the group is small or they are coerced in some way. In his model, the costs of participation create an incentive for individuals to "free ride," or rely on others to provide the collective good. This tendency is especially acute in the context of large groups, where individual contributions are difficult to perceive by other group members. 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.Olson, Mancur. 1971. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press: 51.