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    Community Organization with Digital Tools

    by Dan Schultz
    March 1, 2008

    Last week I took a digital-communication-oriented
    glance
    at the war on Scientology being led by the nontraditional online
    group called Anonymous. I’m not exactly writing a part 2, but I want to start a
    follow-up discussion on a few of the comments made and questions posed by
    Anonymous about how digital media affects the dynamics of community
    organization. That being said, if you haven’t had the chance to browse the
    comments of that post it’s probably worthwhile.

    I have mentioned in the past that I want to see digital media facilitate
    local impact; to do that well we need to understand some of the nuances of
    many-to-many digital communication and look at how those nuances might change
    the way communities can plan, organize, and ultimately act on the issues they
    find important. This post lists a few traits of online communication and what
    they might mean for digitally driven movements, including the one being led by Anonymous.

    Setting the Stage

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    I think it’s worth making sure we’re all on the same page since “digital
    communication” refers to a whole lot of things. In this post I’m talking
    about tools like forums, wikis, chat rooms, community systems, and larger scale
    systems such as Digg or YouTube. Ok, so maybe that didn’t narrow it down much,
    but really any system that facilitates community communication and supports
    multiple conversations among multiple people can be a potential platform for
    organization.

    So how does community organization using digital systems (I.S. Activism)
    compare to organization through more traditional means? Here is a far from
    comprehensive list; hopefully it gives some food for thought.

    • Lower barrier to entry
      it is a lot easier for an interested party to visit a web site than it is
      for them to travel to a meeting; since online involvement is less costly,
      people who have access to the community system are more likely to learn
      more about an issue and potentially get involved.
    • Less commitment – these
      days digital has tended to mean impersonal. That may not always be the
      case, but whenever it is people won’t have as many external/social
      pressures to stick around. It also suggests that comments and actions are
      more genuine.
    • More efficient – Well implemented
      information systems help create knowledge. In this case help comes via
      lowered individual lookup costs, computer driven collective intelligence,
      and more minds solving more problems in a naturally coordinated format.
    • Less controlled – If the
      system is democratic (note the “if”) then community members,
      rather than community leaders, ultimately control the conversations and
      decide what issues are most important. Unfortunately, depending on the
      level of community openness, this means that it may be easier for
      malicious contributors to cause problems.

    Those bullet points are all well and good, but I want to call out the most
    important point of all: I.S. activism relies
    100% on communication
    . If the channels of communication are clogged with
    irrelevant noise, if the overall direction is derailed into uselessness, or if
    the system itself is compromised in some other way, the movement dies.
    Basically, if people rely on a system to communicate and organize, then that
    system had better work well.

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    Success and Failure

    Traits aside, how will these factors come into play in deciding whether or not
    a tech driven movement ends up being a success or failure? I have thought of a
    few general pitfalls as well as some reasons why tech driven movements are
    something that our industry should strive to facilitate within the communities
    we serve.

    [Boon] Worthwhile efforts naturally resonate and grow
    – Lower barrier to entry and the ability to provide information effectively
    means that movements surrounding community issues will be able pick up steam
    much more quickly through digital media. As community members learn more and
    care more, they will think about the issues and ultimately contribute to the
    conversation. If the system is worth a darn then the collective conversation
    will lead to collective action as thoughts turn into plans.

    [Pitfall] More steam means more noise – Growth is
    good, until things get too big. In a traditional movement if an unexpectedly
    large number of people get involved the worst that would happen is that the
    extra resources would go unutilized – we don’t have enough fliers to pass out;
    there isn’t enough space in the meeting room; etc. In an online setting, having
    10 times more people than your system can support means that nobody will be able
    to keep track of what is being said and therefore nothing will get done. This
    is where scalability and system quality come into play.

    [Boon] Diverse ideas and cross pollination breed strength
    – Online settings give the concept of “many voices discussing many
    topics” a fighting chance, so multiple perspectives within the community
    will advise each community decision. Ideas and input from other communities can
    also be brought into the mix since the digital medium makes that type of cross
    posting and content sharing so easy. In the comments of my previous post DevNul
    also identified this as a way to prevent “group think” and in my
    opinion he/she has this absolutely right.

    [Pitfall] Unclear direction results in stagnancy
    Leaderless or weak-led movements could fizzle and amount to nothing without a
    well defined direction. Imagine how many millions of people join Facebook
    groups about the issues that they supposedly care about. Now think about how
    much activism those groups have triggered – hint: practically none. In this
    case the problem stems from the fact that Facebook is a terrible platform for
    group communication (yeah I said it.) With other tools the opposite problem
    might be true; there is so much communication that without a “leading voice”
    it is more difficult to move the masses in a coherent way.

    Final Thoughts

    For members of Anonymous I’m betting most of these things are already unspoken
    understandings. They have been using Internet tools for a while and their
    solutions for several digital coordination issues are tacit at this point,
    often in the form of memes (look up the phrase “tl;dr”). Visit the Enturbulation forums and you can
    see what they are doing well and what organizational problems they still face.
    For instance, forum moderators put important threads in more noticeable
    locations, yet there are plenty of individual missteps, plenty of accusations
    made between community members, and plenty of ways that the overall process
    could be made more effective.

    I believe Anonymous has established their point well enough that their
    efforts won’t stop in the near future, but keeping a high level of interest is
    vital for an online movement; genuine interest will always warrant genuine
    action. This reflects the way digital movements have changed how activism
    can work: participants are no longer just volunteers, now they define the
    issues and invent the direction.

    To bring this post home I’ll end with a final comment: I have a feeling a
    significant number of people learned about Anonymous’ issues and the
    Enturbulation forums through some type of media. What if local news
    organizations could provide an outlet for the communities they serve to do what
    Anonymous did…?

    We’re not there yet, and it would take more than just setting up some
    forums, but as Richard
    Anderson
    said at the NAA conference last weekend,
    we are moving towards the business of community hosting. Facilitating, not
    leading, community organization for impact is exactly the kind of goal that
    makes that role meaningful.

    Tagged: activism anonymous community organization digital tools

    6 responses to “Community Organization with Digital Tools”

    1. Anon says:

      I just wanted to let you know that I enjoy your articles on the subject personally, just because the focus is in a place that seems to fall in most media/people’s blind spot.

      Something I think that a lot of people, in and out of media, largely ignore is the fact that if the Anonymous movement is successful it’s going to have an impact on how media is utilized and implimented, as well as distributed.

    2. Dan Burd says:

      I know what you mean about more steam creating more noise — that’s kind of like what happened to the GPF. There are so many people on there now that I just don’t know what’s going on anymore.

    3. Mary says:

      Hi Dan,

      My name is Mary Joyce and I am a digital activism consultant (www.zapboom.com) and Harvard grad student who loves side projects.

      Working with a friend in Morocco, I recently launched a web site, http://www.digiactive.org, which is dedicated to helping activists around the world become better at using digital technologies (internet and cell phones) to increase their impact. Right now we do this by recounting and analyzes the most successful stories of digital activism from around the world.

      When I first read your analysis of Anonymous (which I quoted from for DigiActive), I thought “I should talk to this guy.” After reading the post you just wrote, I thought “I REALLY need to talk to this guy.”

      You get it (“it” being the ability of the internet to subvert power hierarchies and the world as we know it). Your analysis is spectacular. I could use your brain. Please e-mail me and let’s talk.

      Best,
      Mary

    4. Anonymous says:

      you see this guy? this guy here? he gets it

    5. Hannah Bae says:

      Hi Dan!
      I’ve finally found the News Challenge bloggers! (Granted, I hadn’t looked TOO hard for it…) Interesting post. I agree with you that Facebook groups don’t lead to actual activism, but I will defend its capabilities for group communication — but only for very focused groups. I don’t think Facebook does anything unless it translates into the real world. For example, I recently did an article about a creative writers’ collective here in Seoul that mobilized through Facebook. So I think that’s a good example of social networking leading to effective communication and action in the real world. But I agree that none of those mega-“activist” groups will ever produce any noteworthy real-life action.

    6. YetAnotherAnon says:

      You sir, win the internet.

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