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Background

Social media has been credited for enabling and helping to facilitate the recent uprisings in the Middle East. While there is some controversy over the degree to which it played a role, there is no doubt that it played a role. Governments would not have gone to the trouble of shutting down the internet if they did not fear its power and potential for direct communication and organizing of the people.

Facebook and Twitter are both decentralized networks of information. This is both a strength and a weakness when using them as tools for activism. The strength is that they help information travel very quickly through social connections. The weakness is that some useful information is distributed throughout the network which makes it more opaque than necessary. There is also lots of potentially useful information that does not exist anywhere in the network.

UK Uncut has done a great job of using these social tools while also providing centralized access to some of the most essential information about their actions. This makes it much easier for people to find out what’s going on and even initiate new actions themselves. Yet it still leaves some critical information untapped and in the minds of potential participants. This is information that if transparent could influence even more people to participate.

The Concept

Pledge Based Activism is a new concept designed to help solve some of the challenges that have traditionally been faced by activists. Foremost among these challenges is getting the general public to participate and this is where Pledge Based Activism can help most. It will collect and make transparent information that will allow the public to make better informed decisions when they consider participating in an action. A similar concept has already been implemented with good results in the space of project fundraising. There is no reason it couldn’t be just as powerful in the world of political activism.

As was discussed in the FDL member webinar last week many people generally support the principle behind any given action, yet are somewhat skeptical as to the impact it will make. This is perfectly reasonable as we only get 24 hours in a day and most people are balancing work, family hobbies and other commitments. Most people already have a very full life before considering participation in any form of activism and are keenly aware of the sacrifice required to participate.

Pledge Based Activism works by dramatically lowering the bar to initial participation and providing much greater assurance of the impact that will be made if they are asked to make the sacrifice necessary to participate in the final action. Initial participation in the action is reduced to little more than a mouse click indicating support for and willingness to participate in the action or campaign if they are joined by enough others to make it meaningful. Activists organizing the action or campaign clearly present what would be required of participants and an analysis of the expected impact at increasing levels of participation. This information allows the public to make an informed decision about what level of participation and expected impact would be sufficient to make their sacrifice worthwhile.

An Example

An example of an “ask” or pledge is described in the No Confidence Protest Vote 2012 strategy. In this case the pledge would be to do as follows:

– cast a valid vote in the election they are pledging in (one that must be included in the official tally)

– do not vote for a Republican or Democratic candidate

In this example the fear of “wasting” a vote is reduced because this sacrifice would only be made if enough others pledge to do the same, thus providing some degree of assurance that the expected impact will indeed occur. This specific “ask” has been made by various people throughout the years but confidence of the public has always been lacking. Transparent pledge data would go a long way towards building that missing confidence. Voters would be able to make a pledge with no sacrifice and be free to change their mind on voting day if they were not joined by enough other voters to deem a protest vote meaningful.

The Tool

Here is an example of what a pledge screen might look like:



There are several key elements. First, the name of the campaign or action and a simple concise presentation of what is being pledged are presented. Second, at the right of the screen essential information about the status and number of participants of the campaign is presented. This includes simple english as well as a graphical thermometer. The levels presented would be dynamic based on the campaign or action goals and reasonable expectations. Each level would also be clickable and would present a summary of the impact the organizers expect to make if that level of participation is reached. Finally, there is a simple pledge form allowing participants to specify their intent. This form would include at least an email address and the conditions which will activate the pledge. These conditions may be as simple as the number of other participants but could also include additional factors essential to the participant’s decision about joining (such as who the Democratic and Republican nominees turn out to be in this example).

The thermometer graphic tracks pledges at each level. Activated pledges are green. You’ll notice the next level of pledges to activate is yellow, and so on. The numeric labels are also color coded. When the top of the yellow pledges in the thermometer reaches the associated yellow numeric label the pledges will activate. At that point those pledges would join the green pledges as active and the next level would turn yellow, and so on through the levels. This makes it apparent how close each level is to becoming active all in one simple graphic.

The pledge form could be launched from any web page that presents information about the campaign or action via a pledge button similar to the way people like things on Facebook or tweet them today. Campaign or action status information could also be embedded in any web page as a widget. These would help a Pledge Based Activism tool become an activist optimized form of social media that could be integrated with and used with the more general social media tools that already exist.

In addition to the pledge form and social media integration a Pledge Based Activism tool should also offer a central listing of campaigns and actions that are currently running as well as supporting campaigns like UK Uncut which are coordinated protests that take place locally and on a repeating basis. Participants would be able to find the actions supporting that campaign in their local area and pledge against the local action.

A Pledge Based Activism tool would of course also allow participants to view a list of their pledges and status of the associated campaign or action. This would tell them whether their pledge had been activated or not (although an automatic email would be sent out when the pledge was activated). They would also be able to edit any pledges. The edit function would be critical as campaigns will want to know when participants change their mind.

Closing Thoughts

By reducing the initial sacrifice as much as possible and providing assurance when the public participates the likelihood of participation will be significantly increased. I expect there will also be a feedback cycle as more of the public (not traditionally politically active) pledges, participates, and sees actual impacts occur. Success leads to a sense of empowerment which leads to further participation leading to further success. Campaigns that are not successful in gaining enough pledges will be relatively cost and sacrifice free to the general public and will therefore not necessarily reduce the power of this feedback. In fact it may increase confidence when actions and campaigns that do not have enough support for success are cut short without wasted effort and sacrifice.

While these benefits of Pledge Based Activism are significant in themselves, this is only a fraction of the power Pledge Based Activism has to offer. During our member webinar Jane talked about how carefully she always considers what is involved in asking people to participate or help out in any way. Both the effort and anticipated outcome are considered. Pledge Based Activism can significantly reduce the initial effort required by the public to indicate their general willingness to participate. It provides a tool to gauge public sentiment and without asking too much. By shifting the cost / benefit measure for participants it makes the “ask” easier. This in turn will lead to more actions, more campaigns, and more activism. Most importantly, all of these that gain enough support to move to the next stage of an actual action or event will see a much greater chance of success.

In essence Pledge Based Activism is a tool to help activists to communicate earlier, more transparently, and more effectively with the participating public. Better communication and more information will lead to more successful activism which should and hopefully will lead to a healthier democracy.

Stay tuned for a follow up post where I will discuss challenges and issues to successfully implementing Pledge Based Activism as well as answer commonly asked questions.

If you have a minute please let me know what you think. I would really like to get feedback on this idea. Do you see as much potential in it as I do? Do you think there are insurmountable challenges to making it work? Do you think Facebook and Twitter are good enough and offer all the social tools necessary for net organizing and activism?