Knowledge Exchange presentation by Anastasia Kavada at the 2012 eCampaigning Forum in Oxford.

1. E-campaigning Forum, Oxford 21-22 March 2012
Anastasia Kavada
University of Westminster

2.  Access to new audiences
 Lowers costs of mobilization - information can spread
through pre-existing social networks
 Capacity for interaction and co-production of content
carry the potential for community-building

3.  Loss of control over the message
 Presence on multiple platforms:
 Dispersion of the supporter base
 Lack of message coherence
 Duplication and potential waste of resources
 Limited commitment - Transient sense of belonging
 Weak participation - ‘clicktivism’ &‘slacktivism’
 Promote individuality rather than collective unity

4.  Practitioners:
‘Ladder of engagement’ or ‘supporter journey’
 Academic research:
Threshold of participation, rational choice theory
But…
 Underlying assumption: A smooth progression up the
ladder of engagement?
 Focus on the individual and not on how the individual
is engaged in the collective

5. Mapping of Collective Action
Bimber, Flanagin&Stohl (2005), (2006)

6. Mode of Engagement
Entrepreneurial:
high responsibility &
opportunity
Mode of Interaction
[Bonding]
Personal: Impersonal:
direct Interaction no direct interaction
Institutional:
low responsibility
& opportunity (Flanagin et al., 2006, p. 34)

7. Move from web 1.0 to 2.0
means that we need to study websites
not as top-down communication from advocacy groups to
users
but as platforms of interactionbetween a variety of
actors(web coordinators, lay users, platform creators etc.)
So we need to pay attention to:
 classes or types of users
 roles and rules, governance norms and policy documents
 modes of interaction and co-production of content

8. Case studies:
 Main Facebook and Twitter page of 38 Degrees and
Amnesty International UK
Methods:
 Features analysis (focus on the design and architecture)
 Content analysis of comments (focus on the use)
 Interviews (focus on the use)

9. Activities
 Affiliating
Ranges from institutional
 Framing to entrepreneurial
 Mobilizing Added: presence of the
individual voice in the
 Taking Action collective
 Managing the space

10.  Ranges from personal (leads to direct ties) to
impersonal (leads to affiliative ties)
Added:
 who can communicate with whom
 degree of interactivity (two-way communication)
 degree of synchronicity
 degree of privacy

11.  Greater individual autonomy in affiliating to the
organization
 Framing of issues, narrative of campaigns and agenda-
setting is controlled by the organization
 Design of Facebook pages and Twitter profiles helps to
distinguish between organizational and individual
voices
 Individuals play a somewhat greater role in
curating/arranging information on the platform
 Mobilizing: Greater individual autonomy in using one’s
social network to spread the word

12. Individual supporters & organization
 mainly public and impersonal communication
 some interaction on discussion pages, wall posts and
@replies
Supporters & their own social networks
More opportunities for synchronous, interactive and private
communication
Supporters & Supporters
 mainly public
 opportunity for interaction on discussion pages and
Facebook wall – but content analysis shows that this is
limited

13. Interpersonal bonding with one’s own network
but affiliative ties with other supporters

14. Mode of Understand
Engagement social media as
Entrepreneurial in the broader
embedded
communication ecology of
Mode of Interaction the organization
[Bonding] LG
Personal Impersonal
FB
TW
Institutional

15. Mode of Engagement
Study the links, flows, and
Entrepreneurial
overlaps between different
communication spaces
Mode of Interaction
[Bonding] LG
Personal Impersonal
FB
TW
Institutional

16. Please send questions and feedback to
A.Kavada@westminster.ac.uk