4.3. Emergence of a Public Interest Network

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4.3. Emergence of a Public Interest Network (Top)

Drawing on an army of Internet users and responding to the pent up anger of people over the attempt to remove President Clinton from office, a group called "Moveon" introduced a unique technology that enabled people to use the power of numbers and connectivity to influence the political system. In the campaign against removal from office, millions of angry people signed petitions, contacted their representatives, contacted the media, and organized rallies and demonstrations. Moveon technologies were subsequently adopted and adapted by other groups, particularly in opposition to the impending war on Iraq. They became widely applied in a growing number of public issue areas and grew in number before and during the 2000 elections and have continued to grow ever since. These groups varied in focus from single to multiple issues and their relative emphasis on identifying problems as opposed to taking actions to help remedy them. But, all had in common a new platform and a new way to organize to connect and facilitate people of like minds.

To distinguish them from traditional public interest groups, we call them "Advocacy Nets," or A-Nets, for short. The relationship between the grass roots movement and A-Nets is reciprocal. The movement in its unique incarnation was made possible by A-Net technologies. But, the forces behind the movement also led to the creation of A-Nets and the refinement of their technologies. A-Nets are "Virtual" entities in the sense that they no physical facilities and they are "Emergent" in the sense that they tend to be self-organizing. While traditional public interest groups tend to be organized hierarchically from the top down, these new networks tend to be organized collegially from the bottom up. They also differ from other groups in that they have developed a unique "How-To" technology for detecting and addressing public problems.

Perhaps the most striking difference between A-Nets and traditional groups is in leadership. The traditional role of leaders is to acquire power and force others to do something or to enforce the top-down dictates of higher level leaders. In the nicer tradition of "leading," the role is more akin to the salesperson who persuades others to do something. In contrast, leadership in A-Nets is to facilitate peers and to act as a catalyst. Leadership in A-Nets is sometimes described as being led by peers and managing things above. As often as not, leaders did not look for their jobs, their jobs found them.

A-Nets have proliferated because of the growing number and intensity of government and corporation actions that are perceived to be in violation of the public interest and because A-Nets are relatively cheap to create and operate. Unlike traditional organizations, they are not capital intensive. In many respects, they are the information production and distribution equivalents to energy production and distribution, where oil is organizationally intensive (and monopolized) while decentralized renewable energy is not. In theory, anyone with access to the Internet and a little knowledge of Weblogs can start up his/her own advocacy net. In many respects, this is the age of the information and communication public interest entrepreneur.

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Benjamin Barber

Benjamin R. Barber - bbarber
Dist Univ Prof
BSOS-Government & Politics
Government & Politics
Univ. of Md. College Park, College Park MD 20742-7215

"Democracy and Technology: a project to design and implement web-based deliberation and collaboration software based on the principles of participatory democracy in order to foster communication on a global scale. The result is a virtual space where communities can self-moderate discussions, configure agendas, debate and vote on issues, collaborate on documents, and teach one another in real time."

From Preface to Fourth Printing to Strong Democracy
"It is almost as if there are two democracies in America: the one defined by national parties and presidential politics and bureaucratic policies, a remote world circumscribed by Washington's beltway, walling in the politicans even as it walls out the citizens; and the other defined by neighborhood and block associations, PTAs and community action groups, an intimate domain no larger than a town or a rural county where women and men gather in small groups to adjudicate differences or plan common tasks. With something of a pejorative sneer, we call the first "politics," cynical about the corruption of politicians, skeptical about the competence of voters or about the possibilities of participation in affairs so complex and institutions so bureaucraticed. But about the second we wax exuberant, celebrating its spirited good-neighborliness and restless activity, though we scaresly associate it with politics or democracy at all"

Note: Also relevant to section on local democracy and other places

References
Ito, Joi, Emergent Democracy Paper, See Weblog References for Democracy and the Internet.

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