RPI Senior Thesis Project: Grassroots Activism & the Web

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised:

By Allan La Grenade-Finch

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised:

How the internet empowers community politics in the information age.

By Allan La Grenade-Finch Class of 2013 Science, Technology, & Society Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute ...

Acknowledgments: I’d like to sincerely thank everyone who, in one way or another, helped me put together this thesis. It’s been a long journey to get to this moment, and I couldn’t have done it without some seriously-strong support and inspiration from my family and friends. Specifically, I’d like to thank my parents for making my education possible, my brothers Adrian, Tommy, and Travis for challenging me to climb higher and always allowing me to be myself, my RPI professors for showing me the world, Manik Rathee for sharing his incredible story with me, and Professor Ali Kenner for giving me the confidence to take my ideas to the next level. To those I haven’t mentioned specifically, know that I am forever grateful for all the things you have done for me, in ways both big and small. It has been a joy and a privilege to know you. ...

Senior Project Spring 2013

“Are we a lost generation of our people?

Add us to equations but they'll never make us equal.

She who writes the movie owns the script and the sequel.

So why ain't the stealing of my rights made illegal?

They keep us underground working hard for the greedy, But when it's time pay they turn around and call us needy.

My crown too heavy like the Queen Nefertiti Gimme back my pyramid, I'm trying to free Kansas City.

Mixing masterminds like your name Bernie Grundman.

Well I'm gonna keep leading like a young Harriet Tubman You can take my wings but I'm still goin' fly And even when you edit me the booty don't lie Yeah, keep singing and I'mma keep writing songs I'm tired of Marvin asking me, ‘What's Going On?’ March to the streets 'cuz I'm willing and I'm able Categorize me, I defy every label And while you're selling dope, we're gonna keep selling hope We rising up now, you gotta deal you gotta cope Will you be electric sheep?

Electric ladies, will you sleep?

Or will you preach?”

- Janelle Monáe, Q.U.E.E.N.

Abstract ...

This thesis argues that in order for grassroots movements to be successful in achieving their social policy goals, the internet must be effectively leveraged for its unique and essential properties. Specifically, the argument is examined through three specific perspectives on the web: its technological innovation, information freedom culture, and potential for truly participatory governance. This examination is especially relevant in 2013 due to the increasingly common emergence of protest and social justice movements in countries around the world that have either been born online or utilize the internet in specific ways to boost their effectiveness in affecting change on a local and global scale. The direction of the research conducted is inspired by the central question: “What is the nature of grassroots activism for internet-savvy social justice movements?� Sub-questions are organized around specific topics within the three perspectives: innovation in web development, the promotion of information freedom, and the integration of participatory democracy in grassroots operation. Contemporary periodicals, peer-reviewed journal articles, speeches, and an interview with a software engineer for President Obama make up the extent of my research sources. Stakeholders of this research include social movements like Occupy Wall Street, information and communication technologies including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, web developers, and governments around the world. This thesis concludes that the web is a game-changing communication medium, tailor-made for grassroots movements, and insists that there are still more opportunities for these organizations to take advantage of the democratizing nature of the web to facilitate better participation in the governance of grassroots social action.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: How the internet empowers grassroots community politics in the information age.

Table of Contents Introduction .............................................................................................................................................. 2 Why This Matters Now .............................................................................................................................. 2 Thesis Statement ....................................................................................................................................... 5 Stakeholders .............................................................................................................................................. 6 Background ............................................................................................................................................... 8 Grassroots Organizing: A Brief History ...................................................................................................... 8 Defining Terms ........................................................................................................................................ 12 Prior Opinions .......................................................................................................................................... 16 Great Invention or Greatest Invention? .............................................................................................. 16 Pop Culture Weighs In ......................................................................................................................... 17 Stakeholders in a Web-Savvy Movement............................................................................................ 17 Body of Research.................................................................................................................................... 19 Deploying Innovative Web Technologies ................................................................................................. 19 Community Organizing: Reborn .......................................................................................................... 19 Mechanics of Engagement .................................................................................................................. 23 Promoting Information Freedom ............................................................................................................. 26 Access to Knowledge ........................................................................................................................... 26 Disclosure of Knowledge ..................................................................................................................... 30 Transcending Censorship .................................................................................................................... 32 Integrating a Participatory Democracy Model ......................................................................................... 35 ICTs as Vehicles for Participation ........................................................................................................ 36 Increasing Access Globally .................................................................................................................. 38 How Things Could Be Different ........................................................................................................... 40 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................... 41 Appendix A: Full Interview with Manik Rathee ............................................................................ 44 Works Cited ............................................................................................................................................. 49

Introduction Why This Matters Now On a crisp fall evening in October 2011, having just gotten back from a full day of classes, I collapsed into the chair in my room and flipped open my laptop to ease myself into the long evening of work that later awaited me. Of course, firing up the internet was my first stop on the road to relaxation. I like to fully-immerse myself in the buzz and hum of the web— there is always something going on with my friends on various social media outlets, or some crazy event taking place halfway around the world to read about. That night, I went straight to my favorite online news-aggregation websites to sift through my carefully-curated variety of sources for all of the day’s stories. There was the usual fare, including articles on the upcoming 2012 US national election, the death of Steve Jobs, the iconic CEO of Apple, and the continuing coverage of the political fallout from the Arab Spring revolutions. However, also trending alongside those stories were a few pieces about the quietly-unfolding drama surrounding the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City.

I was indeed aware of the Occupy movement’s series of peaceful protests and massdemonstrations that started taking place in the city’s financial district just a month earlier. Its origins as a community-organized call to action on national and global socioeconomic inequality issues struck me as particularly intriguing and engaging due to the uniquely grassroots means of organization and leadership. At that time, news stories and trending topics on social media outlets indicated that the central mission statement driving the coalition of grassroots activists was truly beginning to gain serious traction as they now had the attention of the national news media and mainstream politicians alike. In an effort to learn more, I plunged into a sea of Introduction | 2

stories, opening more links in my browser than I would have been able to read in a lifetime.

One of these links happened to point to the official site of Occupy Wall Street itself. Beyond the typical page content describing the terms of the movement and linking to related external resources, videos were embedded prominently in the center of the page. I played on a few, thinking they would be promotional in nature: perhaps they were a way for the organizers to recruit members with a slick presentation of inspirational quotes, anger-inducing facts and figures, and plenty of deliberately emotive imagery.

However, I encountered videos were actually rough, unedited recordings of events happening in downtown Manhattan, in Zuccotti Park. Speeches were being given, impromptu interviews were being conducted, and some videos simply captured people just standing around and chatting inaudibly, acting as an observation window into the more mundane moments of mass demonstration. Furthermore, I realized that many of these videos were not simply pre-recorded and uploaded later. No. In fact, they were being streamed live from cell phones and laptop cameras. In that moment, I assembled the following observation: the Occupy movement was literally being streamed over the web to an audience around the world as it was happening. The revolution was live! At no prior juncture in history would this have been possible. It is only with the emergence of miniaturized communications devices and the expansion of the internet’s mobile infrastructure that this was now possible, and the Occupy Wall Street protesters were taking full advantage of it — not only to share their activity with those outside of New York City, but to organize themselves as well.

Finally, at the start of the second decade of the twenty-first century, the noble promise of internet technology to one day democratize the masses has begun to be realized. Occupy 3 | Introduction

Wall Street’s particular implementation of the web in their activism is not the only example that can be drawn upon as evidence of the realization of that promise. In fact, earlier in the year, protestors across the Middle East leveraged the internet to their advantage against their authoritarian governments during the Arab Spring revolutions. Emerging web technologies have empowered ordinary citizens to make extraordinary contributions to the global social and political discourse by acting as citizen journalists, virtually-organizing themselves around shared interests, and gathering and disseminating relevant and unfiltered information. I believe that today, as a result of the last twenty years of web development, the “will of the people� finally has a platform whose design actively contributes to the realization of that very phrase.

Figure 1 - Occupy Wall Street demonstrators in front of the George Washington statue on Wall Street (AP Photo)

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Thesis Statement Today, in this age of information, a successful grassroots campaign for social change must not only be founded upon the legacy of traditional grassroots principles, but must also fully-leverage the existence and ongoing development of the internet as a platform for technological innovations that expand the impact of grassroots organizing techniques, promote a culture of information freedom, and support the implementation of representative governance among the movement’s ranks.

First, grassroots activists, with the help of cutting-edge internet technologies, have greater access to enhanced communications tools, targeted advertising, and crowd-based fundraising that support and enhance traditional organizing techniques more than ever before.

What was once accomplished by canvassing door-to-door and conducting meetings in church basements can now be carried out utilizing a polished web interface and a Google Hangout video-conference session, in addition to the raw passion that spurs the movement forward.

Next, a culture of information freedom and data transparency enable grassroots organizations access to essential information that informs, supports, and protects their movement’s particular mode of activism. Manik Rathee, a user experience engineer on President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, has endorsed his support for the notion that data is key to a successful grassroots campaign strategy by stating that the first lesson he learned as a result of his involvement was that “data drives the world” (Rathee). In fact, this idea has been instrumental in the foundation of several organizations, like Anonymous (a hacker collective) and WikiLeaks (a user-submitted whistle-blowing organization), which were born and operate natively online and act as data collection repositories, operating according to 5 | Introduction

the hacker ethic. Additionally, this activity expands upon society’s rich tradition of corporate and government whistle-blowing that has held corrupt institutions like Enron (an American energy company embroiled in a corporate finance scandal) and the Los Angeles Police Department (responsible for the 1991 beating of Rodney King) accountable for their actions in the analog world. The data-freedom focus of these organizations is enhanced by their online presence which simplifies data allocation, presentation, and dissemination for use by anyone, including grassroots groups looking to support and defend their cause with the truth of raw data.

Finally, the decentralized structure of the internet removes barriers of participation by the constituents of grassroots organizations when web technologies are fully-exploited to better gather and implement their feedback into the governance of the movement and as a result of the ever-expanding population with access to the web that allows more voices than ever to join in on the conversation. With only internet service providers (ISPs) as major governing bodies of online traffic, this decentralization serves as a platform for participatory democracy, the purest form of democratic governance, where elite leaders are held accountable for recognizing and incorporating the will and feedback of the people they govern.

Stakeholders The stakeholders of a tight-knit integration between grassroots activity and the web are uniquely positioned to contribute to the larger goals of people-powered organizations. From federal and local government, to social media companies like Twitter, a micro-blogging site that organizes posts around trends, to crowdfunding financial firms like Indiegogo, which offers

Introduction | 6

social campaigns a platform upon which to brand themselves and raise money directly from site visitors, there are many interest groups that have an interest in the evolution of grassroots use of web technologies to better position themselves for success in achieving their overall goals.

Additionally, grassroots movements themselves are obviously quite interested in successfully investing in this sociotechnical integration model. Dr. Ronald Deibert, a professor with the University of Toronto, calls these new integration models “citizen networks.” In his “International Plug ‘n Play” journal article, he argues that the opposition to the 1998 Multilateral Agreement on Investment treaty by actors on the internet was the manifestation of a “durable presence on the Internet” that is ultimately “part of a significant new and vital force in world politics”(Deibert 258). This and other examples, including the formation of the Mosireen citizen journalism collective that provided independent reporting and documentation of the Egyptian revolution online in 2011, demonstrate the diversity of the many parties involved in the leveraging of the web for the good of the public at large and those organizations that represent them.

7 | Introduction

Background Grassroots Organizing: A Brief History Emerging in a few twentieth-century publications in the United States, grassroots activism has evolved as a political theory predicated upon the collective action of community members in advocating for social change. It differs from establishment activist groups because grassroots movements advocate for change by leveraging the politics of a community and do so while operating outside of traditional political systems. Some characterize the change occurs as a result as coming from the ground-up. Grassroots movements require the symbiotic relationship of involvement and influence in order to successfully execute the overarching mission of the movement. Like shareholders in a corporation, members of grassroots movements invest their engagement (which can manifest itself as donations, participation, or publicity) and, in exchange, have a say in the direction taken by the movement. As a result of this reliance on individual contributions towards the cause, grassroots movements utilize specific organizing techniques to not only unify the efforts of supporters, but also to reach out to many more potential members of the movement as well. These include hosting neighborhood house meetings, canvassing door-to-door, gathering signatures for petitions, mobile fundraising, and even orchestrating large demonstrations and rallies. With these techniques, calls for change start with a yelp and can magnify into a roar when individual stakeholders, driven by a common desire to change circumstances they find themselves in, organize themselves into a coalition with specific goals in mind for the future. Movements of this kind have appeared throughout history, and many contemporary efforts have had

Background | 8

enormous success in making significant changes to the social landscape of not just their communities, but across the globe.

The Civil Rights Movement of the 50s and 60s in the U.S. was one such communitydriven movement that changed the course of history for African Americans and other oppressed racial minorities in America for the better. The crusade against systemic and private acts of racial discrimination was waged using grassroots organizing techniques like marches and rallies, church-led canvassing, voter registration drives, and non-violent acts of civil disobedience, including economic boycotts and sit-ins (Levison). The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) implemented the Citizen Education Program (CEP) that specifically trained community leaders to effectively stand up to corrupt law enforcement officials and the threats of the Ku Klux Klan and connect with other disenfranchised people across the south (Booker). Also, freedom schools were organized in black church basements, barber shops, and meeting halls to arm a coalition of black students with civics and literacy skills which they could then use to carry on the movement by learning about their basic civil rights, encouraging discussion, and signing them up to vote. Howard University student Charles Cobb described the purpose of freedom schools as “[creating] an educational experience for students which will make it possible for them to challenge the myths of our society, to perceive more clearly its realities, and to find alternatives -- ultimately new directions for action�

(University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana). By taking control of the community’s education in civics and personal responsibility, grassroots activists were setting the movement up for lasting change and a legacy of engaged and well-read future leaders in the fight against racial discrimination.

9 | Background

Figure 2 - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose persona is most-often invoked in discussions about the mobilization of the Civil Rights Movement, waves to demonstrators after delivering his famous I Have a Dream speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963 (Benjamin)

More recently, contemporary political campaigns in the United States have come to realize the power of a grassroots coalition towards effectively spreading their particular political platform and finely-tuning it to appeal directly to the population they wish to represent in Washington, D.C. In 2007, Barack Obama emerged as a political underdog and eventually became a frontrunner in the 2008 race for the presidency. Utilizing his early professional experience as a community organizer in Chicago’s Altgeld Gardens public housing project in the mid-1980s, he and his staff built a national election campaign on the lofty ideals and basic principles of a grassroots organization (Walsh). However, the campaign went beyond the traditional implementation of grassroots organizing techniques by seriously leveraging the power of the internet as a platform for better communication and organization within the campaign and external to it, also courting potential supporters and donors. Immediately after his first-term victory in 2008, news publications like US News and World Report were printing stories with quotes like the following to explain his victory: Background | 10

Obama's masterful leveraging of Web 2.0 platforms marks a major E-ruption in electoral politics—in America and elsewhere—as campaigning shifts from old-style political machines toward the horizontal dynamics of online social networks. The Web, a perfect medium for genuine grass-roots political movements, is transforming the power dynamics of politics. (Dutta and Fraser) Obama’s successful campaign tactics led him towards victory again in 2012 during his race for a second term. For this go-around, his campaign staff went even further with their exploitation of web technology in the name of grassroots efficiency by building an open source software infrastructure from the ground-up. During my interview with Manik Rathee, one of those campaign staffers, he described the tech strategy as requiring the synchronization of the design, front-end development, and technology teams that created and implemented digital tools at a “staggering pace” (Rathee). The result was a software platform called Narwhal, a data management platform that allowed the campaign to track new voter records and volunteer activities. In fact, the system did more than simply tracking those individual pieces of data (as the Romney campaign’s failed Orca system was only designed to do), Narwhal unified everything that the Obama for America organization knew about voter demographics, its canvassers, event attendees, phone bank volunteers, and policy polling in real-time (Madrigal).

It was this system, based on tried and true grassroots techniques coupled with the cutting edge data collection and organization afforded by software built online that allowed Obama to win a second term, despite the many media pundits who doubted his ability to win reelection with the highest unemployment rate of any president since Franklin D. Roosevelt (Davis).

11 | Background

Examples of the effectiveness of grassroots organizing methods and techniques can be found throughout many chapters of history. The inspiration resulting from the accomplishments of the Civil Rights Movement is still affecting change today. The movement’s achievements are studied by those who wish to emulate its lasting formula for success. Barack Obama and his Organizing for America campaign certainly were not the first political coalition to utilize grassroots techniques in their campaign strategy, but they arguably are the first to successfully combine old-school grassroots techniques with new-school web technology as the basis of a dynamic and connected political campaign whose candidate cut his teeth on the fundamental principles of community organizing in South Side, Chicago. The president’s election and re-election campaigns demonstrate the necessity of incorporating the web alongside the foundational principles of grassroots activism in orchestrating a campaign that is ultimately successful in bringing about change.

Defining Terms While the vocabulary of social change is fairly commonplace within social science academia, there are a few terms that I employ in my arguments that are used in a specific and unconventional fashion to convey a certain meaning given the context of my research. These terms include: Grassroots movements/campaigns/organizations: When used in any of the aforementioned fashions, the use of the modifier “grassroots” is meant to indicate a particular theory of activism that sees individual supporters as the catalysts for change in support or opposition of an issue or particular set of issues, and who are intimately involved with the advancement of the group towards some goal or set of goals for the Background | 12

future. This methodology attempts to influence the social agenda of traditional political systems while operating outside of those very systems. This rogue operation style and the intimate involvement of grassroots supporters in their own governance differentiate traditional activist movements from ones more grassroots in nature. Additionally, grassroots strategies for organization date back as far as the centuries-old Kyrgyz cultural tradition, Ashar, wherein the community takes up the task of decision-making together (Hunt 9).

Analog culture: When I use this particular term, it is my short-hand for referring to the old-school way of doing things in the areas of communication, organization, and population engagement. Specifically, I am referring to technologies that pre-date or exist outside of the internet and its many offshoot software and hardware innovations.

Examples of this old-school technology include in-person meetings, hand-written petitions and forms, and the utilization print media to distribute and acquire information. The opposite interpretation of this term appears as references to “digital” or “web 2.0” culture. Additionally, I use the term to draw distinctions between the societal mindset of pre-internet thinking and current, internet-aware pop culture.

Joshua Topolsky, Editor-in-Chief of The Verge, an exclusively-online tech news publication, makes similar reference to this shift in popular thinking by describing the distinction as having gone from “technology culture” (where a few enthusiastic parties keep up with and integrate digital devices and internet use into their daily lives) to “culture culture” (where it has become the norm in society to integrate those digital technologies into average daily life). The juxtaposition of digital and analog

13 | Background

technologies alongside each other invoke a larger debate concerning the consequences associated with their differences and the overall utility of the discussion (Wilder 241).

Digital native: A digital native describes an individual born during or after the introduction of some silicon-based technology who is more likely than another generation to be familiar with the tools and concepts associated with them (Prensky 1).

In this thesis, I use this term to refer to those individuals who are familiar with the role and mechanics of the web due to early exposure or prevalence of the web in their formative home/school/neighborhood environments. Additionally, I especially use this term to identify a segment of these coming-of-age technologists who innately understand the value of the web and take advantage of opportunities to actively implement it in their daily routines or to solve specific problems (Prensky 242).

Crowd-sourcing: This term refers to the surveying of many people to achieve a common goal. Specifically in this text, I use this term to refer to the gathering of small financial contributions from individual donors and surveying public opinion about a particular topic. Crowdfunding is a variant of this concept that applies the same approach to financial contributions. An example includes Kickstarter, a crowdfunding company that outsources the work normally done by venture capital firms by providing a platform for the public to voice support for high-potential startup inventions and ideas with their wallets (Barnett).

Slacktivism: A relatively new term already in use by some net-focused academics, slacktivism addresses the feel-good emotional response of online activism that lacks any

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measurable impact beyond a few clicks of one’s mouse. Thus, it is surmised that the emotional response is superficial and not rooted in true engagement that requires an internet activist to sacrifice beyond spending time reading or watching media about the cause behind the glass of their computer screen. Evgeny Morozov describes the practice with utter disdain, writing: ‘Slacktivism’ is the ideal type of activism for a lazy generation: why bother with sit-ins and the risk of arrest, police brutality, or torture if one can be as loud campaigning in the virtual space? Given the media's fixation on all things digital - from blogging to social networking to Twitter -- every click of your mouse is almost guaranteed to receive immediate media attention, as long as it's geared towards the noble causes. That media attention doesn't always translate into campaign effectiveness is only of secondary importance. (Morozov, “The Brave New World of Slacktivism”) The disconnect between impactful and real versus lazy and superficial participation in digital campaigns is tied to a lack of meaningful user engagement. Proponents of this theory acknowledge that the common denominator of all successful social movements is emotional investment. In other words, observers become stakeholders in the outcome of some sort of societal justice. They argue that this investment is either not possible or simply not as captivating as when the elements of the activism are conducted by physical people in the real (read: non-virtual) world.

15 | Background

Prior Opinions Several ongoing conversations in contemporary research and pop culture formed the basis of my research inspiration for my thesis work investigating the extent relationship between the web and grassroots social change. First, the importance of the web to society has been noted and debated by academics for years. The degree of intensity within the discourse surrounding the topic suggests its real importance in the analysis of almost any topic imaginable. My decision to examine its relationship to grassroots activism in particular stems from this newfound relationship. Second, the ubiquity of the internet in the average person’s daily routine is on the rise. This medium contributes majorly to the fabric of pop culture and facilitates conversation in the public sphere that engages everyone connected to it in some way. Finally, my thesis has brought many previously-unrelated stakeholders to the forefront as essential voices in discussions about the greater effects of marrying technology and society together. Overall, these factors are responsible for creating a set of prior opinions that have been the basis of my primary research areas and are essential to understand the reasoning behind why I chose to formulate my thesis in the particular fashion chosen.

Great Invention or Greatest Invention?

I am of course not the first person to recognize the massive importance of the internet to the advancement of society. There currently exists a debate between historians and observers of culture as to whether the printing press or the internet is the greatest invention in all of history (Olson and Nelson 50). Interestingly, proponents of either technology both cite the democratization of knowledge and the increase of better access to information as reasons that justify their support of one product more than the other. Mukesh Amban, Reliance Industries chairman, recently proclaimed that the internet is indeed the greatest invention of mankind after the printing press because “Mahatma Gandhi’s dream of self-reliance can be

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attained by making use of internet and technology” (Press Trust of India). This debate demonstrates the transformative nature of the web, and illustrates the importance of the web to society by directly elevating it to the prominence of the last technological invention to really shake up society: the printing press.

Pop Culture Weighs In

This research is especially relevant in 2013 because of the palpable shift in the utilization and fascination of the web in individuals’ everyday lives. Nowadays, over half of the US population uses a smartphone with access to the internet (Fingas). Globally, that statistic is at 27% and surging as we speak (Bonnington). Furthermore, according to the Pew Research Center, as of April 2012, 55% of adult cell owners use the internet on their mobile phones, which is almost double what was observed three years ago (Pew Research Center). The importance of web access, especially in the fast-moving mobile space, cannot be emphasized enough. The introduction of web-enabled mobile phone apps by Obama for America and other social activism campaigns indicate the role of the web as a platform for political discourse and the smartphone as the window into the world of decentralized political action.

Stakeholders in a Web-Savvy Movement

The progression of the web from a curious toy of the tech-y to an essential ingredient to a grassroots social organization strategy affects many stakeholders, offline and on. Activists who seek greater influence in the decision-making process regarding collective action on behalf of their most valued causes, web developers who build innovative communication tools using the architecture of the web, and digital rights advocates who see the web as the “next big thing” in democratizing access to information (and thusly, power) within society have a stake in 17 | Background

the new territory being carved into the digital record by web-enabled grassroots movements.

The web empowers grassroots activists to enhance their techniques and to build movements in an environment that holds great promise for many parties interested in the next generation of effective social change, including social media companies that provide a communications platform, internet service providers who control access to content, and legislators who propose and debate legislation designed to regulate the web.

Body of Research | 18

Body of Research Deploying Innovative Web Technologies Community Organizing: Reborn

The rebirth of foundational grassroots organizing techniques developed in the analog world as innovative and dynamic web technologies empowers and expands the depth and reach of the effectiveness of grassroots community organizing. The internet has become a powerful platform for the rapid development of software that connects its users not only to each other, but also to the media and communication tools that broaden the range of information and connectivity available to them. Some of these web technologies are highlighted for being specifically-designed to facilitate better written, verbal, and visual communication among grassroots organizers. They are described generally as information communication technologies (ICTs). It is with these tools that grassroots movements are already better-positioned to take advantage of the internet as a platform that advances their particular awareness, mobilization, and fundraising strategies.

Raising awareness is essential for social activists because, in doing so, they can spread the word about the mission and activities of their particular campaign and cement a loyal and supportive following that will help advance waves of change forward in support of the campaign’s goals. Doing so online is tough because of the sheer volume of content and digital noise that their messaging must compete with. Grabbing the attention of web users with literally hundreds of millions of choices in web sites and media is obviously quite challenging.

Thus, grassroots movements looking to distinguish themselves from the rest of the noise employ guerilla marketing techniques to stand out. Kony 2012, a mini documentary 19 | Body of Research

highlighting the war crimes of Joseph Kony, the Ugandan leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, became the most viral video in history after Invisible Children, the nonprofit organization behind the project, uploaded their film to social video-sharing websites like YouTube and Vimeo, and leveraged their social media platforms, including Twitter and Facebook, to share the links to connected individuals following the activity of their accounts (Wasserman). Within a few days, the video’s view counts were rapidly increasing, and Twitter recorded exponential growth in conversation mentions about the video and companion campaign that increased by 10 million within 48 hours (Goodman and Preston). Danah Boyd, a social media research for Microsoft, explained the sensational response by examining their online communications strategy: They create narratives that can be boiled down to 140 characters ... They create action messages that can be encapsulated into a hashtag. And they already have a strong network of people who are, by and large, young, passionate, active on social media, and structurally disconnected from one another. (Goodman and Preston) Social communication tools are not simply for external awareness of a grassroots-driven message, however. Internally, these technologies assist with intra-organizational communication that is critical in keeping a movement on a progressive path towards its goals.

Modern American political campaigns, adhering to grassroots principles as the foundation of their organizing efforts, know the value of this tech especially well. Most famously, President Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign was based on these very principles (Gibson). His victorious campaign for the White House in 2008 demonstrated the raw power of community politics in affecting sweeping change across a nation as diverse as the United States.

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In advance of his re-election bid in 2012, Obama’s campaign staff had to face the reality that the ingredients of their winning formula were now well-known. How would they leverage the same grassroots techniques now that opposing campaigns were engaging in similar tactics?

It turns out that they found their answer in the internet. Actually, their answer involved the creation of a tech team that would leverage the web as a development platform. In fact, the team was initially called in to fix a nearly-fatal flaw of their 2008 campaign: disorganized chaos in their internal communications strategy. Communication between volunteers gathering data (including new voter registration information), regional team leaders, and senior staff at campaign headquarters in Chicago was extremely poor the first time around. Even on the day of the election, primitive software applications (apps) that transmitted data to headquarters via the internet were grossly inadequate to handle the massive amounts of data and communication noise generated by such a decentralized, ground-game focused organization.

Figure 3 - A screen-shot of the Dashboard application, part of a suite of grassroots organizing tools developed by the Obama 2012 campaign (Gallagher, The Dashboard Web Application)

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In response, Obama’s tech team built Narwhal, a set of services that acted as support and backbone for a communications interface that would make communication and voter data collection far easier to accomplish (Gallagher). The team was described as being full of “Internet bona fides” by senior engineer Clint Ecker, and he described the qualifications for tech team hires as those “engineers who understand APIs—engineers that spend a lot of time on the internet building platforms” (Gallagher). User experience engineer Manik Rathee described the team members as “the most talented people in their respective fields” (Rathee). The consensus of post-game analysis concerning Obama’s unprecedented re-election win as a politicallywounded incumbent, whose supporters the media characterized as having lost much of their enthusiasm, credited his tech team with skillfully translating the tenets of an analog grassroots communications strategy from the streets of Chicago to the internet (Stirland).

As important as a connected communications strategy is to the success of a grassroots campaign, the fundamental engine of political influence requires a healthy cash flow. A robust fundraising effort for a movement initially driven by the inspiration of its supporters is characterized by donations and contributions from individual backers themselves. This manner of fundraising, called “crowdfunding,” draws on the power of crowds and networks for particular projects or causes (Bannerman). One such project, Mosireen, an Egyptian media collective born out of the eruption of community activism and citizen media, used such tactics to fund their efforts to document the Egyptian revolution online. Using Indiegogo, an international crowdfunding website, the independent journalists of Mosireen appealed directly to socially-aware internet users for donations (Mackey). Sara Bannerman, Assistant Professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, reminds us that crowdfunding is an “age-

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old” concept with a “long history offline” (Bannerman). The new perspective on this fundraising concept comes from the innovations being produced by innovation in web platform development. “Web 2.0 technology,” she says, “has provided a critical boost, inspiring new crowdfunding platforms, facilitating access to ‘the crowd,’ and making possible communication and networking between entrepreneurs and investors.” Again, she confirms the notion that old grassroots techniques are not only being reborn online, but also that they are actually even more powerful than their analog predecessors.

Mechanics of Engagement

Leveraging the usefulness of these web technologies does not require just a successful deployment strategy alone. Implementation of the web’s various tools and platforms must also fully take into account engagement as an additional factor that will ultimately define their level of success. Measuring true engagement of web users manifests itself as not only popularizing certain causes through online sharing, but also inspiring true civic engagement that encourages the connected masses to participate in local politics and educate themselves about international affairs. However, a debate rages on about whether or not the information and communications advances of the internet actually translate into tangible knowledge of and participation in social awareness online.

Academics skeptical of the web’s effect on global politics participation have coined the term “slacktivism” to describe the futility of the notion that connected web users are more socially-aware and civically engaged in global politics. The central question is, as David Carr of the New York Times has asked, if one “likes” something on Facebook, does that really mean you care about it (Carr, “Hashtag Activism, and Its Limits”)? Skeptics remind hopeful observers that 23 | Body of Research

activism requires actively challenging the status quo and furthermore charges that attacking deeply rooted problems is “not for the faint of heart” (Gladwell). Slacktivism denotes a certain level of superficiality in the level of participation web users have in supporting the more involved aspects of a campaign, including rallying and fundraising.

Evgeny Morozov, a visiting scholar at Stanford and Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation, begins his argument against the validity of online engagement as a concept with an anecdote about an experiment by Danish psychologist Anders Colding- Jørgensen that explored how ideas spread online. The psychologist’s experiment involved creating a Facebook group that suggested the city of Copenhagen was planning on dismantling the famous and beloved Stork Fountain landmark. After initially soliciting his 125 Facebook friends to join the group, awareness of the group began to spread virally. After three days, the rate of group membership averaged two members each minute. At no point did these concerned netizens do any meaningful follow up research to validate the bogus claims being made. Morozov cites this example as evidence that we only use social media to implicitly shape our online identities without actually taking stock of the validity of the cause or the utility of our contributions. He notes further that ... Our digital effort make[s] us feel very useful and important but [has] zero social impact. When the marginal cost of joining yet another Facebook group are low, we click “yes” without even blinking, but the truth is that it may distract us from helping the same cause in more productive ways. Paradoxically, it often means that the very act of joining a Facebook group is often the end – rather than the beginning – of our

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engagement with a cause, which undermines much of digital activism. (Morozov, “From Slacktivism to Activism”) While the pessimists allege that the use patterns of the internet are not supportive of the causes they purport to have a stake in, others acknowledge the current deficit of participation and see the potential for a transformation of civic engagement as it appears today. The Pew Internet and American Life Project’s “Report on the Internet and Civic Engagement” concluded that while “just as in offline civic life, the well to-do and well-educated are more likely than those less well off to participate in online political activities such as emailing a government official, signing an online petition, or making a political contribution” (Smith et al. 3). While there is a socioeconomic divide (which results in a digital access divide), Pew speculates that certain patterns and trends in the demographics of internet use may demonstrate the promise of civic engagement online. They conclude that “the development of new forms of communication on the internet—like blogs and social networking sites— potentially expands the opportunities for civic engagement” (Smith et al. 49). Because new forms of online political engagement are “the domain of the young,” consisting of a generation of digital natives who grew up with the commercialized world wide web in the 1990s, we simply do not know yet the full extent of their political activism as they are still in the youngest range of adults (those 18 to 24) and are less likely than other age groups to be politically active regardless of their participation on or offline (Smith et al. 50).

Understanding the potential of the internet to foster real engagement in grassroots issues and activism requires looking to the youth of the internet as a model for future use scenarios. New studies by civic learning scholars suggest that the internet is making for more engaged young citizens. The findings run directly counter to two commonly held assumptions 25 | Body of Research

about the issue: the first and lesser-held opinion, that the internet prevents exposure to diverse political viewpoints; and second, that the internet perpetuates shallow activism, i.e., slacktivism. The study’s results struck down the notion of the first assumption’s validity with ease. The second claim found that indeed interest in and use of the internet does translate into engagement. Spending time in online environments was found to actually promote their engagement with society: “Youth engagement in interest-driven online communities was associated with increased volunteer and charity work and in increased work with others on community issues” Additionally, researchers found that the internet can serve as a “gateway to online and offline civic and political engagement, including volunteerism, community problemsolving, and protest activity” (MacArthur Foundation).

Promoting Information Freedom Access to Knowledge

The mantra “knowledge is power” rings especially true for grassroots movements determined to take advantage of every possible avenue on the road to success. Because they operate outside of traditional political schemas, the ability to access data and knowledge empowers their efforts to support their arguments for change with facts and figures, broadcast their own agenda in an unfettered fashion to supporters, and force powerful corporate and governmental interests to remain accountable for their organizational and external politics.

Various web technologies advance both collective and individual knowledge acquisition and dissemination. Many of these take shape as digital libraries of knowledge that lower the barrier

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to entry even further by transcending physical boundaries and inviting users to contribute to the font of knowledge as well.

Perhaps the most famous of these information sharing centers is Wikipedia, a participatory encyclopedia and community that exists purely online, that has enjoyed impressive popularity since its inception in 2001. As the world’s sixth-most-popular website , it is an example of the emerging Social Web, wherein people use web technologies to facilitate social information foraging, sharing, and collaboration (Chi 88). Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, has said that he considers the free flow of information “a human rights issue� and explains that his decision to make the website a nonprofit because he realized that the platform was a community project, and as such, belonged to everyone who contributes their knowledge for the collective good (Greenwald).

Social media is critical to democratizing access to information as well. Social scientists have long recognized the importance of social networks in spreading information (Lerman and Ghosh 90). Services like Twitter and Facebook, blogs, and news-aggregators like Digg, Reddit, and Google News are the latest tools that anyone can use to gauge the trends of pop culture conversation and curate news sources with specific relevance to their interests. These sites and services underscore the transformation of the web to a participatory medium where users create, evaluate, and most importantly, distribute information and news to their friends and organizations alike (Lerman 1). For grassroots organizations, this can mean everything from targeted issue-tracking to monitoring reactions to their own campaign tactics by the community at large.

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Even untraditional communities without consistent access to the internet may benefit from these tools. A study conducted by Siriginidi Subba Rao of the role of information technologies in rural communities in India determined that more than 50 grassroots projects are using information and communication technologies (ICTs) for the benefit of rural communities. Beginning the study with a bold claim, Rao asserts that “Information is the key to democracy,” and explains the impact of the emerging information society by stating that “An explosion in the free flow of information and ideas has brought knowledge and its myriad applications to many millions of people, creating new choices and opportunities in some of the most vital realms of human endeavour” (Siriginidi Subba Rao 261). Furthermore, the way rural communities’ information systems operate in India are described as being grassroots in nature, with individual community members acting as sources of information about their physical and social surroundings. Other countries’ systems are highlighted as well, including FarmNet, an information network for farmers, in Uganda (Siriginidi Subba Rao 263).

Finally, citizen journalism has emerged as a critical resource for oppressed communities that seek to shed light on the reality of their surroundings to the world at large. For the citizens of countries involved with the 2011 Arab Spring, the press has basically functioned as the public relations arm of their authoritarian governments (Medley). After the fall of autocratic rule came an influx of more democratic values, including a crusade on the part of cell phonewielding protestors to document their revolution and subsequent transition to a more accountable form of democratic rule. As the aforementioned Mosireen media collective has shown, citizen journalism and community media have become vital in understanding the revolutions and their aftermath (Mackey). Videos of police and military brutality, photos of

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protests in the street, and recorded sounds of rebel leaders giving improvised speeches to followers are being posted online for the world to see and hear. The revolutionary nature of the aforementioned cited examples are a case study of the power of personal communication devices connected to the internet in affecting effective social change. However, the reasoning behind the necessity for grassroots campaigns to engage in information freedom culture remains the same: it is up to them to share their truth with the rest of the world and leverage the truth of information to protect and defend their social action.

Some democratic governments, in an effort to curry favor with their citizens, are using the web to fulfill promises of greater transparency in their operations. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech in 2010 acknowledging the importance of information networks and the ability for anyone to freely access knowledge. She also added in comments made by President Obama about the importance of this access, recounting him explaining at a town hall meeting that “he spoke about how access to information helps citizens hold their own governments accountable, generates new ideas, encourages creativity and entrepreneurship” (Clinton). The utilization of ICTs to further government transparency initiatives has become essential in recent years, and this form of “e-government” has also been projected to reduce corruption and grants organizations and individuals alike access to more raw data than ever before (Bertot, Jaeger, and Grimes 264). US federal agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services have established blogs designed to keep the public abreast of their activities and to provide a forum for discussion of particular topics. Projects like HealthData.gov and Recovery.gov provide raw statistical data on public health and economic recovery topics.

Though their tools are yet not perfectly implemented and datasets are still far from complete, the United States government realizes the expectation of ICT use in providing a platform for 29 | Body of Research

government-related knowledge acquisition, and their initial steps are a good step in the right direction for better access to knowledge for all.

Disclosure of Knowledge

In the analog world, whistle-blowers have historically been a common fixture of accountability efforts. Typically, these individuals have exposed governments and large corporations for their abuses of public trust and money in the name of transparency and anticorruption ideals. In digital space, hacking culture (also known as free culture) operates by much the same ideology. Hacker culture operates by the lofty ethos and mantra that insists that “information wants to be free� (Levy). Internet tech icons like Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, and the late Aaron Swartz, famed web developer and information freedom activist, have incorporated this hacker ethos into their work in the online tech industry. In the process of making good on this promise to society, hackers and activists, or hacktivists, also arm grassroots movements with valuable data that can aid in strengthening their core messaging or help to target the scope of their calls for change.

WikiLeaks, perhaps the most famous of these groups, has gained notoriety in free culture circles for their many releases of sensitive and classified government information, including that of the United States federal government. Their approach to whistle-blowing online is novel in that they themselves are not actively accessing data from these agencies.

Instead, their website utilizes a unique submission system that makes the process entirely anonymous. Even if they wish to discover the identity of their sources, their own submission tools make that nearly impossible to do (Aaron Caplan). The anonymity and ingenuity of the

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submission process has given WikiLeaks the ability to publish sensitive documents and media from governments around the world. Their data haul includes documented proof of corruption in the Kenyan government, the secret internal rituals of Scientology, and documents and video of the U.S. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (WikiLeaks).

Anonymous, another loosely-affiliated, natively decentralized hacktivist collective, has made a name for itself alongside the most controversial whistleblowers for their pranks and merciless attacks on government, banking, and corporate websites in addition to calculated breaches of their data. Depending on one’s perspective of their chaotic style of activism, they could genuinely be called both prolific and potentially destructive for carrying-out their stunts.

Recently, in a move that surprised and delighted open government activists, Anonymous claimed to have gained access to passwords and emails from Uriminzokkiri.com, an official web presence maintained the North Korean government. The group claimed to also have access to the country’s local intranets, mail servers, and other web servers. As a part of the announcement, the group also demanded free democracy in the country and unfettered internet access for its people, in line with the principle ideals of free culture thinking (Jon Russell).

Despite the existing controversy, the actions of this collective and others similar to it are forcing the hands of government and big business alike to publicly adopt a culture of transparency, hoping to demonstrate shifting attitudes about information disclosure and the right of the affected public to have access to it. However, evidence suggests that there are far more insidious forces at work attempting to dismantle the nature of the free web.

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Transcending Censorship

Any attempts by government to curate web information, restrict access, or manipulate personal data in private online accounts represent threats to the free flow of data and information online. Additionally, the ability of grassroots actors to gather knowledge and resources or share their own information with the world or each other can be seriously impacted. Governments both domestic and foreign engage in these disruptive practices either directly or indirectly, and threaten the grassroots networks that advocate for issues specific to their particular geographical borders.

For example, during the Arab Spring in 2011, authoritarian governments attempted to censor specific social media websites and cut internet access altogether in an attempt to stop the flow of communication and media from protestors and citizen journalists out of the country and to prevent revolutionaries from using various ICTs to organize their own ranks using the internet. In Egypt, where control of the internet was mostly a “hands-off� affair (unique from other countries in the surrounding region), the government was still able to successfully shut down internet and mobile phone networks for days due to their ownership and control of critical components of the national communications infrastructure (Andrew McLaughlin). Syria, with an existing reputation for heavily monitoring internet transmissions within the country, cut access to all internet traffic on June 3rd, 2011, in response to protests (Flock). Iranian authorities preemptively blocked Facebook and Twitter access before their 2009 national elections in a move to strangle the opposition candidates’ ability to organize and strategize with supporters before election day (Sheikholeslami).

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In the United States, the federal government has not made outright attempts to block internet access for political reasons. However, they have engaged in policy creation and collusion with internet service providers to restrict web access under the guise of “anti-piracy initiatives” and have threatened the progress of democratizating knowledge online by resisting net neutrality legislation.

Anti-piracy legislation has been proposed by lawmakers in Washington as a necessary component for the protection of the nation’s economy and intellectual property. On the surface, that explanation seems like a reasonable reaction to theft of content. However, the broad powers proposed by the bills introduced in Congress could leave a backdoor open to future attempts to limit communication and access to other kinds of content that are not in the interest of the government. The 2011 Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), heralded by traditional media companies as a solution to the “rampant and highly damaging” piracy of their content, would have granted the government sweeping regulatory powers online, including the creation of a “blacklist” of “rogue” (read: disagreeable) websites and the ability to block sites that directly host or simply link to sites that host illegal content (Carr, “The Danger of an Attack on Piracy Online”).

Net neutrality has emerged as a conceptual framework that would preserve the democratization of the web by disallowing the unnecessary stratification of access to particular types of content on the internet. It has faced legal challenges as well, pitting internet service providers (ISPs) and government policy at odds with potentially-jeopardized web services (like Netflix) and information freedom activists. Open internet and information freedom activists cite the desire of ISPs to stratify web access across socioeconomic and anti-competitive lines as 33 | Body of Research

reason for explicit legislation ensuring net neutrality (Wu). In Canada, where duopolies are still the only options for many citizens to get online, ensuring impartial network operation has proved to be complicated, as web users are of the opinion that certain forms of content deserve to be discriminated against like spam email (which they claim is harmful to their inboxes and computer security), whereas telecom companies would like to discriminate against other data like video streaming (that they claim is harmful to network operation on their end) for a fee, effectively locking out lower-income Canadians from access to certain types of information (Barratt and Shade 297, 299).

The unique properties of the internet and its community of users may be able to transcend this censorship of knowledge, however. Efforts to rethink the domain name system (DNS), which authoritarian governments attack to censor certain parts of the web, could prove fruitful in the effort to uphold the hacktivist culture ideal of free-flowing information over the internet (Brito). Additionally, the transnational networks that were formed to circumvent censorship and prosecution by the authoritarian regimes of the Arab Spring give hope for internet activists. The innovations developed in response to information oppression online are themselves developed on web platforms, benefitting all stakeholders in the fight for information access and the right to disseminate it. Grassroots groups looking to leverage social media in spreading their message or acquire knowledge to strengthen their arguments for change against the well-guarded status quo are especially-invested in the outcome of these efforts. So far, the culture and decentralized foundations of the web are working to their advantage.

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Integrating a Participatory Democracy Model

It is only with active participation by supporters that a grassroots movement can make progress on its goals. Grassroots participation suggests more than an organization that is merely supported externally by well-meaning individuals. Instead, these are the lifeblood of its operation and play a critical role in internal governance. As such, the supporters define the driving ethos of the organization. Truly grassroots groups expand this interaction further by calling for the direct contribution of ideas in steering the path forward and in how best to governing themselves. Participation in self-governance promises to broaden stakeholder involvement and contribution, leading to greater satisfaction in the legitimacy and acceptability of public decisions and greater transparency (Rios Insua et al. 162). The prophecy of cyberpolitics has foretold the arrival of a day when this sort of grassroots participatory democracy (also known as direct democracy) would be implementable as a result of ICTs, information and communication technologies. Critics have dismissed these notions as belonging to the most naive “cyber-utopians,” and globally there have been no major political systems ever to assume power in this way or to function according to these principles thereafter (Levin 81). Other research into the implementation of ICTs suggests that innovative advances “allow a much more substantive implementation of the democratic ideals described by Abraham Lincoln: the government of the people, by the people, and for the people” (Kim 179). However, few web policy scholars have applied the potential of web-enabled participatory governance to social movements. More specifically, as a result of web platform innovation, the precedent of participation in online culture, and the expansion of access to the World Wide Web, grassroots

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movements stand apart, uniquely positioned to take advantage of more literal interpretations of participation in governance.

ICTs as Vehicles for Participation

Implementation of a strategy for participation is incredibly complex. Success depends on the availability of resources to produce cohesion against a natural tendency for the process to drift in conflicting directions of self-organization and population fragmentation (Bula and Espejo 340). Questions surrounding the challenges this complexity include: How do we make representative democracy more representative? How do we make deliberative democracy an exercise of equality of arms between participants rather than the participation in hugely uneven contests? How do we increase the chances that participatory (direct) democracy, exercised for instance in plebiscites and referenda, is informed and not the outcome of manipulation by those with economic power and media control? (Bula and Espejo 341) Optimistic perspectives consider ICTs as part of the solution in encouraging stronger individual participation in inclusive democratic organizational systems (Bula and Espejo 341). There are two distinctions within participatory governance that emerge in a qualitative discussion regarding the implementation of ICT web technologies in grassroots governance: public decision-making and deliberation. Public decision-making speaks to a literal and mechanical “one voice, one vote� implementation that emphasizes active member participation on an issue-by-issue basis (Kim 179). The process of deliberation requires citizen input into discussions that is then considered by the leaders of the governing body. Despite the Body of Research | 36

difference in focus, both models still emphasize ICTs as the mechanisms by which public influence may be gauged.

E-democracy, a group consisting of researchers on open government issues, has proposed a framework for integrating citizens in the decision-making process using a City Council as a model. They describe their hypothetical project as “one of the most innovative and technology-oriented websites” in Europe (Nastase et al. 126). First, a list of best practices is formed to guide an engaging website design. Surveys, discussion, ease in navigation, and the ability to file forms requesting official government information electronically are cited as ways in which citizens can be encouraged to join the discussion. Additionally, the proposal includes an information network designed to fight crime and vandalism, and a system to update citizens of progress being made on certain issues to keep them in the loop in a timely fashion (Nastase et al. 130). Internal communications could be achieved using forums and other online dialogue tools (like wikis), and electronic voting and polling could be used to determine collective choices directly (Nastase et al. 131).

Researcher Jinbaek Kim proposes his own model for supporting public participatory decision making by illustrating the feasibility of supporting such a system with “e-democracy.”

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) tools are highlighted for their ability to break down geographical barriers using networks to transcend physical and chronological limitations. Video and voice over internet protocol, email, instant messaging, and virtual reality spaces are all included as examples of these CMC tools. In addition to these tools for communication, brainstorming tools are emphasized as critical in fostering idea selection, exploration, and indepth analysis (Kim 182).

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A study of the use and effectiveness of social networking sites in Kenya found that ICT use was rapidly advancing as a powerful tool in helping citizens increase their democratic participation. Even the Kenyan government itself has acknowledged the strategic role of ICT in the economy and the accountability of their political structure (Ndavula and Mberia 301). As the communications infrastructure grows in the nation, so does the potential usefulness for these sites. Their most radial function involves the reduction of central control of media, which represents a break with previous communications technologies (Ndavula and Mberia 305).

While international investment in African democratization has been substantial thus far, not nearly enough attention has been paid to the extent to which using social media might benefit the process.

Increasing Access Globally

By now, this should be clear: contributions from invested stakeholders online are a critical component of genuine grassroots movements. Participation from supporters and other relevant sources as well can strengthen the message and scope of an organization that takes its marching orders from its members. However, the diversity of the voices present within the ranks is just as important to the well-rounded governance of a grassroots effort. While the numbers are steadily increasing every day, the fact remains that only 39% (2.7 billion people) have access to the internet worldwide. In the developing world (or Global South), only 31% of the population has access, compared to 77% in developed nations (The World in 2013: ICT Facts and Figures). There are billions of people whose voices we never see represented in online communities and likewise, we are not able to contribute our own experiences and perspectives to their community conversations either. However, between 2000 and 2010, Internet use grew Body of Research | 38

more than 30% per year in 60 developing countries (Human Development Report 2013).

However, technological innovations are appearing that have the effect of broadening the scope access and accessibility for diverse communities with a variety of backgrounds and needs.

Figure 4 - A chart presenting the number of internet users worldwide as a percentage of access traffic by nation. The chart reads from left (1990) to right (2011). (jkan)

For example, activists and socially-conscious startup companies are experimenting with the introduction of different device form factors as means by which to connect more people in the Global South to the internet. Nontraditional internet devices, like low-cost smartphones, rugged laptops, and tablets are meant to efficiently introduce web access to communities while catering to their specific environmental and cultural needs. Low-cost smartphones are

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especially important given that in developing countries without a strong ground infrastructure, mobile internet access is often the only option available (“Global Mobile Statistics 2012�).

Additionally, efforts are underway to change the domain name infrastructure of the web to be more inclusive of language and cultural differences, with a particular emphasis on including languages that are not based on Latin scripts. Since 2007, the United Nations educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has collaborated with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the Internet Corporation for assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), and other partners that work with domain names to promote the development and dissemination of multilingual content online. Their latest project has been to open up top level domain names so that they can be based on Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, Devanagari, and Greek scripts in addition to the usual Latin scripts of languages like English and Spanish that most all website URLs are based on today (UNESCO).

How Things Could Be Different

Structural changes like those to web domain infrastructure, in concert with the increase of connected communities in the developing world and expanded use of ICTs in community governance, that give rise to my belief that participatory governance of grassroots organizations via the web is not only beneficial, but will become the norm in future iterations of these bottom-up campaigns for change. Once the vast scope of a truly world wide web is realized (or the trend of such observations becomes obvious), community networks will realize that no other social network system in history has given traditionally-marginalized people as much of a chance to leverage the awareness, input, and support of other global citizens in such

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a powerful and meaningful way. The mere threat of such a coalition will pressure established political regimes to adhere more fully to the will of the people in a purer democratic fashion, similar to how the well-funded lobbying groups of corporations and political elites operate within democracies today.

Conclusion As someone who shares a birth year with unveiling of the World Wide Web in 1991, I quite literally grew up with the internet as we know it today. The web makes frequent cameos in my coming-of-age story, and has largely informed my view of what a truly globalized world looks like. It is that personal history, combined with the connected culture that is reinventing information-acquisition techniques that grounds my interest in web-enabled community politics. Recent developments in the role of internet technologies in social change reaffirm that initial interest and shape it with the context of current events on a domestic and international scale.

The web is indeed the driving engine of change within the grassroots organizations that set goals towards specific social policy advancements, and movements formed from here on out cannot realistically hope to reach their goals effectively without leveraging its unique properties. These unique properties include innovative information and communication technologies, a culture of information freedom, and innovative means by which the inclusion of participatory governance within its membership is possible. ICTs like social media outlets, video-sharing websites, and communication technologies like Skype and Gmail arm grassroots groups with the tools to efficiently increase public awareness, organize internal mobilization, 41 | Conclusion

and execute a crowd-fundraising financial strategy in virtual space. Knowledge-based websites like Wikipedia, along with a driving ethos derived from hacker culture democratize media, make access to publicly-verified data and information possible, and empower grassroots communities to use data to their advantage in supporting their mission statements and challenging the status quo. Finally, further implementation of ICTs and the increase of internet access to communities around the world diversifies the potential audience for any given grassroots cause. The audience’s participation is crucial in supporting truly community-focused politics, and efforts to remove as many barriers to participation as possible will only strengthen the rich environment of ideas. Ultimately, the end result of that input drives the movement forward towards a better manifestation of the kind of world they want to help create.

My work in community politics research contributes to the field of Science and Technology studies by making clear the broader societal impacts of the web and web culture on the proficiency of grassroots social action. In the previous pages of this thesis, I have laid out a case for the web as an essential piece of the fabric of social change. Scholars have written extensively about the same issues I highlight in my arguments, including Sara Bannerman’s analysis of the emergence of crowdfunding as a viable financial model for loosely-affiliated support networks, and Jinbaek Kim’s conclusion that the implementation of ICTs ultimately moves society closer to the democratic ideals of Lincoln. Their established work reminds me that the concept of grassroots community action is not a novel one. The current iteration of its nomenclature dates back to the Civil Rights movement and early labor unions in the United States during the 50s and 60s. As an applied theory, the roots of grassroots social action stretch back even farther. It is the legacy of these organizational methods and the recent

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emergence of the internet as a powerful decentralized communications medium that bolster the reinvigoration of the concept of community-driven politics and remakes the idea anew for the information era. Going forward, the revolution will not be televised. Instead, it will be streamed live on the web to people across the globe who will watch the evolution of society unfold in real time with bated breath, standing in virtual solidarity with their brothers and sisters as they push culture forward and risk everything in pursuit of real progress towards an existence where their voices are not merely lost to the vacuum of outer space, but rather are instrumental in changing the world in a deliberate and measurable way.

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Appendix A: Full Interview with Manik Rathee Interview with Manik Rathee, User Experience Engineer for President Barack Obama

Q: Were you at all interested in politics or the mechanics of political campaigning before you joined President Obama’s re-election campaign staff?

A: I wouldn't say I was interested in politics but I always kept up with it. I believe it is everyone's duty to be educated about current events, especially surrounding elections, simply because democracy needs us to make sound decisions. I was a big supporter of both Hillary and Barack during '08 as well.

What were some unique or interesting observations you made about the tech strategy of the Obama 2012 grassroots campaign?

To be completely honest, everything about the tech strategy for OFA (Obama For America) was unique. Nearly everything we accomplished was a 'first' in political campaign history, which is both incredible and terrifying. We were operating in un-charted territories.

Ultimately, we worked together incredibly well. The design, front-end development and technology teams all synced and were able to put out digital products at a staggering pace. We put out amazing products like the Dashboard which allowed grassroots supporters to be able to go about their day and submit their nightly data into a central repository, which we then used to output updated estimations, updated field plans and more. Another tool, the Barack Obama Call Tool, was another first in campaign history. We combined our voter-database and created a tool that would allow any Obama supporter to sign up and make calls to various locations in order to gather information, record event RSVPs and, most importantly, inform voters about the various state-level voter laws that were in play during this election.

These two, among countless others, helped us gain an incredible advantage in the election's ground game.

What was the work environment of the campaign tech team like? What the driving ethos that spurred you forward?

It was a really amazing place to work for a few reasons. First, it is incredibly rare to be surrounded with the most talented people in their respective fields. These people, whether on the analytics team, email, copy-writing, you name it, were all at the top of their field. That can be an incredibly intimidating thing.

Appendix A: Full Interview with Manik Rathee | 44

Luckily, they were all also incredibly kind and caring people as well.

Because of this type of team, there was a tremendous amount of confidence and composure throughout the campaign. We were working under more stress than any of us had been exposed to in the past, but everyone was able to keep calm and accomplish the goals at hand.

This, however, did not come without a price. We essentially had given up our personal lives when we joined the campaign. We worked from 9 or 10am to 9pm, 10pm, sometimes even 3 or 4 am. After a few months, we also moved to work weekends, so we were basically only going 'home' to sleep.

It was difficult but working with such talented people made it much easier.

One of your particular projects involved designing and evaluating the online contribution mechanisms of the campaign. How did you and your team’s design evolve as the campaign wore on?

I worked for the better part of 2012 on the contribution platform with a few other people. I built the entire front-end for, what we call the Sequential Donate module. You can learn more about this and the process involved in it on my site.

I worked with Ryan Roche, who managed the design on this, and together we evolved the longform donation from into the sequential module which was called, by multiple people, 'a piece of interaction design mastery.'

Where did your work on the web contribution platform fall in the spectrum of the overall campaign strategy? Fundraising is obviously critical for any political campaign to gain traction and support momentum. Was your team’s goal just to increase the size of donations? Or were your goals more focused on encouraging recurring donations? Or something else?

We had multiple goals, both short-term and long term. The ultimate goal was to raise as much money as possible - those donations were funding the campaign so they were critical. This encompassed many smaller goals: increasing conversions on sign ups, increasing donation conversions, increasing donation amounts, increasing recurring donation conversions, and many more.

Our team would build tests that would put the new improved pages we built against our existing forms. We would put these online during large email sends, like those directly from POTUS or FLOTUS, and use the data we gathered to make a decision on which page to employ for the coming days. This cycle would repeat 10-20 times a day so the pages were constantly evolving in an effort to improve our placement with one of the aforementioned goals.

45 | Appendix A: Full Interview with Manik Rathee

How would you say webpage design affects the way users interact with a site’s content? How did you apply these thoughts to the design of President Obama’s flagship web presence, BarackObama.com?

The design of a site, along with how it is built and the user-experience (ux) employed during this entire process decides how pleasant a website is and how usable it is.

BarackObama.com went under many iterations under Jeffrey Louden, the Lead Developer for BarackObama.com. I was lucky enough to help with the ux of a few of the last re-designs that were put into play.

We would always be improving these web presences and trying to adjusted how the page was laid out, how content was written and presented, how the pages were built, and subsequently, how they worked on various devices. All of these points were a focus of small subsets within the design and front-end teams.

Each re-design of the site drastically improved the layout, content, mobile versions, etc. These improvements made it easier for users to find content they needed (IE: Answer a question like 'What is the President's stand on health care?'), it made it easier for them to donate to specific causes and contests that resonated with them, and also helped them find persuasion pieces that had data points to share with their friends and family.

Without our constant improvements on BarackObama.com, these items would have been much less efficient to find, and therefore, may never have reached our users.

What are your thoughts (if any) on the Dashboard tool used by campaign volunteers to network with each other and collect data on the ground? Did your team interact with it or use data from it as you completed your own projects?

I spent about 3 months working on the front-end for the Dashboard tool when I first joined the campaign. It was a very exciting project to be a part of because we knew that the people out in the field would finally have a central place for them to input data and communicate with other offices. It was very successful in creating a cloud presence for field offices that otherwise could not have been possible.

We used Dashboard internally for some messages but we didn't use the data gathered from Dashboard for any of our other web properties. It was mostly used to gather numbers about voter registrations, constituency groups, and other pieces of data that were integral in strategy and planning.

Appendix A: Full Interview with Manik Rathee | 46

In addition to technical design of particular systems like the backend of the Dashboard tool and the coding of the contribution forms, how did aesthetics factor into your design decisions?

Design was never as important in campaign history as it was in OFA 2012. Our internal design team, made up of over 18 designers, created all the visual elements for OFA, ranging from branding to print pieces handed out at rallies, to the design of websites and applications.

The aesthetics were incredibly important because we knew that well-designed pieces were easier to use. Luckily, Messina knew that as well when he started to build the campaign team.

They hired the right people, obviously, because everything that officially came from the campaign was beautifully designed and simply a pleasure to own and use.

What is your guiding design philosophy as a user interface designer?

Simplicity is key. I am a big believer in minimalism and it often comes through in my work. I focus on content, typography, and mobile whenever designing for the web, and then layer design on top. Content is always critical, and design should make something easy to use and ultimately also make it a pleasure to interact with.

How do you incorporate your development skill-set with your design philosophy?

I work primarily on the web, so it is really easy for me to combine it: I build everything I design.

It is something I have always loved to do.

Seeing something you designed come to life is a pretty great feeling, and it never really gets old.

What personal and professional lessons did you learn as a result of your work with the Obama 2012 campaign team?

I learned quite a few things, but I'll keep this concise.

First: 'Data drives the world.'

Everything we did, every decision we made, was based on data and feedback. We were trying to make usable donation forms, so we had extensive user-testing sessions to get incredibly valuable feedback on specific interactions.

We wanted to improve donation rates so we A/B tested our pages endlessly.

Second: 'You are almost always wrong.'

47 | Appendix A: Full Interview with Manik Rathee

I went to the campaign thinking I knew a lot about user experience. However, I was wrong in estimating how our A/B tests would perform at least 60% of the time. It is, unfortunately, really tough to estimate how a design change will impact the usability of a form.

The great part about this is that you can always learn more about your craft and I took every opportunity to learn lessons from each test we ran.

Third: 'If you work hard enough with people that believe in helping others, you will succeed.'

The team at OFA was amazing. I consider them a second family. We all worked harder than we ever have in our lives, all towards the same goal: To move the country Forward.

Clear eyes, full hearts.

Can't lose.

Appendix A: Full Interview with Manik Rathee | 48

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Who am I? Well, I love to travel. I’m a gadget geek. I like reading satirical humor. I’m a huge fan of weird documentaries about North Korea. I’m also a huge fan of music, with a genre-bending, eclectic taste. I especially appreciate the art of the live performance. Additionally, I’m a huge news-junkie. Give me a newspaper and a few hours and you’ve tapped into my most-treasured way to kill time. Others might describe me most often as bold: I live life in the spirit of the unsatisfied explorer. I’m always looking for the next big idea. I’m a passionate person that works hard, laughs hard, and loves hard. I expect my friends to challenge me intellectually. I’m untraditional and I like to mix it up. I want you to feel like you too can do anything you want. I’m a dreamer. But all of these things, while very much so me, are still only a fraction of who I am. Ultimately, it is figuring out the rest of who we are together that is the most fun and rewarding part of waking up every day.

At Rensselaer, majoring in Science, Technology, and Society Studies was an attractive proposition: it offered the chance to study not only the particulars of the technologies that define our lives, but also how that technological innovation affects society at large. My interest initially was in pure political science-- studying traditional forms of government, analyzing election data, and linking pop culture trends to social political change worldwide. However, I wanted something more out of my degree. I wanted to go further and to explain the fabric of human ecology through the eyes of technological innovation. It is the application of these concepts to a global political context that made this major the perfect fit for my academic ambition, and has culminated in my writing this thesis in the way that I have.