an article by Håkan Johansson and Gabriella Scaramuzzino (Lund University, Sweden) published in New Media & Society Volume 21 Issue 7 (July 2019)
Abstract
A growing body of research highlights how the Internet and social media offer new platforms for advocacy.
This article contributes to the debates on digital advocacy by combining interest group and social media studies and present the notions of digital access politics, digital information politics, and digital protest politics for a comprehensive analysis of digital advocacy. Based on a netnographic study of two highly different advocacy groups working with workers’ rights in a Swedish context, we find that online and offline activities are highly interconnected.
While previous studies have largely focused on how groups gain political influence, present digital advocacy is much more oriented towards gaining political presence through social media. The article proposes that future studies into advocacy in the digital era needs to study acts for political influence and acts for political presence as intertwined or even as two sides of the same coin.
Showing posts with label lobbying. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lobbying. Show all posts
Friday, 19 July 2019
Wednesday, 7 November 2012
Who Listens to the Grass Roots? A Field Experiment on Informational Lobbying in the UK
Liz Richardson (School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester) and Peter John (School of Public Policy, University College London) published in The British Journal of Politics & International Relations
Volume 14 Issue 4 (November 2012)
Abstract
Research on interest groups indicates that elected representatives respond positively to the informational content of a lobby campaign; but scholars also acknowledge that this claim is hard to evaluate because of the methodological challenges of establishing whether influence occurred or not.
To test for the impact of informational lobbying, we deploy an experimental design, recruiting citizen interest groups in eight local authority areas to campaign on a matter of importance to them. These groups sent either information-rich or information-poor lobbying letters to 248 randomly selected local councillors in their areas, and we monitored the responses.
Descriptive statistics and regressions with clustered standard errors show that the informational content of the letter does not make a difference to the response overall. But the information-rich treatment affected the quality of the response, encouraging councillors to pass on the letter to another expert or professional.
Our findings indicate that elected representatives in English local government use a cue from an informational lobby to defer to other professional elites rather than to engage with the lobbyist’s request. These findings have implications for the study of lobbying influence in other jurisdictions.
Abstract
Research on interest groups indicates that elected representatives respond positively to the informational content of a lobby campaign; but scholars also acknowledge that this claim is hard to evaluate because of the methodological challenges of establishing whether influence occurred or not.
To test for the impact of informational lobbying, we deploy an experimental design, recruiting citizen interest groups in eight local authority areas to campaign on a matter of importance to them. These groups sent either information-rich or information-poor lobbying letters to 248 randomly selected local councillors in their areas, and we monitored the responses.
Descriptive statistics and regressions with clustered standard errors show that the informational content of the letter does not make a difference to the response overall. But the information-rich treatment affected the quality of the response, encouraging councillors to pass on the letter to another expert or professional.
Our findings indicate that elected representatives in English local government use a cue from an informational lobby to defer to other professional elites rather than to engage with the lobbyist’s request. These findings have implications for the study of lobbying influence in other jurisdictions.
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