Abstract
Digital media have transformed the nature of political engagement and enhanced the tactics used by campaign organizers. Of these, the affordance of listening to a public is perhaps the most significant. In Analytic Activism: Digital Listening and the New Political Strategy (2016), David Karpf examines new opportunities and challenges for political activists in an evolving, hybrid media system. Through illustrative case studies of prominent organizations, such as Change.org, MoveOn.org, and Upworthy.com, Karpf discusses how scale, digital listening, and a culture of testing may strengthen the accuracy and effectiveness of activist strategies online. Conversely, this work serves to delineate the boundaries activists must navigate within, as well as the algorithmic constraints imposed by quasi-monopolistic digital entities, such as Facebook and Google. While the practice of analytic activism is ever-evolving, Karpf presents a coherent, working conceptualization of its distinguishing features, affordances, and limitations.
As with any new media practice, many practitioners and scholars remain skeptical of the capacity for digital activist campaigns to incite social and political change, often dismissing the practice as “clicktivism”—the view that, due to the ease of online participation, true civic engagement will ultimately decrease (p. 45). In response, Karpf introduces two distinct inaccuracies, which heretofore have been absent from the conversation: expectation and comparison—particularly, the tendencies among critics to evaluate the success of digital activism using the metrics employed by electoral campaigns, and to develop expectations of their impact based on powerful historical cases. In this way, Karpf not only examines what analytic activism is but also what it is not.
Aside from providing a referential framework for political organizers, Karpf contextualizes the practice of activism in the digital age by expounding the nature of media hybridity. To be sure, the immeasurable significance of US social movements during the broadcast era has influenced the expectations of activist campaigns today. However, Karpf argues this is an inequitable comparison, given the myriad differences between the former and current media environments. What facilitated the widespread public support and recognition of prominent historical events, such as the civil rights movement or “Bloody Sunday,” was the ability for mass media to directly reach audiences through fewer channels. In today’s hybrid media system, however, the metrics of success are not so fixed as they once were. As Karpf explains, the confluence of digital and traditional media platforms has transformed the landscape of political engagement, thus prompting activists to adopt a matching strategy.
Similarly, Karpf illustrates the propensity among political activists to focus on the analytic strategies employed during electoral campaigns. Although relatively nuanced, the differences between these digital tactics reflect the overall goals and mission of each campaign. Moreover, electoral campaigns have fixed end-dates and previously established measures of success (e.g., securing 270 electoral votes on 8 November), whereas activist campaigns often have no fixed endpoint. Furthermore, the impact of an activist campaign is fluid and victories may be small in comparison to those of an electoral campaign. Like this, Karpf cautions against adopting the “horse race” mentality common among electoral campaigns, given their inherent emphasis on short-term, easy-to-measure outcomes.
In sum, what distinguishes Analytic Activism, beyond its comprehensive examination of the analytic strategies employed by activists, is its response to the subtleties of comparison, expectation, and context, often overlooked by critics. As Karpf explains, the current hybrid media system dictates the perceived impact and success of a campaign, and for this reason, activists must realign their expectations accordingly. While the field of analytic activism is still taking shape, Karpf provides a timely and instrumental glimpse into the emerging practice:
While the Internet has presented many new opportunities for mobilizing citizens online, the political information gap seems to have been amplified. Aside from circumventing the polarizing algorithms of Facebook and Google (as with the case of Upworthy), how else are citizens and organizations able to escape these “information cocoons”? Furthermore, knowing this polarization exists and with burgeoning evidence of its negative effects, why have quasi-monopolistic organizations such as these not altered their algorithms?
Citizens can escape information cocoons by diversifying their media diet, diversifying who they follow and friend on social media, and by actually clicking the links and reading the articles posted by people they don’t naturally agree with. Most citizens aren’t going to do this, though. It is a tall order, asking everyone to individually add content to their information diet that they find distasteful.
Organizations can reach beyond their own narrow audiences by becoming information producers that (1) interact with the issues at the top of the public/media agenda (being more nimble, in other words), (2) use digital listening to identify the frames that make their stories salient to citizens/readers/viewers who are not already diehard supporters, and (3) actively pay attention to the latest algorithmic incentives that Google and Facebook (particularly Facebook) are creating. Facebook, for instance, has recently unveiled Facebook Live. Facebook Live videos now perform great, while Upworthy-style videos perform more poorly than they used to. Organizations have to adapt to the rules being created by the quasi-monopolistic platforms.
Let’s recall that polarization’s effects aren’t entirely negative. Polarization is great for mobilization. I would assert that we could use more mobilization these days, and that it is both practically and normatively valuable. I think the question is how do we address the worst effects of intense polarization. I think the answer probably lies in both algorithmically, socially, and legally punishing polarized behavior that breaks important rules and norms. So, as an example, I think if Facebook and Google crack down on fake news, and if SleepingGiants succeeds in convincing thousands of advertisers to abandon Breitbart.com (which is, itself, a polarized type of behavior), then we get a better society.
The quasi-monopolies haven’t altered their algorithms for two reasons. (1) They’re businesses that measure success by the click. Polarization is clicky. It’s good business, at least in the narrow sense. (2) Like many businesses, these quasi-monopolies are also institutionally conservative and afraid of making decisions that will make people mad. Honestly, I think Facebook would have been a lot more aggressive in addressing the fake news problem if it hadn’t already had the controversy over the trending topics section earlier in 2016. Conservatives thought Facebook was rewarding liberals. The fake news sites were mostly conservative. Facebook was afraid of the bad press that would come with cracking down on fake news.
2. You present the concept of digital listening without conversation as an integral component of analytic activism and conclude by briefly discussing some of its limitations. Because of the inherently atomizing effect of the Internet, at what point — or under what circumstances — does conversation need to be included as a strategy?
Conversation is central to organizing. And organizing is basically the only route to developing a deep capacity for citizen power. Not all campaign strategies require this deep capacity—lobbying and mobilizing is enough for plenty of smaller, defensive goals. But for the organizations and social movements that want to pursue a larger vision of social change, they’re going to need to bridge the connective tools of digital media with the analog tools of person-to-person conversation.
3. While this book was published only last year, the political landscape in the United States has undergone some dramatic changes (to put it lightly) in the time that has elapsed. Particularly, with a rising skepticism in online content, what new challenges do online activist organizations face?
If I was rewriting the book today, or if I was writing a second edition, the main adjustment I would make would be to expand upon the framework of the media theory of movement power. In the book, I mostly talk about how a radically changing media environment requires activists to test, experiment, and learn so that their tactics and strategies can create leverage over their targets. After the 2016 election, I would like to add that the main target/opponent we now face is unlike the targets we are accustomed to. You don’t effectively pressure Donald Trump the way you pressured Barack Obama or George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan. Trump does not rely upon the same signals and inputs as normal politicians. And this is both a problem and an opportunity because you can pressure Donald Trump in a whole host of ways that you couldn’t pressure other Presidents! (You aren’t supposed to be able to directly communicate with the President through advertisements on Fox & Friends, for instance . . .)
So the key new challenge for activist organizations today (online and offline) lies in figuring out both how to hack the affordances of the still-changing media environment and how to pressure this unusual, unstable, hostile, and psychologically vulnerable President. That makes Analytic Activism as a process (of testing, measurement, learning, and reflection) more important than ever before, because what has worked in the past will not work today! But it also heightens the risks that organizations and citizens face like never before.