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Tom Liacas 2015 - Innovations in networked movement building:

Distributed activism as practiced by 350.org and Hollaback!

Innovations in networked movement building:

Distributed activism as practiced by 350.org and Hollaback!

Tom Liacas tom@liacas.com - @tomliacas

Based on a post first published on Greenpeace's Mobilisation Lab blog, August 2015. Abstract: This paper looks at how two new advocacy organizations, climate campaigners 350.org and Hollaback!, a global network of anti-street harassment activists, have incorporated horizontal mobilization approaches from earlier “networked social movements” such as Indymedia, the Arab Spring uprisings, the Indignados and the Occupy Wall Street Movement. Recent studies of networked social movements, specifically those that arose from 1999-2011, have noted their rapid rise to power, their use of social media and other digital communications technologies as well as their emphasis on horizontal decision-making structures. However, as digitally-savvy activists are now adapting tactics at the same breakneck speeds as technological change, networked activist models studied in the 2000s or even as recently as the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011 have already been supplanted by more recent evolutions in form and practice. Referring to studies of these past movements by Manuel Castells and Todd Wolfson, this paper draws on interviews with key staff and observation of 350.org and Hollaback!'s operating practices to show how they have adapted elements of earlier horizontal movements and paired them with a new "hybrid" command structure that allows for efficient top-down decision making but also confers a good deal of freedom and agency on its local chapters.

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Tom Liacas 2015 - Innovations in networked movement building:

Distributed activism as practiced by 350.org and Hollaback!

From a tactical standpoint, social and environmental activism has been evolving in parallel

and in symbiosis with new technologies since the dawn of the internet era (Wolfson,

2014). For much of this period, this fruitful exchange has largely happened away from

the limelight, both in terms of academic study and wider public interest.

With the sudden and dramatic onset of the Arab Spring uprisings of 2010-2011, the rise

of the Indignados at the height of the economic crisis in Europe and the global spread of

the Occupy Wall Street protests, a larger number of journalists and academics began to

focus to the role that Internet-mediated communications, especially social media, played

in the rapid rise of such new movements (Castells 2012, Tufekci & Wilson, 2012).

In parallel, authors such as Castells and Wolfson (Castells 2012, Wolfson 2013 and 2014)

have also analyzed the horizontal nature of these "networked social movements". In past

studies, this preference for de-centralized leadership and organization has been linked to

the logic of the "open source" movement in software design and distribution (Juris, 2004).

With regards to these more sweeping and global instances of horizontally-organized

movements, Castells' observations in Networks of Outrage and Hope (Castells, 2012)

could be deemed celebratory, while Wolfson's views have been more critical (Wolfson

2013, 2014). While Castells sees horizontality as a net tactical asset and an evolved model

of autonomy and shared power, Wolfson has identified it as a potential weakness, one

that ultimately cut short the lives of the movements he was tracking.

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Tom Liacas 2015 - Innovations in networked movement building:

Distributed activism as practiced by 350.org and Hollaback!

Horizontality is not just a grassroots phenomenon

While focus has been put on recent instances of sudden grassroots mobilization, many

tactical elements of the networked social movement model have been adapted and

applied by certain advocacy groups and Non-Governmental Organizations in the past

five years. On one level, online petition-based networks such as Avaaz.org and

Sumofus.org have evolved from a petition focus to a campaigning model and have

grown their networks into the millions (Avaaz.org, Sumofus.org, 2015). On another

level, certain cause-based groups have managed to blend top-down leadership with

local autonomy in organizational structures greatly mediated and facilitated by digital

communications.

350.org and Hollaback!, the two groups studied in this paper, are prime examples of

networked organizations that have adopted elements of the horizontal leadership model

and have taken advantage of digital tools to manage distributed activism campaigns.

Climate campaigners 350.org define themselves as "a global network active in over 188

countries" that is "building a global climate movement" (350.org, 2015). Hollaback!, for

its part, is presented as: "A non-profit and movement to end street harassment powered

by local activists in 84 cities and 31 countries" (ihollaback.org, 2015).

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Tom Liacas 2015 - Innovations in networked movement building:

Distributed activism as practiced by 350.org and Hollaback!

Both of the groups studied are notable for their incorporation of horizontal mobilization

tactics and spirit into distinct areas of movement structure. What's more, their operating

model has demonstrated capacity to grow global networks of scale with limited resources

that also stand the test of time. What follows is a closer look at the elements behind their

particular practice of what is called "distributed action" in activist circles (Aroneanu,

2009).

Central cause-framing and definitions of approach

At 350.org and Hollaback!, framing the issue at the center of all advocacy as well as

determining the core approach to addressing it are activities that take place at each

organization’s executive level. This top-down approach differs significantly from the strict

collective process for defining problems and demands present in the grassroots horizontal

movements studied by Castells and Wolfson (Castells 2012, Wolfson 2015). The clarity of

vision that a top-down strategic process brings to defining a movement's issues and goals

may be a partial explanation for 350.org's and Hollaback's success at capturing and

maintaining the support of a large network of followers.

350.org and Hollaback!’s global networks

350.org worldwide: 4000 groups in 180 countries

Hollaback! worldwide: 92 groups in 32 countries

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Tom Liacas 2015 - Innovations in networked movement building:

Distributed activism as practiced by 350.org and Hollaback!

In “How We Make Change is Changing, a recent exploration of how networked

organizations are building distributed campaigns, Marisa Franco, B Loewe and Tania

Unzueta note that finding “action worthy problem and solutions” is an essential first step

to building distributed movements. According to these organizers, action-worthy causes

must answer to two questions: “Does the problem you are trying to solve really matter

to anyone?” and “Is the solution you propose realistic and effective?” (Franco et al, 2015).

Both 350.org and Hollaback! are working on issues that affect people at a personal level

across the world. On street harassment, the cause at the heart of Hollaback!’s

campaigning, Executive Director Emily May notes that: “Unfortunately, we have a huge

population of young women and LGBT folks who have been affected by this and have no

resources to deal with it,” (E. May, personal communication, July, 2015). For 350.org’s

Social Media Manager, Thelma Young, “Climate change is affecting people in communities

all across the world. It’s become personal now, so people are more likely to mobilize,” (T.

Young, personal communication, June, 2015).

When it comes acting on these causes, Hollaback! and 350.org have carefully framed

responses to issues for their members while making sure that proposed actions are

straightforward and doable. In its “Take Action” guides, Hollaback!’s leadership builds on

years of organizing to pull together best practices for new members. Their guide leads

new adopters through a series of simple entry-level actions, such as sharing their stories

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Tom Liacas 2015 - Innovations in networked movement building:

Distributed activism as practiced by 350.org and Hollaback!

with the community or organizing a ‘chalk walk’ to the wholesale activation and leadership

of a new Hollaback! local chapter (ihollaback.org, 2015).

350.org, for its part, has centrally planned and conceived climate action ideas for its

followers from its early days. In an article in the activist tactical blog Beautiful Trouble,

350 co-founder Phil Aroneanu recounts how the 2009 “Global Day of Climate Action”

event was first conceived by 350’s leaders as a: “message, or framework for others

around the world to take similar action at the same time.” Then, with the proper push

and the right digital tools provided to local adopters, the Day of Climate Action took on

its own life and generated 5,200 simultaneous public events in 181 countries (Aroneanu,

2009). 350.org applied a similar approach to the 2014 People’s Climate March in New

York City. Here again, the event and its central messaging was planned at the executive

level, while local organizers were provided with a digital “hubs platform”, which allowed

them to rally participation from among their communities of interest (McKenzie, 2015).

Getting autonomy right

Earlier expressions of distributed movement building, including the worldwide Occupy

Wall Street movement, were self-organizing and adopted radically horizontal

management structures. Unfortunately, they did not have staying power. The problem

with these previous cases was too much local autonomy, according to Todd Wolfson, once

an active Indymedia organizer himself. This organizational weakness, Wolfson believes,

is one of the “…significant factors that has led to the lack of sustainability” of these short-

lived movements (Wolfson 2013, 422).

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Tom Liacas 2015 - Innovations in networked movement building:

Distributed activism as practiced by 350.org and Hollaback!

Some organizations have taken a more cautious approach to access the potential of do-

it-yourself grassroots power. The groups covered in Mobilisation Lab’s Grassroots Led

Campaigns report (Mobilisation Lab, 2014) – including Avaaz.org, 38

Degrees and MoveOn.org – provided spaces where members could initiate their own

online petitions and drive a limited series of actions around them.

As the report notes, grassroots-led petition initiatives have increased participation and

driven larger membership numbers for these organizations. Still, many groups using these

distributed tactics have not moved very far beyond list building and online petition

advocacy.

In their approach to distributed organizing, Hollaback! and 350.org seem to fall

somewhere in the middle of the spectrum between the radical autonomy of Occupy Wall

Street and the highly-restricted autonomy of petition networks. In what could be

described as a “hybrid approach,” 350.org and Hollaback! maintain top-down leadership

on strategy and movement capacity-building while allowing local groups a fair amount of

autonomy on tactical issues and creative freedom to adapt identity and events to local

culture.

For example, 350.org and Hollaback!’s members can self-start local chapters that plan

and execute actions both online and offline. These local movement nodes organize

physical events, recruit new members, lead their own communities and do their own

media outreach.

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Tom Liacas 2015 - Innovations in networked movement building:

Distributed activism as practiced by 350.org and Hollaback!

When questioned on their decision to allow this level of local autonomy, representatives

of 350.org and Hollaback! both claim that they chose this model out of necessity.

For 350.org, this approach has been there from the very beginning as “part of its

organizational DNA” according to Digital Director, Jon Warnow. “There’s no way our

relatively small staff could have effectively run a ‘command and control’ program that

relied on top-down administration,” he explains (J. Warnow, personal communication,

July, 2015).

Hollaback!’s Executive Director Emily May explains that they chose to go distributed

because there was simply no funding available to build a top-down organization to

Balancing autonomy the 350 and Hollaback! way

Strategy, training and facilitation are all managed top-down by central staff

Framing the “action-worthy” cause and the approach to it Creating overall campaign strategy Planning collective actions that mobilize local groups Creating central communications for collective mobilization Creating a digital hub structure and digital action kits for local organizers Continually building capacity with local organizers Curating and mirroring local content back to the collective

Local groups have tactical and creative freedom in the following areas

Local groups can self-activate Local group chapter leaders appoint themselves Local digital hubs can be customized to reflect local flavor Local groups are free to create their own messaging Local groups can devise and execute their own actions

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Tom Liacas 2015 - Innovations in networked movement building:

Distributed activism as practiced by 350.org and Hollaback!

address street harassment. What’s more, she adds that: “While we were experts of our

own experiences, organizing against street harassment looks very different in India and

Chile and it should be local organizers there that determine what the movement looks

like,” (E. May, personal communication, July, 2015).

Autopilot is not an option

Though previous horizontal movements, especially Occupy Wall Street, appeared to arise

spontaneously and to evolve organically, 350.org and Hollaback have both experienced

the downsides of a totally "hands off" approach to movement growth and have since

adjusted their levels of oversight.

In its earliest phase, from 2005-2011, Hollaback! tried to grow a global network of

followers with little or no continued support from central staff. Instead, they simply

offered an online "do-it-yourself" guide to starting local chapters and allowed remote

organizers to self-start groups themselves. However, though this process led to the

creation of 20 local chapters between 2005 and 2010, only three remained active over

time (ihollaback.org, 2015).

At 350.org there were times when some of the group’s ambitions seem to have outpaced

capacity, notably during the People’s Climate March. Writing in Civicist (McKenzie, 2015),

Jessica McKenzie has pointed out that many of the hubs activated for the event have

since gone idle, despite 350’s assurances that the march was “about more than just a

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Tom Liacas 2015 - Innovations in networked movement building:

Distributed activism as practiced by 350.org and Hollaback!

single day.” This highlights the risks of initiating a distributed structure without the proper

staff resources to see it through.

Since the fade-out of its first batch of chapters, Hollaback! adjusted course in 2011 and

instituted a mandatory training program for new chapter leaders, overseen by staff at the

group's headquarters. In a series of webinars that new leaders follow for three months,

Hollaback’s central command provides coaching on cause marketing and branding, basic

tech capacity, how to run a campaign and how to talk about street harassment to the

media. Using this approach, Hollaback! has now trained over 300 leaders in 26

countries (ihollaback.org, 2015) and Executive Director Emily May confirms that its

chapters are both more active and more stable (E. May, personal communication, July,

2015).

In spite of the lack of resources given to hubs after the People’s Climate March, 350.org

is generally hands-on when it comes facilitating and managing its distributed networks

and a point person is assigned this task for each campaign. In an interview with

Mobilisation Lab, Louise Hazan, 350.org’s European Digital Campaigner, described her

role in bringing together collective activities for the Global Divestment Day in February of

2015. Her duties included planning and writing email calls to action for all chapters and

preparing the online infrastructure and digital toolkits that participants would use to self-

organize (L. Hazan, interview with Mobilisation Lab, April, 2015). Beyond this, 350.org’s

central facilitators spend a good amount of time training and coaching their local hub

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Tom Liacas 2015 - Innovations in networked movement building:

Distributed activism as practiced by 350.org and Hollaback!

leaders and also curate and share content coming from different nodes with the larger

community of organizers.

An emerging “hybrid” approach to distributed campaigning

With a clear lineage tracing back only as far as 1994 (Wolfson, 2014), it is clear that

distributed campaigning / action is still an emergent mode of activist mobilization. As

such, it is hard to provide a definitive model of its form and functions and even more

difficult to evaluate which tactical choices lead to the best outcomes for campaigners.

Still, the movements and organizations that have experimented with it in successive

waves up to present have provide a sufficient base of case studies from which the relative

Considerations for distributed campaigning the 350 and Hollaback! way

1. A compelling cause and action framework Central leadership frames the “Action Worthy Problem & Solutions.” Proposes action ideas to activists that are concrete and doable.

2. Freedom to appropriate and customize Local leaders and local chapters can self-start and adapt the movement to reflect their reality. They can modify messaging and action ideas to appropriate the movement and to better suit local contexts.

3. Self-serve tools and top-down facilitation Central leadership prepares digital infrastructure, research and campaigning tools for activists. Staff is assigned to facilitate induction of new chapters and spends time training and building capacity with new leaders.

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Tom Liacas 2015 - Innovations in networked movement building:

Distributed activism as practiced by 350.org and Hollaback!

benefits of different approaches may be determined, especially as regards to efficient

management structures and their balance of autonomy and central leadership.

While spontaneous movements such as Occupy Wall Street may have been too

autonomous to build long term organizational power, it’s clear that leaving more freedom

up to local groups has its benefits for cause-based groups. Both 350.org and Hollaback!

have succeeded in growing robust global activist networks in much less time and with

much fewer staff than traditional top-down NGOs. Their “hybrid” approach to distributed

campaigning, a mix of strategic guidance and training from the top with a good amount

of local autonomy, seems to be at the heart of this growth.

Given the impressive and sustained global performance of these organizations in the past

few years, this new model of distributed campaigning is promising for organizations

seeking to achieve global scale and unleash grassroots people-power with limited

resources.

Questions remain, however, with regards to the wider applicability of distributed

campaigning in regions across the world where digital divide issues affect Internet

knowledge and access for significant portions of the population. Likewise, distributed

tactics are likely to be a lot less easy to implement in areas where Internet freedoms are

restricted.

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Tom Liacas 2015 - Innovations in networked movement building:

Distributed activism as practiced by 350.org and Hollaback!

From an academic point of view, this current study is admittedly under-developed. There

are surely other theorists, beside Castells and Wolfson, who have critically engaged with

the distributed aspects of networked social movements. It would be productive to

evaluate the practices of 350.org and Hollaback! against the frameworks provided by a

wider body of scholarship. Still, given the challenges of keeping pace with the rhythm of

hacks and mutations in networked activist practice, this paper will have achieved its

purpose if it has succeeded in bringing leading-edge distributed campaigning case studies

to the attention of the academic community.

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Tom Liacas 2015 - Innovations in networked movement building:

Distributed activism as practiced by 350.org and Hollaback!

References: 350.org. Retrieved September 4, 2015. Aroneanu, P. (2009) Tactic: Distributed action. Blog post on Beautiful Trouble accessed September 4th, 2015 at http://beautifultrouble.org/tactic/distributed-action/ Castells, M. (2012). Networks of outrage and hope: Social movements in the Internet age. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Franco, M.; Loewe, B.; Unzueta, T. (2015) How We Make Change is Changing, Part I Open Source Campaigns for the 21st Century. Blog post in Medium accessed September 4th, 2015 at https://medium.com/organizer-sandbox/how-we-make-change-is-changing-part-i-5326186575e6 ihollaback.org. Retrieved September 4, 2015. Juris, J. S. (2004) Networked social movements: Global movements for global justice, in: M. Castells (Ed.) The Network Society: A Cross-Cultural Perspective (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar). McKenzie, J. (2015) The Unfinished Business of the People's Climate March. Blog post on Civicist accessed September 4th, 2015 at http://civichall.org/civicist/the-unfinished-business-of-the-peoples-climate-march/ Mobilisation Lab. (2014) GRASSROOTS-LED CAMPAIGNS: Lessons from the new frontier of people-powered campaigning platforms and programs. Powerpoint Presentation accessed September 4th, 2015 at http://www.mobilisationlab.org/mobilisation-tools/grassroots-led-campaigns/#.Vem3A5dSLi8 Tufekci, Zeynep and Wilson, Christopher (2012) Social Media and the Decision to Participate in Political Protest: Observations From Tahrir Square, in Journal of Communication, 2012. Wolfson, T. (2013). Democracy or autonomy? Indymedia and the contradictions of global social movement networks in Global Networks, 410-424. Wolfson, T. (2014). Digital Rebellion: The Birth of the Cyber Left. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.