From: rre-request@weber.ucsd.edu Date: Tue, 18 Oct 1994 11:36:20 -0700 Subject: archive send: action-alerts File: action-alerts BEGIN---------------cut here------------------ -------------------------------------------------------------------- T H E N E T W O R K O B S E R V E R VOLUME 1, NUMBER 1 JANUARY 1994 -------------------------------------------------------------------- This file contains a single article from TNO 1(1), which presents some guidelines to follow in preparing Internet-based "action alerts" about political issues. To retrieve the whole issue, send a message that looks like this: To: rre-request@weber.ucsd.edu Subject: archive send tno-january-1994 Subscription and copyright information are at the bottom of this file. Please feel free to forward it to others. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Action alerts. Computer networks are a new medium, and we still haven't figured out what to do with them. One thing we can do is share success stories; if someone does something really innovative with the net, let's get the word out. But some of the net's uses have been around for years without anybody really paying much attention. One such use is what I'll call (following many analogous practices on paper) the "action alert". An action alert is a message that someone sends out to the net asking for a specific action to be taken on a current political issue. It's time to understand how action alerts work and abstract some guidelines for people who might wish to use them more consciously in the future. The action alerts I can think of fall into two categories, single messages and structured campaigns. * Single-message alerts. One model for a single-message alert might be the recent flood of messages urging us all to counter an ongoing Christian right campaign by calling up Apple Computer to congratulate it on its policies regarding gay and lesbian families. Several other such messages have passed through the Internet over the years. A single-message alert will typically be sent out ad hoc a discussion group, or to a bunch of them, from which interested individuals will pass it along to other groups. * Structured campaigns. Perhaps the best model for a structured campaign is Jim Warren's successful campaign to get California legislative information made publicly available on the Internet. Rather than send his messages out to discussion groups, Jim created his own mailing list devoted solely to this campaign. Another example is the mailing list that Amnesty International maintained for a while -- I believe it's no longer operating. Both types of action alerts are obviously modeled on things that have been happening on paper, and lately via fax machines, for a long time. What computer networks do is make them a lot cheaper. In particular, a networked alert can travel extremely far from its origin by being forwarded from friend to friend and list to list, without any additional cost being imposed on the original sender. This phenomenon of chain-forwarding is important, and it behooves the would-be author of an action alert, whether a single message or a whole campaign, to think through its consequences: (1) Establish authenticity. Bogus action alerts -- such as the notorious "modem tax" alert -- travel just as fast as real ones. Don't give alerts a bad name -- include clear information about the sponsoring organization and provide the reader with some way of tracing back to you. (2) Put a date on it. Action alerts can travel through the net forever. They may, for example, sleep in someone's mailbox for weeks, months, or years and then suddenly get a new life as the mailbox's owner forwards it to a new set of lists. Do not count on the message header to convey the date (or anything else); people who forward net messages frequently strip off the header. And if your recommended action has a time-out date (e.g., do it by Thursday, February 17th or don't do it) then clearly say so. (3) Put clear beginning and ending markers on it. You can't prevent people from modifying your alert as they pass it along. Fortunately, at least in my experience, this only happens accidentally, as extra commentary accumulates at the top and bottom of the message as it gets forwarded. So put a bold row of dashes or something like that at the top and bottom so extra stuff will look extra. (4) Think about whether you want the alert to propagate at all. The Amnesty alert network actively discouraged this kind of forwarding. Because of the extremely sensitive nature of the materials they were sending out, they wanted to know precisely who was getting their notices, and how, and in what context. And they wisely said so. (5) Make it self-contained. Don't presuppose that your readers will have any context beyond what they'll get on the news. Your alert will probably be read by people who have never heard of you or your cause. So define your terms, avoid references to previous messages on your mailing list, and provide lots of background, or at least some simple instructions for getting useful background materials. Avoid the temptation to explain the issue in the shorthand you use when preaching to the converted. This can take practice. (6) Give everyone something to do. If your campaign only applies to a certain political area, such as Warren's California campaign, explain some alternative way that people from outside that area can help out. Or, conversely, if your campaign is global, say so. Apple Computer, for example, is a global firm and deserves global reinforcement for its good deeds. (7) Put a good, clear headline on it. And all the rest of the usual advice. State the facts and double-check them. Check your spelling too. Use short sentences and narrow margins. Write in language that will be understood worldwide, not just in your own country or culture. (8) Don't overdo it. Action alerts might become as unwelcome as direct-mail advertising. Postpone that day by picking your fights and including some useful, thought-provoking information in your alert message. If you're running a sustained campaign, set up your own list, like Jim Warren did. Then send out a single message that calls for some action and include an advertisement for your new list. (9) Do a post-mortem. When the campaign is over, try to derive some lessons for others to use. Even if you're burned out, take a minute right away while the experience is still fresh in mind. What problems did you have? What mistakes did you make? What unexpected connections did you make? Who did you reach and why? Good guesses are useful too. (10) Don't mistake e-mail for organizing. An action alert is not an organization; it's just an alert. If you want to build a lasting political movement, at some point you'll have to gather people together, and it's really not clear whether the net is a good medium for doing this. More on this topic in future TNO's. (11) [added 10/94] Get your facts straight! Your message will circle the earth, maybe to many tens of thousands of people, so definitely check your facts. When you make mistakes, you cause great disruption in the world, as well as discrediting yourself, your organization, and the whole idea of network action alerts. With regard to campaigns run through mailing lists, the important thing is to realize that such a campaign gets its power from two linked elements: (a) a reporter on the scene (for example, in the California Legislature) who can provide accurate, sophisticated, comprehensible, up-to-the minute accounts of the current state of play; and (b) a networked constituency who will read these accounts and is willing to act on them. In the particular case of legislative campaigns, this is a pattern that's developing throughout the world of lobbying. The lobbyist who spins arguments in members' chambers is quickly giving way to the mass-mail and mass-telephone specialist who, armed with absurdly detailed demographics on the member's constituents, whips up letters and calls based on the issue of the moment. And many organizations, such as the National Association of Manufacturers, have reportedly been using computer networks for this purpose routinely for years. This is definitely not a healthy development overall. But the practices that have emerged on the Internet have an important virtue when compared to the inflaming targeted phone call: the alert messages go out in "public", or at least in open network forums, and are subject to criticism from people who find them misleading. I'll have more to say about computer networks and lobbying in future issues of TNO. The lesson to take home right now is that the Internet is providing some kind of vague approximation of a "public sphere" for political action, and we can all do democracy and ourselves a big favor by paying close attention to its logic and its ethics. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Phil Agre, editor pagre@ucsd.edu Department of Communication University of California, San Diego +1 (619) 534-6328 La Jolla, California 92093-0503 FAX 534-7315 USA -------------------------------------------------------------------- The Network Observer is distributed through the Red Rock Eater News Service. To subscribe to RRE, send a message to the RRE server, rre-request@weber.ucsd.edu, whose subject line reads "subscribe firstname lastname", for example "Subject: subscribe Jane Doe". 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