Changing the Face of Advocacy? Explaining Interest Organizations’ Use of Social Media Strategies

Social media have increasingly been recognized as an important and effective tool for advocacy. A growing body of research examines the use of social media in grassroots and social movements as well as issues related to civic engagement, social capital, and voter turnout. The extent to which organized interest groups have adopted social media as an advocacy tool, however, has been relatively ignored. This article examines the determinants of the use of social media tools by a broad range of interest organizations. We argue that social media use needs to be understood as part of an interest organization’s larger set of news media lobbying strategies. We explain social media use as a function of two factors: first, the importance organizations place on trying to shape lobbying debates through the news media; second, the importance they place on shaping their public image via the news media. We test this argument using a unique data set of interest group advocacy in the European Union. Controlling for a host of competing explanations, regression results provide evidence supporting our central argument.

[1]  Keith N. Hampton,et al.  Neighboring in Netville: How the Internet Supports Community and Social Capital in a Wired Suburb , 2003 .

[2]  A. Binderkrantz.  Interest groups in the media: Bias and diversity over time , 2012 .

[3]  L. Kenix,et al.  In search of Utopia: An analysis of non-profit web pages , 2007 .

[4]  L. Baroni,et al.  Defining and classifying interest groups , 2014 .

[5]  John M. T. Balmer,et al.  Managing Corporate Image and Corporate Reputation , 1998 .

[6]  S. Utz,et al.  Is the medium the message? Perceptions of and reactions to crisis communication on twitter, blogs and traditional media , 2011 .

[7]  Friederike Schultz,et al.  The Construction of Corporate Social Responsibility in Network Societies: A Communication View , 2013 .

[8]  Bernard Manin.  Principes du gouvernement représentatif , 2012 .

[9]  J. V. Laer.  Activists Online and Offline: The Internet as an Information Channel for Protest Demonstrations , 2010 .

[10]  Gregory D. Saxton,et al.  Information, Community, and Action: How Nonprofit Organizations Use Social Media , 2011, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[11]  A. Lupia,et al.  Which Public Goods are Endangered?: How Evolving Communication Technologies Affect The Logic of Collective Action , 2003 .

[12]  D. Schwartz.  Users of the world unite , 2000 .

[13]  M. D. Carpini.  Gen.com: Youth, Civic Engagement, and the New Information Environment , 2000 .

[14]  Gerardo Patriotta,et al.  Maintaining Legitimacy: Controversies, Orders of Worth, and Public Justifications , 2011 .

[15]  S. Otjes,et al.  Weapon of the weak? The social media landscape of interest groups , 2016 .

[16]  Justin Greenwood,et al.  Interest representation in the European Union , 2003 .

[17]  Gregory D. Saxton,et al.  Modeling the adoption and use of social media by nonprofit organizations , 2012, New Media Soc..

[18]  Petros Iosifidis.  THE PUBLIC SPHERE, SOCIAL NETWORKS AND PUBLIC SERVICE MEDIA , 2011 .

[19]  J. Alterman.  The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted , 2011 .

[20]  R. V. Schendelen,et al.  Machiavelli in Brussels: The Art of Lobbying the EU , 2002 .

[21]  A. T. Thrall.  The Myth of the Outside Strategy: Mass Media News Coverage of Interest Groups , 2006 .

[22]  W. Riker.  The art of political manipulation , 1987 .

[23]  M. Prior,et al.  The Immensely Inflated News Audience: Assessing Bias in Self-Reported News Exposure , 2009 .

[24]  P. Howard,et al.  The Upheavals in Egypt and Tunisia: The Role of Digital Media , 2011 .

[25]  Ken Kollman.  Outside Lobbying: Public Opinion and Interest Group Strategies , 1998 .

[26]  A. Kaplan,et al.  Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media , 2010 .

[27]  A. Chalmers.  Trading information for access: informational lobbying strategies and interest group access to the European Union , 2013 .

[28]  Kaye D. Sweetser,et al.  Adoption of social media for public relations by nonprofit organizations , 2010 .

[29]  E. E. Schattschneider.  The Semisovereign People: A Realist's View of Democracy in America , 1960 .

[30]  Christine Mahoney,et al.  Brussels Versus the Beltway: Advocacy in the United States and the European Union , 2008 .

[31]  Brian Pitts,et al.  Making an Impression: New Media in the 2008 Presidential Nomination Campaigns , 2009, PS: Political Science & Politics.

[32]  Bruce Bimber.  Information and Political Engagement in America: The Search for Effects of Information Technology at the Individual Level , 2001 .

[33]  W. Maloney,et al.  Researching Interest Group Politics in Europe and Elsewhere: Much We Study, Little We Know? , 2008 .

[34]  Jan Beyers,et al.  Voice and Access , 2004 .

[35]  Hanspeter Kriesi,et al.  The Making of a European Public Sphere: Going Public in the European Union , 2010 .

[36]  Hanspeter Kriesi,et al.  Going Public in the European Union , 2007 .

[37]  Heather R. Edwards,et al.  Are Social Work Advocacy Groups Using Web 2.0 Effectively? , 2010 .

[38]  W. Maloney.  INTEREST GROUPS AND THE REVITALISATION OF DEMOCRACY: ARE WE EXPECTING TOO MUCH? , 2009 .

[39]  R. Polat.  The Internet and Political Participation , 2005 .

[40]  D. Karpf.  Online Political Mobilization from the Advocacy Group's Perspective: Looking Beyond Clicktivism , 2010 .

[41]  D. Bergan.  Does Grassroots Lobbying Work? , 2009 .

[42]  Lucig H. Danielian,et al.  The heavenly chorus: interest group voices on TV news , 1994 .

[43]  Ken'ichi Ikeda,et al.  Social capital online: Collective use of the Internet and reciprocity as lubricants of democracy , 2006 .

[44]  Jonathan A. Obar,et al.  Advocacy 2.0: An Analysis of How Advocacy Groups in the United States Perceive and Use Social Media as Tools for Facilitating Civic Engagement and Collective Action , 2011, Journal of Information Policy.

[45]  A. Binderkrantz,et al.  Interest Group Strategies: Navigating between Privileged Access and Strategies of Pressure , 2005 .

[46]  Shelley Boulianne.  Does Internet Use Affect Engagement? A Meta-Analysis of Research , 2009 .

[47]  Jeffrey Ayres,et al.  From the Streets to the Internet: The Cyber-Diffusion of Contention , 1999 .

[48]  Dhavan V. Shah,et al.  "Connecting" and "Disconnecting" With Civic Life: Patterns of Internet Use and the Production of Social Capital , 2001 .

[49]  M. Jennings,et al.  Internet Use and Civic Engagement: A Longitudinal Analysis , 2003 .

[50]  C. Mahoney.  Brussels versus the Beltway , 2008 .

[51]  Elisabeth R. Gerber.  The Populist Paradox: Interest Group Influence and the Promise of Direct Legislation , 2011 .

[52]  F. Baumgartner,et al.  Measuring the size and scope of the EU interest group population , 2010 .

[53]  van M.P.C.M. Schendelen.  Machiavelli in Brussels , 2002 .

[54]  James A. Thurber,et al.  Untangled Web: Internet Use during the 1998 Election , 1999, PS: Political Science & Politics.

[55]  D. Randall.  Lobbying and Policy Change: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why , 2010 .

[56]  Theresa Lynn Petray,et al.  Protest 2.0: online interactions and Aboriginal activists , 2011 .