5. DESCRIPCIÓN DEL PROCESO
12.5 CAMBIOS EN EL PROCESO DE CERTIFICACIÓN
on the interaction on the collaborative IF campaign Facebook as well as document review of flyers on CAFOD’s Hunger for Change campaign and Oxfam’s Grow campaign. The importance of this section is to provide evidence that contribute to understanding how INGO case used the Internet in their campaigning, and for sustaining their network of digitally connected campaigners.
As noted in an earlier section describing campaigners in INGO case, there were no indications that campaigners were engaged as an identifiable group with shared identity. In general, the public audience were assumed as potential campaigners that could be mobilised to take campaign action on global poverty issues. This assumption is based on the possibilities of these NGOs to communicate their message to a fluid network of public audience connected by ICT. The Internet and social media platforms therefore made it possible to integrate and coordinate their network of actors within and between organisations, as well as across cultural and geographical boundaries. While support groups in INGO case were considered as a network of actors that share, follow
or like the campaign message, there was little evidence that INGO case engaged their
campaigners as actors with a shared identity.
Much of the interaction was sharing information about their activites and encouraging their campaigners to take actions by liking or sharing a story or image linked to an appeal campaign. To a lesser extent, this was different with Trócaire, which engaged with a network of identifiable volunteers that constituted a core element of the organisation’s campaign structure, and therefore, a cohesive group that offered opportunity to generate a common identity. As explained earlier, the terms “share”, “like” and “follow” are part of the clicktivism language used in communicating on social media, and are represented by symbols used to indicate acknowledgement of an information that is communicated. However, the use of these symbols did not necessarily imply any level of engagement with the campaign issue that was communicated. Furthermore, there was no evidence from the visual method that these semiotic modes of interaction proceed or derive from a common frame of reference, as they did not include written text that could be analysed. For example, an image shared could get a hundred ‘likes’ with no word said and this made it difficult to assess the frames and what was communication.
127 When asked about the role of the internet and communication technology, S1 from Oxfam explained: “Oxfam website has very many uses; 1, is the issue of campaigning,
where we want the public to take action on issues, 2, there is the issue of fund raising, 3, is the trading line Oxfam shops.” It is important to note here that the website was
seen to serve the purpose of ‘taking action’ and ‘fundraising’. Raising public awareness was more about the campaign action than knowledge about the issue. With Oxfam, the use of Internet for its ‘trading line’ is linked to fundraising and Fairtrade merchandising. It is also important to note the gap between the education unit emphasis on knowledge and the campaign team’s mention of action as the focal point of their campaigning. Regarding how they used the Internet in their campaigning, R2 in Trócaire said: “Sure,
you are wasting your time when you don’t ask people what they want to engage in social media. If you go to Trócaire social media today you’d see that there is spirit of engagement looking for comments.” “The spirit of engagement looking for comments”
points to the desire by INGOs to encourage deliberation through the conversation prompts they post to elicit comments. The participants from CAFOD provided a similar response on the role of the Internet and social media when asked about their medium of communication. Y2 said: “We pay a lot of attention to Internet and social media
when it comes to communicating the message of the campaign and promoting it. In terms of it being a resource for developing knowledge (on the issue), I’m not sure how much we do”.
The responses here further suggest that for organisations in INGO case, the Internet and social media served mainly to create awareness around the different activities they include in their campaigning. As an official in the campaign unit, Y2 response also implied there was no conscious effort to use the Internet or social media as platform for increasing knowledge about the campaign issues. The idea of knowledge was arguably associated with their educational programmes and perceived as something produced by the organisation and delivered to the public through structured channels. This was evident in Y2 response on the opportunity the organisation offered campaigners to be involved in defining the campaign issue.
When asked if they considered their social media as a platforms to involve campaigners in identifying or defining the campaign issues, R1 from Trócaire said: “On
whether we get or use the feedback…engagement with social media can initially be quite superficial as people get in and out… So we would be interested in people more committed, real advocates who can come to offline events as well….”
Y2 from CAFOD said: “Social media for me is more about communicating the
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message (campaign knowledge)... I’m not sure we are good at listening most NGOs are better at telling.”
There seemed also an expression of doubt that the social media served as a resource for increasing or expanding knowledge on the campaign issue. This comment by S1 below resonated with the response across the INGO case: Yes, it is useful for
mobilising people, but for the broader public, evidence shows that social media is not useful in changing perspectives; it can be used for action to promote local issues” (S1).
The response from R1 points to the desire to have more committed campaigners that can act as catalysts for multiplying public understanding. Similarly, the response from the participant from CAFOD indicated that the social media was seen as a channel for communicating knowledge only after it had been framed by the organisation. However, this response is only descriptive of the current usage rather than its acknowledged potential.
These responses again provide evidence of a tenuous relationship between the organisation and their campaigners in which campaigners were not engaged as stakeholders in framing the knowledge, but consumers of framed knowledge. However, the responses across the three INGOs showed that information and communication technology emerged as a core channel of communicating with their campaign audiences. The response from S1 in Oxfam provided further evidence: “...the website is
a good place to publish information and knowledge…we use them in communicating to the public. But social media is not known to be a forum for campaign, but for social interaction” . The issue about the Internet not being the place for changing perception
is debatable in the current wave of the use of social media by extremist group in radicalising young people.
Visual methods on the social media interaction showed that the Facebook was the most used mode of communication with campaigners, while the Youtube was used more for soliciting donations through the use of video fundraisng appeals. What the campaign audience see on the Youtube link in the NGO case websites was testimonies from individuals about hardship and deprivation and the compassionate need to make charity donations to ‘lift families’ out of the poverty trap. Demographic considerations was not a major fact in how campaign messages are designed or communicated to the public. However, there was an acknowledgement by interviewees from INGO case about the importance of engaging their campaign audience as heterogenous social actors rather than as an amorphous public. This was evident in the response from S1 in Oxfam also state: “getting this understanding and knowledge that there isn’t an
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amorphous public out there, there are groups of people that want to engage with particular issue, so that we have a more strategic approach to our audiences”.
The interviewees from Trócaire expressed a different view on the importance of demographic segmentation of campaign audiences. They argued that values were a uniting force with no age barriers, and therefore saw no reason for demographic segmentation in designing or communicating their campaign. This was implicit in R2 response: “In one sense we are aware that for public campaigns, there is often young
adults and opportunities for getting them involved, but we would not take this in isolation, we would take a values-based approach… We look at values and think people of different age groups can share same values”.
Visual methods showed that CAFOD, and to a lesser extent Oxfam practised such segmentation but in a limited way. Although there is a link on their campaign websites specifically dedicated to young people in primary and post-secondary age categories, the websites was designed to mentor young people on how to start their own campaigns and become successful campaigners. The responses from all participants in INGO case indicated an acknowledgement of the potential benefits for a more strategic engagement with their campaigners.
For CAFOD and Trócaire the faith-based INGOs, the church parishes also provided a way of reaching out to their core public constituency in fundraising. Charity boxes and donation envelopes are usually handed out to parishioners to support the poor. Although CAFOD and Trócaire see their campaigning on global poverty as directed at the wider public audience, the Catholic community is considered their ‘official’ target, and their campaigns are therefore designed to project the values and practices of the Catholic community and Christian audience. The inclusion of Christian social values such as compassion and sacrifice are therefore important for their narrative, the framing of their campaign message, and for the actions they promote. The use of prayers to evoke compassion and humanity was particularly prevalent in their YouTube video clips that replicate the combination of charity appeals and individual testimonies with social justice messages in their campaigning.
With Oxfam, CAFOD and Trócaire, taking an action on a campaign issue can be an individual experience that ranges from sending an online petition to making a personal sacrifice on their choice of grocery. The review of online publications relating to the campaigns on the Oxfam and CAFOD websites describes ‘taking action’ as sending an online petition to local Members of Parliament and other symbolic sacrifices such as living on 2 dollars a day (www.ifenoughfood.org).
130 The screenshot of Oxfam campaign webpage as seen in figure 7 below, is an illustration of the typical representation of global poverty the campaign audience finds when they visit INGO case campaign websites. Campaigners are encouraged to select a campaign theme from a catalogue of predetermined campaign issues. The screenshot shows a message on Oxfam ‘Climate Change’ and ‘Land Grab’ campaigns that were part of the wider ‘Grow’ campaign included in the document review for this thesis. The website offered a number of campaigns options each showing a target number of actions required, with deadlines for accomplishing the campaign. With this particular campaign, there was an animated picture depicting how donations could literally lift individual families’ from poverty, and by extension eradicate global poverty, through petitioning local Members of Parliament and making donations.
Figure 7: Oxfam: brochure of campaign actions.
(www.oxfam.org.uk/get-involved/campaign-with-us)
At the top left hand side of the web link a menu invites prospective campaigners to get involved, with the option of Fundraising and Campaign with us. There is also hyperlinks to a number of campaign actions from which to choose as well as links to Campaign
success stories, ‘How to campaign’ and how to ‘Join the Grow campaign’. With the
climate change campaign, a direct link is made to natural causes such as drought, poor harvest and hunger, and campaigners are encouraged to ask their MP to ‘lift lives for good’ by addressing climate change. This particular campaign ran uptil June 2015, and the target online actions set at 650 of which 600 actions had been taken at the time of visual observation. The second campaign on stemming land grabs targeted the activities of multinationals such as Pepsi. The individual actions were tracked and
131 monitored using a countdown chart that indicated how many actions had been taken, and how many more were required to achieve a successful campaign by collective action. Although the researched information on these campaigns was usually uploaded, they were found in the archives of the organisations websites, and the emphasis was on taking an action to achieve the set target.
This section provided evidence for analysing the role of the Internet in INGO case communications with their campaign audiences. It showed that aside from their campaigning and advocacy, the websites of the sampled INGOs also served for fundraising and institutional lobbying, and that public awareness on global poverty was often subsumed in these activities. The data revealed the role of the Internet in building coalitions between organisations as well as a network of actors for non-membership organisations that aimed to mobilise public action. The Internet also offered opportunities to extend their reach to social actors across demographic stratification. The email and social media emerged as the most frequent channels of communication with actors within and outside the organisation. This medium of communication reflected the era of online campaigning, but also posed the question about how they might influence public engagement offline (Brandzel, 2010). The next section presents data on some specific examples of how NGOs in both sample categories interpret the success of their campaign against global poverty.