Transnational Advocacy in the Digital Era: Think Global, Act Local

Transnational Advocacy in the Digital Era explores the role of digital advocacy organizations, a major new addition to the international arena. Organizations such as MoveOn, GetUp, and Campact derive power and influence from their ability to rapidly mobilize members on-line and off-line and are shaping public opinion on many issues including climate change, trade, and refugees. Research in international relations (IR) has highlighted the influence of non-governmental organizations, which wield power through their expertise and long-term, moral commitment to an issue. However, no IR scholars have explored the spread and power of digital advocacy organizations. Nina Hall provides a detailed investigation of how these organizations have harnessed digitally networked power and can quickly respond to the most salient issues of the day, and mobilize large memberships, to put pressure on politicians. She finds that these organizations operate in a globalized world but tackle transnational problems by focusing on national targets. This new generation of activists have formed a strong transnational network, but still see the state as the locus of power.

Table of Contents:
1: Introduction 2: The Power of Digital Advocacy Organizations 3: The Global Growth of Digital Advocacy Organizations 4: Campaigning 5: The Purposes of a Transnational Network 6: Trends in Transnational Campaigning: Issues, Targets, and Partners 7: Mobilizing for Climate Action 8: Staff or Member-Driven? 9: Conclusion Appendix References

About the Author :
Nina Hall is an Assistant Professor in International Relations at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (Europe). She previously worked as a Lecturer at the Hertie School of Governance, where she published her first book Displacement, Development, and Climate Change: International Organizations Moving Beyond their Mandates? (Routledge, 2016). She holds a DPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford and is the co-founder of an independent and progressive think tank, New Zealand Alternative. She has been a Senior Fellow at the Weizenbaum Institute (the German Internet Institute) and a Faculty Affiliate at the SNF Agora Institute, Johns Hopkins University.

Review :
The book reminds scholars of transnational advocacy that new forms of activism regularly challenge the dominance of traditional groups established well before the internet age. Transnational Advocacy in the Digital Era helps scholars and activists understand vital questions about when and why digital advocacy organizations choose to work transnationally. Bridging work in political communications and international relations, its incisive analysis reveals both the power and tensions inherent in the digital advocacy model. Transnational Advocacy in the Digital Era is groundbreaking work. Nina Hall's extensive research documents an organizational form that has gained traction across national settings. These are groups that extend beyond individual protest moments, building movement capacity and transforming it into long-term political power. This is the first book to examine such organizations through a comparative, cross-national lens. It has a lot to teach both academics and practitioners who specialize in this field. This book importantly captures shifts in how transnational advocacy occurs even in an era when many states have restricted the ability of such organizations to operate. Hall finds that advocacy organizations see the state as the most important locus of power, and hence the target of their campaigns which are nationally based and include campaigns on elections, unlike charitable organizations which are typically precluded from doing so. These are nonetheless transnational phenomena insofar as these organizations have diffused the advocacy model of rapid-response tactics like analytic digital activism and messaging to rapidly mobilize large memberships—offline and online—rather than relying on professional staff wielding expertise over a given issue. This is an insightful handbook of new forms of advocacy in the face of changing political and technological environments for students, scholars, and practitioners. With this timely and compelling book Nina Hall brings international relations scholarship on transnational advocacy into the digital age. Hall spells out the unique nature and contributions of digital advocacy organizations, drawing on careful research on diverse organizations working on a range of issues. Nina Hall has identified an important new source of power in global politics and created a valuable framework for further research. Hall clearly delimits the empirical boundaries of this book and highlights the need to examine different political contexts and marginal groups, which is also the subject of a growing literature. Notably...Hall's work provides an important contribution to this growing but still relatively under-explored field. This fascinating and well written book examines the ways in which digital campaigning and advocacy have developed over the past decade or so, through a close examination of novel types of advocacy organisations,...Hall brings to this work new questions for International Relations (ir) scholars who wish to interrogate the practices and power of contemporary forms of online mass activism...Hall clearly delimits the empirical boundaries of this book and highlights the need to examine different political contexts and marginal groups, which is also the subject of a growing literature.