User:Iisabellasanch/Advocacy group

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Activities[edit]

Advocacy groups exist in a wide variety of genres based upon their most pronounced activities.

• Anti-defamation organizations issue responses or criticisms to real or supposed slights of any sort (including speech or violence) by an individual or group against a specific segment of the population which the organization exists to represent.
• Watchdog groups exist to provide oversight and rating of actions or media by various outlets, both government and corporate. They may also index personalities, organizations, products, and activities in databases to provide coverage and rating of the value or viability of such entities to target demographics.
• Lobby groups lobby for a change to the law or the maintenance of a particular law and big businesses fund very considerable lobbying influence on legislators, for example in the USAand in the UK where lobbying first developed. Some Lobby groups have considerable financial resources at their disposal. Lobbying is regulated to stop the worst abuses which can develop into corruption. In the United States the Internal Revenue Service makes a clear distinction between lobbying and advocacy.
• Lobby groups spend considerable amounts of money on election advertising as well. For example, the 2011 documentary film Hot Coffee contains interviews of former Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver E. Diaz Jr. and evidence the US Chamber of Commerce paid for advertising to unseat him.
• Legal defense funds provide funding for the legal defense for, or legal action against, individuals or groups related to their specific interests or target demographic. This is often accompanied by one of the above types of advocacy groups filing an amicus curiae if the cause at stake serves the interests of both the legal defense fund and the other advocacy groups.
• Astroturfing groups mask the sponsors of a message or organization (e.g., political, advertising, religious or public relations) to make it appear as though it originates from and is supported by grassroots participants. It is a practice intended to give the statements or organizations credibility by withholding information about the source's financial connection.
• Media advocacy groups use mass media to advocate for the incorporation of equitable public policies- particularly policies aimed at benefiting historically marginalized communities.

Social media use[edit]

Apart from lobbying and other methods of asserting political presence, advocacy groups use social media to attract attention towards their particular cause. A study published in early 2012 suggests that advocacy groups of varying political and ideological orientations operating in the United States are using social media to interact with citizens every day. The study surveyed 53 groups, that were found to be using a variety of social media technologies to achieve organizational and political goals:

• Facebook was the social media site of choice with all but one group noting that they use the site to connect with citizens.
• Twitter was also popular with all but two groups saying that they use Twitter.
• Other social media being used included YouTube, LinkedIn, wikis, Flickr, Jumo, Diigo, Tumblr, Foursquare, Identi.ca, Picasa, and Vimeo.

As noted in the study, "while some groups raised doubts about social media’s ability to overcome the limitations of weak ties and generational gaps, an overwhelming majority of groups see social media as essential to contemporary advocacy work and laud its democratizing function."

Another 2012 study argued that advocacy groups use social media to reach audiences unrelated to the communities they help and to mobilize diverse groups of people. Mobilization is achieved in four ways:

"1). Social media help connect individuals to advocacy groups and thus can strengthen outreach efforts.

2). Social media help promote engagement as they enable engaging feedback loops.

3). Social media strengthen collective action efforts through an increased speed of communication.

4). Social media are cost-effective tools that enable advocacy organizations to do more for less."

While these studies show the acceptance of social media use by advocacy groups, populations not affiliated with media advocacy often question the benevolence of social media. Rather than exclusively fostering an atmosphere of camaraderie and universal understanding, social media can perpetuate power hierarchies. More specifically, social media can provide "a means of reproducing power and fulfilling group interest for those possessing excessive power... [having the potential to] indirectly reinforce elitist domination." By excluding those without access to the internet, social media inherently misrepresents populations- particularly the populations in low-income countries. Since media advocacy groups use social media as a way to boost the narratives of these populations, the effect of social media use can be counteractive to well-intentioned goals. Instead of directly amplifying the voices and narratives of historically marginalized populations, social media magnifies their concerns through the perspective of individuals with access to the internet.

Since advocacy groups have the agency to control a community's narrative through a social media post, they have the agency to control the deservedness of a community as well. That is, the amount of resources or attention a community receives largely depends on the kind of narrative an advocacy group curates for them on social media.