Online Petitions

The increased use of internet not only for business, education, or entertainment but also for expressing opinion and digital activism signified that public sphere could also take place virtually through the internet. This paper aims to explore the digital activism done by Indonesian netizens through online petitions, and how it challenged the possibility of online petition as a form of the digital public sphere in Indonesia. The methods used is literature study on various works of literature and recent petitions in Change.org. This research shows that online petition provides a space for interaction between the marginalized groups, netizens, and the government. Online petitions also facilitate a new form of protest with more dynamic characteristics, including fast and effective communication. Online petition also gives the same right for every citizen to express their concern. However, online petition did not provide much space to promote a critical and deliberative public debate for public.

Online media and communication are an essential part of most political campaigns of today;
they enable citizen to take part in political activism in many new forms, such as online petitioning. This study examines the mobilizing power of three characteristics, i.e., tone, picture, and interactive cues, of online petitions. The research uses a 2 (negative vs. positive tone) x 2 (with vs. without image) x 2 (with vs. without interactive cues) in between subject design. The findings reveal that the negative tone of online petitions positively affect Internet users more than positive ones in terms of the intent to sign the online petition and behavioral intentions (e.g., seeking for more information, sending the petitions and talking about the petitions to their friends, family and colleagues, etc.). The study also shows that interactive cues of online petitions specifically increased a perceived credibility of the online petitions, while tones and images do not. We also found that the combination of all three characteristics produce the most mobilizing power among respondents in seeking for more information about the presented issue in the online petitions. The findings suggest that online petitioners should take the characteristics of an online petition into consideration in order to generate more mobilized and effective online petitions in the future.

Key words: mobilization effects, online petition, online campaign, online activism, tones, images, interactive-cues

Yeni medya çevreci politikalar üzerinde son yıllarda merkezi bir rol üstlenmiş durumdadır.
Özellikle yeni medyanın aracılık etmek, anlamlar oluşturmak, bunları şekillendirmek,
semboller yaymak, çevrim içi stratejiler geliştirmek ve taktikler yaratmak konusunda sağladığı
avantajlar çevreci hareket içerisinde yer alan organizasyonlar tarafından kullanılmaktadır.
İnterneti çevrim içi eylemleri için platform olarak kullanan bu organizasyonlar daha geniş bir
kesime ulaşmayı amaçlamaktadırlar.
Çevrim içi düzenlenen eylemler gerçek hayatta gerçekleştirilen aktivizm ve doğrudan eylem -
lerin felsefi arka planının sanal dünyaya aktarılmasıyla ortaya çıkmıştır. Bu çerçevede değerlendirilebilecek
çevrim içi aktivizm çeşitlerinden olan imza kampanyaları; devlet organlarına,
kurumsal otoritelere veya çeşitli şirketlere karşı gerçekleştirilebilmektedir. Çevreci hareket de
çevrim içi imza kampanyalarını çevresel sorunlara dikkat çekmek amacıyla kullanmaktadır.
Çevreci hareket içerisinde yer alan ve kendisini ABD’nin en etkili eylem grubu olarak ifade
eden Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)-Doğal Kaynakları Koruma Konseyi, 2 milyondan
fazla üyenin taban gücüne ve çevrim içi eylemcinin etkisine sahiptir. Organizasyon 500’e
yakın avukatın, bilim adamının ve diğer profesyonellerin uzmanlığını çatısı altında birleştirmektedir.
NRDC, çevrim içi olarak düzenlediği imza kampanyalarıyla da çevreye ilişkin sorunlarda 313
olumlu adımların atılması için mücadele etmektedir. Bu çalışmada NRDC’nin resmi web
sitesinde yer alan çevrim içi imza kampanyaları içerik analiziyle ele alınmaktadır. Bu imza
kampanyalarının detaylı bir şekilde ele alınması küresel aktivizmde elektronik imza kampanyalarının
giderek artan rolünü, bunların özelliklerinin neler olduğunu ve webde kolektif
eylem örgütlenmesinin kilit noktalarını aydınlatmak açısından önem taşımaktadır.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Çevrim içi protestolar, çevrim içi aktivizm, çevrim içi imza kampanyaları,
içerik analizi, yeni medya

According to the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act introduced in 2009, UK local authorities are expected to implement “a facility for making petitions in electronic form to the authority”.Motivated by this arrangement, this paperreflects on the findings of a case study investigation conducted with the Royal Borough of Kingston (one of the first local authorities to implement such a servicesince 2004). Lessons learnt from the case suggest that ePetitionsreveal increased potential to enhance local government democracy, but are also shaped by challengingopen implementation issues which can highly influencethe initiative’s impact.Our conclusionsare developed within the general debateabout online public participation or eParticipation andparticularly examinetheimplications for policy makers.

We ask why most online signature campaigns attract only a handful of supporters while a few are backed by millions. Using a field-experimental design on the popular petitioning website Change.org, we investigate the role of emergent phenomena during the mobilization process in determining levels of collective action. We demonstrate the significance of these emergent processes while controlling the structural profiles, organizing strategies, and initial signatory volumes of online petition campaigns. Differences in ultimate signatory support among similar petitions are as extreme as theories of critical mass and tipping points would suggest, yet the dynamics leading up to these arbitrary disparities are unexpected. Growth is highly erratic, with initially unpopular campaigns experiencing wholly unexpected revivals, limiting the predictability of future from past momentum to just the short run. The mechanism we identify driving these unpredictable dynamics we call " accidental activation, " the unanticipated recruitment of secondary mobilizers.

Public institutions, in their efforts to promote meaningful citizen engagement, are increasingly looking at the democratic potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Previous studies suggest that such initiatives seem to be impeded by socio-technical integration barriers such as low sustainability, poor citizen acceptance, coordination difficulties, lack of understanding, and failure to assess their impact. Motivated by these shortcomings, the paper develops and applies a business model perspective as an interceding framework for analysis and evaluation. The underlying principle behind this approach is that it is not technology per se which determines success, but rather the way in which the business model of the technological artifact is configured and employed to achieve the strategic goals. The business model perspective is empirically demonstrated with the case of an online petitioning system implemented by a UK local authority. The case illustrates the importance of considering ICTs in public engagement from a holistic view to make them more manageable and assessable.

The Internet has become a fundamental resource for activism as it facilitates political mobilization at a global scale. Petition platforms are a clear example of how thousands of people around the world can contribute to social change. Avaaz.org, with a presence in over 200 countries, is one of the most popular of this type. However, little research has focused on this platform, probably due to a lack of available data. In this work we retrieved more than 350K petitions, standardized their field values, and added new information using language detection and named-entity recognition. To motivate future research with this unique repository of global protest, we present a first exploration of the dataset. In particular, we examine how social media campaigning is related to the success of petitions, as well as some geographic and linguistic findings about the worldwide community of Avaaz.org. We conclude with example research questions that could be addressed with our dataset.

During the last decade, with the progress of new information and communication technologies, electronic petitioning systems have emerged as a productive way for individuals to communicate with the authorities or policy makers about diverse issues. Although, they are designed to enable citizens to influence decision–making in the policy making process, there is an ongoing discussion on their effectiveness: one side of this discussion regards e-petitions as a new form of activism that enables greater political participation, and hence fortifies democracy. According to this view, e-petition campaigns can be an operative tool to help citizens to put issues on the political agenda, they are capable of producing a desired result, and thus they can cause a change over and transform political decisions. On the other side of this discussion, there is an opposite view that considers the transformative potential of an online petition as very moderate. Within this study, this transformative potential, the effectiveness of e-petitions, is discussed and analysed. With this aim, the paper uses the case studies from change.org.tr to determine the extent to which e-petitioning worked when ending a campaign successfully.

We demand the Chicago Transit Authority restore Green Line elevated rail service to Jackson Park over E. 63rd Street from Cottage Grove Avenue to Stony Island Avenue.

Sign the petition online: https://www.change.org/p/mayor-emanuel-and-the-chicago-transit-authority-restore-the-e-63rd-street-green-line/.

Find out more: https://63rdL.com/.

Join the discussion and use #63rdL:

Twitter: @63rdStL (https://twitter.com/63rdStL)
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/63rdStL/

In the last 25 years, the diffusion of the Internet has changed the way citizens and their elected representatives interact and influence each other. In Europe, the UK has been at the forefront of the digitalization of democratic processes. However, the implementation of e-Democracy instruments has given ambivalent results. On one hand, at the national level, the UK Government's e-petitioning system has become the most popular e-Democracy institutional instrument ever implemented (Chadwick, 2009). On the other hand, Panagiotopoulos, Moody, and Elliman (2012) found that in the short-term the attempt to replicate at the local level the success of e-Petitions through national legislation produced ambiguous effects. Eight years later, semi-structured interviews to Southampton councillors, civil servants and petitioners revealed how institutional actors’ attitudes and agendas influenced the implementation of e-Petitions and reiterated known short-term shortcomings over a longer time frame. In line with Panagiotopoulos et al. (2011;2012), this case study confirms that an organisational culture averse to bottom-up political participation and limited consultation of local stakeholders in drafting top-down democratic innovations are predictors of perfunctory implementation of e-Democracy and self-serving behaviours of institutional actors. In turn, these attitudes result in poor public awareness of the existence of the e-petitioning system, low responsiveness, and frustration of petitioners.

By and large, the Indian anthropologists have failed to generate real academic debate in the public domain around the anthropology and sociology of factory schools and their relationship with the largescale displacement and socio-economic deprivation of the Adivasis(Indigenous communities designated as ‘Tribe’ in the governmental and anthropological terminology) caused by mining, deforestation and industrialisation in the context of their Hinduaisation in India. This is a tragic outcome of public anthropology in the country.

Нестерович В.Ф. Інституційне утвердження електронних петицій в Україні у контексті зарубіжного досвіду. Віче. 2015. № 22. С. 18-23.

Institutional establishment of electronic petitions in Ukraine is considered in the context of the experience of the UK, the USA, Finland and Latvia. It is poined out that the introduction of electronic petitions is an important modern trend that swept most democratic countries. Now the electronic submission of petitions is stipulated in more than 75 countries, which have different forms of e-petitions, subjects who create them and the procedure for filing them. The introduction of electronic petitions in Ukraine is an important, timely and progressive step that will facilitate greater participation of citizens in public and social issues. President of Ukraine has become the first government body of Ukraine, which introduced electronic petition.

Das Petitionsrecht ist 2005 politischer und massentauglich geworden. Die elektronische " öffentliche Petition " ist eine Einladung für organisierte Interessen, die das Internet zur Mobilisierung nutzen. Hohe Unterstützerzahlen schieben Themen direkt auf die Agenda des Parlaments.

The increased use of internet not only for business, education, or entertainment but also for expressing opinion and digital activism signified that public sphere could also take place virtually through the internet. This paper aims to explore the digital activism done by Indonesian netizens through online petitions, and how it challenged the possibility of online petition as a form of the digital public sphere in Indonesia. The methods used is literature study on various works of literature and recent petitions in Change.org. This research shows that online petition provides a space for interaction between the marginalized groups, netizens, and the government. Online petitions also facilitate a new form of protest with more dynamic characteristics, including fast and effective communication. Online petition also gives the same right for every citizen to express their concern. However, online petition did not provide much space to promote a critical and deliberative public debate fo...

Само сочетание сбора подписей и прохождения экспертной комиссии достаточно абсурдно — гражданам предлагается сперва допрыгнуть до некоей объективной численной планки, а потом еще и понравиться нескольким госслужащим по критериям совершенно субъективным. Это напоминает выборную процедуру «подписи или партийное выдвижение плюс муниципальный фильтр» и отражает тот же маниакальный страх перед избирателем, от которого нужно огораживаться частоколом, рвом, стражей, а потом еще и башней с кипящей смолой наверху, чтобы он, не дай бог, как-нибудь не пролез. Заметим очередной раз, что эту фобию с властью разделяет значительная часть образованной публики, руководствующаяся блестящей логикой «кто нравится людям — тот Гитлер» и «чего люди хотят — то фашизм».

Extensive debate on Internet and formal politics has concentrated on whether authorities should focus their efforts on high-volume activities such petitioning or crowdsourcing. Those engagement tools seem to be consistent with the ambition of many networked citizens to influence policy making through ad hoc and mostly single-issue movements. Therefore, certain interesting questions emerge: can authorities organise their engagement activities to respond and act upon this call? Can citizens in-deed influence policy making in a few clicks? This chapter draws together material from different uses of ePetitioning tools in Europe, mainly focusing on the integrated UK experience at national and local level. The analysis suggests that those initiatives can provide valuable feedback to authorities and be effectively complemented by other forms of deeper engagement. Yet, political organisations should pay close attention on how the public views such exercises and be prepared to support partici-pants in different ways and on a regular basis.

After the government announced that there will be two coronavirus vaccination schemes; government program vaccination and self-vaccination, the public gave a disapproving reaction by raising an online petition on the Change.org website asking the government to make vaccines free for all Indonesians. Within five days, more than 7500 virtual signatures supported the policy from the initial target of 2500 signatures. As a result, the government decided to make vaccines free for all Indonesians. By using literature review research method, this qualitative paper concluded that the online petition entitled "Free Covid-19 Vaccine For All Indonesian People!" on the Change.org site is following Direct Democracy digital democracy where the goal is equality to make free vaccines for all Indonesian people without any political actors acting as intermediaries. Political participation carried out by the public through digital media has proven not to tarnish democratic values ​​at all it strengthens them when carried out with applicable norms.

According to legislation introduced in 2009, all English local authorities were expected to implement an online petitioning facility by the end of 2010. This mandate offers a unique opportunity to assess the impact of a national eParticipation policy at such scale focusing on a particular engagement tool. A web content analysis methodology was used to collect data from the 353 English local government websites. Different variables measuring the implementation of this initiative were explored, including evidence of other eParticipation activities such as online consultations. The data were then cross-examined with institutional background factors such as political affiliation of the leading party. The study results question whether the legislation actually achieved its purpose since they indicate apparent efforts of minimum institutional compliance and low actual use of ePetitions. Among others, population density and previous experience with eParticipation were positively correlated with the implementation effort and actual use of those systems.