Page 130 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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Introduction 18:0
organizations, including CPSR, initiated an effort to mobilize computer
professionals and users into political action against this challenge to pri-
vacy without relying heavily on traditional media techniques, mailing
lists, or large memberships. Instead, the groups asked citizens through
electronic mail to protest the policy directly to the White House. The
result was another vociferous, ad hoc, self-organized network, which
was large and loud enough to command national political attention and
therebygenerateadebateoverthependingpolicy,whichtheWhiteHouse
eventually withdrew. 7
Some of these early instances of new forms of collective action were
dismissed by observers in the mid-1990s as too idiosyncratic to have
theoretical significance. They involved political actions by people within
the computer industry, using computer technology, in order to affect
private and public policies aimed at computer use. They seemed to have
little bearing on broader politics, because the percentage of adults who
had access to the Internet was in the single digits and the web had not yet
emerged as a commercial force. More important, few mainstream politi-
cal groups and organizations were involved in these Internet-dependent
political strategies, so episodes like Lotus Notes and the Clipper Chip
seemed peripheral. It appeared entirely speculative to think that the or-
ganizational features of these political events were indicative of any larger
phenomenon that might affect collective action more broadly.
By the late 1990s, that no longer seemed true. Reports of lobbying and
advertising that employed new means of communication increasingly in-
volved groups outside the computer industry. From the Christian Coali-
tiontotheDemocraticSocialistsofAmerica,groupswereusingtheInter-
net to inform and organize citizens, and the result looked less and less like
traditional,bureaucraticallyorganizedadvocacy.The“MoveOn”protest,
for instance, involved the important political question of impeachment.
Move On was initiated by two Colorado residents who used electronic
mail and the web to create a nationwide mail and petition drive aimed
first at persuading the House not to impeach President Clinton, and
later at convincing the Senate to acquit. Like the privacy protests earlier
in the 1990s, the Move On protest exhibited a rapidly accelerating, self-
organizing character. As the number of participants swelled, it caught the
attention of the major media, who in reporting on Move On contributed
even further to its size. Between September 1998 and January 1999, the
Move On effort generated about 500,000 messages from constituents

7
Ibid.
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