Introduction
Explore a collection of digital organizing frameworks and models by Tectonica,
a movement building agency.
Frameworks and Models
Author: Ned Howey, with input from Becky Jarvis, Natasha Adams, and Amanda Starbuck. Graphic vision by Mariana Spada.
Earlier this year, we set out to evaluate Europe’s progressive digital organising efforts. We did this in part because we see a great deal of misunderstanding and disagreement around what digital organising is, and even more about what effectively works to win. Indeed, if you ask a hundred campaigners and organisers, “what is digital organising?”, you’re likely to get a hundred different answers…
‘Digital organising’ has been used as an umbrella term to describe all kinds of online advocacy activities – some use it to describe their Twitter strategy, others for list building with petitions, micro-targeted digital ads using AI, or Facebook groups where activists themselves plan actions.
With such a range of activities potentially falling under the umbrella of ‘digital organising’, we needed a way to define, understand and evaluate the full spectrum of it.
[This] framework we developed breaks down the full spectrum of online activities in people-powered efforts to impact political change, and classifies them into five major categories.
The order of these categories is dependent on depth of supporter engagement, beginning with one-way communication, moving through top-down direction, and ending with activists creating strategies and acting autonomously. As decision-making is decentralised, relationships develop and are sustained through the organising activities.
Author: Ned Howey
Since we launched the Five Part Framework for Digital Organising in 2020, we’ve heard from those campaigning around the world how helpful it has been in understanding what work they are doing, and more importantly, what work they aren’t doing that they should be.
The report painted a clear picture that the more decentralised and personalised an action was, the less likely it was to feature in the campaigns we surveyed.
As the report and framework took wings, though, we soon learned that the trends we observed in Europe were not specific to the continent.
Author: Ned Howey, with input from Weronika Paszewska, Mariana Spada, Natasha Adams, Filipa Mladenova, Alonso Hernández Sánchez, Mertcan Ozgur
To better understand organising, and the elements that comprise it (that need to be measured), we developed a metaphorical equation – symbolic rather than mathematically rigorous.
Our equation shows the elements that make organising powerful, and the relationship between these elements to build long term power.
We want to represent the complexity of organising, not so organisations abandon it because it doesn’t have short term impact, but to help organisations understand that with commitment and investment, organising can hugely impact change.
We acknowledge this work isn’t complete. Probably one of the most important parts of this equation is the elements and their relationships within collective power.
Author: Ned Howey, with input from Weronika Paszewska and graphic vision by Mariana Spada
We know that making political and social change is beyond hard. Particularly these days it seems harder for those working towards a more open, just, and sustainable world.
We see small battles won and know a lot of organisations can claim victories in the process, but winning actual power and seeing fundamental change seems a rare occurrence. While there is no ‘magic sauce’, no single solution – we do see patterns from the research that exists currently on social movements, elections, and campaigning, and in the organisations and parties we’ve worked with over these past years.
We feel the responsibility to formulate what we understand to be the right direction and input our learnings into a logical model that can help empower all who are working to create change.
About Tectonica and the Tectonica Organising Network (TON)
Tectonica is a movement building agency with a mission to create a seismic shift in the way politics are done, through innovations that empower social, economic, and environmental justice movements. With a broad array of strategic, creative and technological services, their work helps organisations, political parties, candidates and unions unlock transformational opportunities, build movement infrastructure, and run successful social and political campaigns rooted in people-power.
As part of its social mission, Tectonica hosts the Tectonica Organising Network (TON) – a community of progressive campaigners working and innovating to win social and political change through people-based power. The community is a centre for best practices, resources, learning, and sharing. People can join here.
Explore a
collection of Tectonica’s resources in the Commons Library.
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