http://Moveon.Org

http://MoveOn.org is an online political organization whose aim is to assimilate “real Americans” into the political process. Through an e-mail database of more than 3 million individuals, MoveOn contacts members about petitions, “urgent actions,” “flash campaigns,” and “global actions.” It is a model that does not follow traditional one-issue or identity politics; instead, MoveOn is a postmodern, decentralized, grassroots service that allows its membership to not only define group policy broadly but also to act upon select political issues through the ease of Internet communications.

Created by Joan Blades and Wes Boyd, the former owners of Berkeley Systems (makers of the Flying Toasters screensaver), as a 1998 online petition to “move on” from the Clinton impeachment, http://MoveOn.org has grown and branched into two related organizations: http://MoveOn.org Civic Action, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, and http://MoveOn.org Political Action, a federal PAC. Civic Action has continued to focus on MoveOn's original emphasis of petitions, advertisements, and activist strategies. Political Action, on the other hand, acts as a small donor collection and distribution hub that simplifies the campaign donation process. In 2005 alone, MoveOn Political Action collected $9 million from 125,000 members for mostly Democratic and liberal candidates and campaigns.

Through MoveOn's ActionForum software, members are able to nominate issue priorities and tactics on the website forum, and other members can respond in turn. The top-rated concerns are then chosen as the group's strategic issues for the current Congress. The guiding ethos of MoveOn is the ability to “move on” from issue to issue in a mode of oppositional politics. The site, through member input, moves from perceived problem to problem, opens a channel for members to speak out through e-mail in conjunction with local house parties and gatherings, and then weaves this thread of replies together to form a blanket of opposition to whatever policy is at hand. Targets are then inundated with phone calls, e-mails, letters, and petitions en masse.

Members take part only in the actions they care about, respond to what they are interested in, and are members just by joining the e-mail list. There are no local chapters and no office, and only seven staff members are responsible for directing the action campaigns. One example of such a campaign [Page 981]was the 2003 campaign in opposition to the FCC's deregulation of media ownership rules. An urgent action message was e-mailed to members urging them to e-mail or call the FCC and their congress-people and to sign an online petition opposing the deregulation; more than 375,000 members complied. Many critics of MoveOn's form of decentralized, point-and-click politics have noted, however, that the concrete results of responses to these urgent actions are difficult to measure.

Nonetheless, MoveOn's actions are not limited to e-mails and petitions. Many civic actions are geared toward mass media awareness and the creation of issue advertisements for television. One action, 2003's “Bush in 30 seconds,” encouraged members to film their own political ads that illustrated the “truth” of George W. Bush's presidency. MoveOn's political ad winners were narrowed down by popular online member voting and finally chosen by a panel of celebrity judges, which included Michael Moore and Gus Van Sant. The winning ads were supposed to be aired during the Super Bowl on CBS, but the station refused on the basis of their policy of not accepting issue ads. This generated a firestorm of mass media attention and increased activism on the part of MoveOn members, and Child's Play was later available on CNN and the MoveOn website. More recently and controversially, on Thanksgiving 2005, MoveOn aired a 30-second ad criticizing the extended deployment of U.S. troops in Iraq, calling for their withdrawal. The ad inadvertently illustrated MoveOn's call to action with images of British, not American, soldiers; this mistake led to criticisms of MoveOn by military and Republican organizations.

...