Advocacy

This article is about promotion of a cause or point of view. For legal representation, see Advocate.

Advocacy is an activity by an individual or group which aims to influence decisions within political, economic, and social systems and institutions. Advocacy can include many activities that a person or organization undertakes including media campaigns, public speaking, commissioning and publishing research or conducting exit poll or the filing of an amicus brief. Lobbying (often by lobby groups) is a form of advocacy where a direct approach is made to legislators on an issue which plays a significant role in modern politics.[1] Research has started to address how advocacy groups in the U.S.[2] and Canada[3] are using social media to facilitate civic engagement and collective action.

An advocate is someone who provides advocacy support to people who need it.

Forms

There are several forms of advocacy, each representing a different approach in a way to initiate changes in the society. One of the most popular forms is social justice advocacy.

The initial definition does not encompass the notions of power relations, people’s participation and a vision of a just society as promoted by social justice advocates. For them, advocacy represents the series of actions taken and issues highlighted to change the “what is” into a “what should be”, considering that this “what should be” is a more decent and a more just society (ib., 2001.). Those actions, which vary with the political, economic and social environment in which they are conducted, have several points in common (ib., 2001.). They:

Some of the other forms of advocacy include:

Different contexts in which advocacy is used:

Aims

Advocacy in all its forms seeks to ensure that people, particularly those who are most vulnerable in society, are able to:

Advocacy is a process of supporting and enabling people to:

Use of the Internet

For more than ten years, groups involved in advocacy work have been using the Internet to accomplish organizational goals. It has been argued that the Internet helps to increase the speed, reach and effectiveness of advocacy-related communication as well as mobilization efforts, suggesting that social media are beneficial to the advocacy community.[3][6][7][8]

Topics

See also: social issue

People advocate for a large number and variety of topics. Some of these are clear-cut social issues that are universally agreed to be problematic and worth solving, such as human trafficking. Others—such as abortion—are much more divisive and inspire strongly-held opinions on both sides. There may never be a consensus on this latter type of issues, but intense advocacy is likely to remain. In the United States, any issue of widespread debate and deeply-divided opinion can be referred to as a social issue. The Library of Congress has assembled an extensive list of social issues in the United States, ranging from vast ones like abortion to same-sex marriage to smaller ones like hacking and academic cheating.[9]

Topics that appear to involve advancing a certain positive ideal are often known as causes. A particular cause may be very expansive in nature—for instance, increasing liberty or fixing a broken political system. For instance 2008, U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama utilized such a meaning when he said, "This was the moment when we tore down barriers that have divided us for too long; when we rallied people of all parties and ages to a common cause."[10] Change.org and Causes are two popular websites that allow people to organize around a common cause.

Topics upon which there is universal agreement that they need to be solved include for example: human trafficking, poverty, water and sanitation as a human right.[11]

More ethically complex topics, about which there is intense disagreement about whether they are "good" or "bad" (and which are referred to as "social issues" in the United States) include: abortion and same-sex marriage. "Social issues" as referred to in the United States also include topics (also known as "causes") intended by their advocates to advance certain ideals (such as equality) include: civil rights, LGBT rights, women's rights, environmentalism, and veganism.

Transnational advocacy

Advocates and advocacy groups represent a wide range of categories and support several issues as listed on worldadvocacy.com.[12] The Advocacy Institute,[13] a US-based global organization, is dedicated to strengthening the capacity of political, social, and economic justice advocates to influence and change public policy.[14]

The phenomenon of globalization draws a special attention to advocacy beyond countries’ borders. The core existence of networks such as World Advocacy or the Advocacy Institute demonstrates the increasing importance of transnational advocacy and international advocacy. Transnational advocacy networks are more likely to emerge around issues where external influence is necessary to ease the communication between internal groups and their own government. Groups of advocates willing to further their mission also tend to promote networks and to meet with their internal counterparts to exchange ideas.[15]

Transnational advocates spend time with a local interest groups in order to better understand their views and wishes.

Advocacy can be helpful in all kinds of situations where people find it difficult to make their views known.

See also

References

  1. "Lobbying Versus Advocacy: Legal Definitions". NP Action. Archived from the original on 2 April 2010. Retrieved 2010-03-02.
  2. Obar, Jonathan; et al. (2012). "Advocacy 2.0: An Analysis of How Advocacy Groups in the United States Perceive and Use Social Media as Tools for Facilitating Civic Engagement and Collective Action". Journal of Information Policy.
  3. 1 2 Obar, Jonathan. "Canadian Advocacy 2.0: A Study of Social Media Use by Social Movement Groups and Activists in Canada". Retrieved 27 April 2013.
  4. Loue, S.; Lloyd, L.S.; O'Shea, D.J. (2003). Community health advocacy. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. . delete character in |page= at position 296 (help)
  5. Asbridge, M. (2004). "Public place restrictions on smoking in Canada: assessing the role of the state, media, science and public health advocacy". Social science & medicine 58 (1): 13–24. doi:10.1016/s0277-9536(03)00154-0. PMID 14572918.
  6. Ope;, J.A.M. (1999). "From the Streets to the Internet: The Cyber-Diffusion of Contention". Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 566: 132–143. doi:10.1177/0002716299566001011.
  7. Eaton, M. (2010). "Manufacturing Community in an Online Activity Organization: The Rhetoric of MoveOn.org’s E-mails". Information, Communication and Society 13 (2): 174–192. doi:10.1080/13691180902890125.
  8. Obar, J.A.; Zube, P.; Lampe, C. (2012). "Advocacy 2.0: An analysis of how advocacy groups in the United States perceive and use social media as tools for facilitating civic engagement and collective action". Journal of Information Policy 2: 1–25. doi:10.2139/ssrn.1956352.
  9. http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/toc/ecip0516/2005018778.html
  10. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/03/us/politics/03obama-transcript.html
  11. UNICEF (2010). Advocacy toolkit - A guide to influencing decisions that improve children's lives (PDF). UNICEF. p. 144. Retrieved 11 February 2016.
  12. "World Advocacy - The world's premier source of advocacy groups". worldadvocacy.com.
  13. "The Advocacy Institute". advocacyinstitute.org.
  14. Cohen, D.; de la Vega, R.; Watson, G. (2001). Advocacy for social justice. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press. . delete character in |page= at position 296 (help)
  15. Keck, M.E.; Sikkink, K. (1998). Activists beyond borders: advocacy networks in international politics. Baltimore, MD: Cornell University Press. . delete character in |page= at position 296 (help)

External links

Look up advocacy in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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