The Reilly Center for Media and Public Affairs welcomed David Karpf to speak on digital media’s effects on today’s social movements through listening, rather than speaking, on Wednesday.
On Feb. 8, Karpf, assistant professor of media and public affairs and director of graduate studies at George Washington University, spoke in the Holliday Forum about his new book “Analytic Activism: Digital Listening and the New Political Strategy.”
Karpf describes analytic activism as the process of measuring audience feedback and packaging it into a framework that can be used to make decisions.
Manship School of Mass Communication Dean Jerry Ceppos introduced Karpf as the “ideal guest for the Manship School.” Karpf’s visit on the practice of digital listening was perfect timing for the Manship School due to rapid technological changes and advancements within mass communication in recent years.
Karpf’s background in political organizing served as the foundation for his latest release, having spent more than 20 years in various roles with the Sierra Club, one of the nation’s largest grassroots environmental organizations.
The phrase, “Well, let’s test it,”a phrase Karpf once heard at a debate, was at the heart of everything through the entirety of his speech, Karpf said.
“We’ve focused a great deal on digital speech and almost not at all on digital listening,” Karpf said. “I think that digital listening, and the ways that allows us to test out new tactics and strategies and learn new things … I think that is just as important as the speech that we’re so used to studying.”
Karpf used Gawker’s “Big Board” as an example. The board provides real-time online analytics that utilize audience data to influence decisions made strategically and editorially.
During the talk, Karpf referenced the pivot his book makes from affordance-based analysis to object-based analysis.
“Most research in this area has been looking at the affordances of the internet,” Karpf said. “I’m trying to focus us more specifically within the organizations, at the strategic objects that analytics create.”
This pivot led Karpf to argue his “Media Theory of Movement Power” tripod, which was made of three different, yet equally important aspects: activist resources, opponent/target vulnerabilities and media system affordances. The tripod came from problems in how academics and practitioners look at social movements in this “hybrid media system,” Karpf said.
To completely understand what “analytic activism” meant, Karpf explained it as the intersection of three main components: the use of digital tools for listening, embracing a “culture of testing” by using data to influence various strategic trials and a scale to measure change.
“I’m not suggesting that all digital activism today is this new form of digital listening and analytic activism,” Karpf said. “This is a thing that we’re seeing amongst large non-profit activist organizations and mostly within the United States.”
Karpf went on to describe what he said are the two major types of listening, tactical optimization and passive democratic feedback, before addressing the limitations this type of activism can face.
One barrier analytic activism can encounter is the analytics floor, which is when smaller organizations cannot analytically affect change themselves. Karpf described it as the “theoretical floor below which you are too small to make use of analytical activism.” Essentially, analytical activism can be used by large organizations such as Change.org and Upworthy, because they have the resources to actually affect change.
Other limitations organizations can face are the analytics frontier — where useful information exists, but cannot be physically equated — and listening without conversation.
“When we try to understand the impact of digital media on politics, we shouldn’t just be asking ‘What does it mean that you can have so easily a retweet on protesting the president?’” Karpf said. “We should be thinking alongside that speech about … how people are harnessing … this activity to test out an experiment on new tactics and strategies and how they can use that to creatively create leverage in this new unfolding political and information environment.”