Internet-Mediated Climate Change Advocacy: Organization, Mobilization, and Online Infrastructure

The Internet's emergence as a critical platform for political participation has fostered new types of advocacy organizations whose use of the Internet sets them apart from their pre-Internet predecessors. Although these Internet-mediated, MoveOn.org-type advocacy groups seem to operate differently from their legacy counterparts, they share a common technological context, relying on similar tools, including private information intermediaries like social networks, to carry out their work. Single-issue advocacy communities--including the climate change community--have also produced many such organizations. These issue-specialist organizations share many characteristics with both their multi-issue counterparts and environmental predecessors--but also differ in important ways.Employing a mixed-methods, research portfolio approach, this dissertation explores the similarities and differences in strategic Internet use between different types of U.S. environmental and climate change advocacy organizations. How do the online strategies of Internet-mediated advocacy organizations differ from or replicate those of legacy organizations? How are Internet-mediated climate, and legacy environmental organizations, using email to communicate about climate change? Do the policies and architectures of online intermediaries, such as social networking sites, affect the work of advocacy organizations?The study relies on interviews with online strategists at several climate change and environmental advocacy organizations, and a quantitative content analysis of mass emails produced by most of these groups. The following organizations are studied: Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Greenpeace USA, League of Conservation Voters, Energy Action Coalition, Climate Reality Project, 1Sky, and 350.org. The study finds differences and similarities in strategic Internet use between climate and environmental organizations, including greater emphasis by climate organizations on high-threshold, offline actions; greater emphasis by environmental groups on low-threshold, online actions--particularly donation requests; and high reliance by both on motivational framing that demands accountability from policymakers. It also finds differences between climate Internet-mediated groups and their multi-issue counterparts, including a lower reliance on event-driven fundraising appeals by climate groups. Finally, it finds a general lack of knowledge or concern among online strategists about important aspects of private information intermediaries that could affect their work. Implications and future research agendas for climate communication, Internet-mediated activism, and Internet governance are discussed.