22
votes
Do online petitions actually work?
platforms like change.org for example, do you know of petitions that have been successful ? do you have any personal experience with them?
platforms like change.org for example, do you know of petitions that have been successful ? do you have any personal experience with them?
This is just anecdotal, so take it with a grain of salt. My experience is that if the petition is structured as the opening of a funnel that leads people to other activities, then it can be a helpful coordination and recruiting tool. On its own as a persuasive collection of signatures, no, I haven't known them to be effective.
I've spoken with a number of legislators and policy makers, and they tend to give different levels of credence to the contacts made with their offices, and online petitions are down near the bottom. Likewise, mass emailing of the same message doesn't move the needle much.
Phone calls, custom crafted emails from constituents, and signed letters through the post make more of an impact. I recall a house rep I was speaking with say that they mentally multiply every physical letter they get by fifty or more in terms of constituents who have that position, while dividing by some factor for mass email and petition campaigns.
So I think it depends on what you mean by work. If you can leverage someone signing a petition into them writing a letter, then yes. If you can't get further action beyond a signature from the people signing, then probably not.
Just my personal experience.
Echoes my experience, in order of attention:
0.5 show up in numbers with printed, signed petition of many many signatures, outside office, with media coverage
But you're right about funnel -- number 7 is what gets seen by other citizens and most likely to lead to items further up the chain
The UK parliament petition site does get mentioned relatively often, and as it has actual consequences to signature thresholds (response at 10k, debate in parliament at 100k) they at least have some sort of guarantee of possible effects. I think they definitely have a lot of power to bring attention to issues politicians are less aware of. I know the EU definitely has a petition website and maybe taiwan as well? The Hansard Society published an interesting article on the history of petitions in the UK here going over how the e-petition system revived a once-popular concept that had died for a period.
I don't have any direct knowledge of them but I've seen tons of them posted to social media platforms and from reading responses I'd say they do basically nothing.
However, those posts can generate a lot of discussion around whatever issue the petition is for and that can have an effect if the target of the petition is already engaged with their community. So basically you may as well skip the petitions and just keep generating discussions on whatever platforms the target is already engaged with.
It would be great to hear from anyone who's had a different experience though.