September 17th will mark the third anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. Most of us will not march in the streets or sleep en masse in parks. However, many around the world will “keep the revolutionary fires burning with personal and collective acts of love and defiance” (Adbusters).
The actions of activist groups are often ‘simple, direct, emotional and predictable.’ However, the decentralized nature of many groups poses challenges for corporations and governments – even those organizations willing to engage in dialogue and reach mutual understandings with activists.
Harrison (2008) identified eight characteristics of activist groups:
- There is no command and control centre.
- Each node (person or group) is connected to every other node.
- There is a heavy amount of communication between the nodes.
- Great redundancy within the network. Nodes can be removed or destroyed with little or no impact on the overall network.
- New nodes can be easily added.
- Each node is independent and autonomous – free to act when and where it pleases.
- Nodes may coordinate their activities against targeted businesses, government departments and interest groups.
- Nodes are active at all levels of society from local to international.
Despite the hurdles these characteristics present, Harrison goes on to say that if an effort is made to communicate with single-issue activists and establish a dialogue, a surprising amount of common ground can be reached. Psychologically, it is more difficult to make emotive claims against an organisation or their representatives if those people are actually there, face-to-face.
The process of understanding begins by examining some of the strategies used by activists.
Below are three interesting strategies from recent campaigns:
1. Culture jamming is a form of resistance, where people engage in a battle over the meaning of reality, a battle using signs, rather than weapons.
See more examples at: https://www.adbusters.org
2. Shopdropping
- “To covertly place merchandise objects on display in a store. A form of “culture jamming” http://shopdropping.net/blog/
- Reverse of shoplifting
See video:
3. The term ‘ambush marketing’ describes a wide range of marketing activities by which a business seeks to capture, or leverage off, the goodwill surrounding an event for which it is not a sponsor. Under broader definitions of ambush marketing, it is not necessary for any sponsorship to be expressly or impliedly claimed (in fact, such an association may be denied) (Chan et al, 2007).
A group called 350 Climate Action organised their campaign stunt to fall on the day before the breakfast on the bridge event. This way it made the news around the same time. Some people believed the events were tied together.
