Advocacy

& lobbying for human rights issues

A social media model for efficiency

Prof. Olivier Arifon, Universit libre de Bruxelles

Email: <olivier.arifon@ulb.ac.be>

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis for efficient advocacy and lobbying campaign and use of Information and communication technologies (ICT). Then, case studies
are presented. The purpose is to understand how a combination of influence and lobbying with ICT could contribute to some success or failure specialty with NGOs on
human rights issues with less powerful protagonists than usual procedures of corporate
lobbying. Our fieldwork is Brussels and European Institutions. The lobbying activities
deploys in the capital of Belgium could be observed and provide interesting results.

Context
Advocacy and lobbying refer influence on decision-making process or to types of protagonists such as grassroots movements, private companies, professional bodies or consulting agencies.
It's an evidence that ICT tools and applications have deeply modifies the conditions and
the communications strategies of protagonists involved in advocacy and lobbying. To
understand the efficiency of ICT on advocacy and lobbyings a several dimensions analysis is useful. On one side, we considered actions repertoire, on the other, mediating conditions to understand strengths and weakness of the particular sector of lobbying done by
NGO on human rights. Several tools or registers of communication could be considered.
The key point remains to gain in credibility and accountability.
Moreover, the disengagement or some failure of the state, especially in social and environmental domains, leaves empty spaces, often occupied by NGO's using for that the
web 2.0 functions in order to influence decision making process.
A - Advocacy and lobbying
The content and the borders of the two concepts "advocacy" and "lobbying" (Coen,
2008) remain unclear. They may refer to legal aspect when devoted to change the law
elaboration process according to groups interests. They may also refer to social aspects
when protagonists, especially in the social sector, try to advocate one cause.
To advocate is to support or recommend publicly, to plead for or speak in favour of one
cause. Advocacy is public support for or recommendation of a particular cause or poli

cy1. Logically, it is a political process by an individual or group, which aims to influence

public policy and resource allocation decisions within political, economic, and social systems and institutions.
Lobbying is an official activity focused, at least in Europe, on influencing decision-making
process, including different types of stakeholders such as grassroots movements or private companies (Guegen, 2010). Lobbying is often defined as A group of persons
who work or conduct a campaign to influence members of parliament to vote according
to a group's special interest2. At the European level, in the European agreement of 2011
on the transparency register, a definition of interest representatives can be found: all
activities (...) carried out with the objective of directly or indirectly influencing the formulation or implementation of policy and the decision-making processes of the EU institutions, irrespective of the channel or medium of communication used (...)3.
A law in Quebec, the French speaking state of Canada, proposes an interesting definition
of the activity, because it tries to focus more on the intention of the actor and less on the
result: Activities of lobbyism in the sense of the present law constitute all communications oral or written with a holder of a public load with a view to influencing or being able
to reasonably be considered, by the person who initiates them, as being likely to influence
the catch of decisions comparatively:
1 in elaboration, in presentation, in modification or in rejection of a legislative or regulation proposal, a resolution, an orientation, a program or a plan of action;
2 in the attribution of a license, a license, a certificate or another approval;
3 in the attribution of a contract, otherwise than as part of a public invitation to tender,
as a subvention or as another financial advantage, or in the attribution of another form of
performance determined by regulations of the government4.
Nevertheless, we consider that both terms can designate the same type of activity, influencing policy reforms and decision-making processes. The main ideas behind the concept
of lobbying are:
The recognition of communication channels and medium as significant;
The omnipresence of the concept interest and influence ;
The interdisciplinary discipline, referring to law, sociology, political science and communication.

1

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english
source : http://oxforddictionaries.com
3
Texts Adopted Wednesday, 11 May 2011- Interinstitutional Agreement, EUROPARL
(official website of the European Parliament), URL:
www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=- //EP//TEXT+TA+P7-TA-2011-
0222+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN, consulted 6 June 2013.
4
www2.publicationsduquebec.gouv.qc.ca, retrieved 6 May 2013.
2

To complete the general frame for a comprehensive understanding of lobbying activities,

an important dimension should be presented: State rescaling facing globalization and
NGOs actions filling the empties spaces lefts by this rescaling process allows many
protagonists to proceed to lobbying.
B - Rescaling State; news spaces of lobbying procedures
The second element to consider is the evolution of the conception and of the perimeter
of the State influenced by new responsibilities and new types of borders. Debates on role,
shape, limits or the capacities of a State are nowadays intense because central state is under the pressure of globalization. This pressure has modified the links and the relations
between geography (landscape), governance (State), and territorial community. New protagonists can express themselves on topics such as gender, race, religions and ethnics
identity, elements no more connected to State level. At a political level, several schools
debate on more or less social and economical participations of the State, according to
social democrat or liberal theories. At a geographical and structural level, regions and territories are now dealing with finances, local development, employment, high education,
social care or culture (Gollain, 2010).
Moreover, the forms of governance should deal with urbanization, decreasing borders
systems, movements of capital. As consequences, the disengagement of the state, especially in social issues, leaves empty spaces, often occupied by NGO's. Helped by the Web 2.0
functions helpful for their organizational and communications aspects, NGO's try to occupy those empties spaces, first to gain and provide support to the audiences, second to
support policy reform. This point is central for advocacy and lobbying strategy. In three
domains, private life, professional life and geopolitics, networks borders could serve to
get round and to cross obstacles by superposition of a new hybrid space border which
overflow institutional limits and blockages of physical borders5. New spaces of negotiation arise where all types of protagonist could engage lobbying procedures. Those features
of lobbying cover and justify the communicational angle of attack chosen for this research.

Information and communication technologies and action

repertoires
It's an evidence that ICT tools and applications, such as social media, have deeply modifies the conditions and the communications strategies of agents involved in advocacy and
lobbying. Emiliano Grossman & Sabine Sauruggers notion of resource is worth highlighting before going further. According to these authors, resources are defined as
means that give actors the ability to act and secure them a power . Action repertoires
could be define as ways to bring out resources with the aim of influencing a decisionmaking process and can be classified in five ideal types:

5

Perriault, J., Hermes n63, p. 158, our translation.

3

 Negotiation and consultation: actors are invited to participate in the decision-making

process;
Use of experts: scientific data are used to support the represented interests;
Protests: raising awareness in the public space;
Juridification: creation of a legal framework to defend interests;
Politicization: transformation of an interest group into a political party6.
A French scholar proposes a very detailed typology7:
Institutional actions which includes trail, lobbying, and platforms of actors,
Non-cooperation actions: non-participation, objection, civil disregard, and boycott,
Public legitimation actions: petition, protestations, fast, experts contribution, stars
contribution,
Direct actions such as sabotage, interposition, occupation, demonstration, reprisal,
Actions of awareness such as festive actions, feast or picnic, symbolic action, such as a
die in
Neveu explains that NGO have a less restricted repertoire at the European level, due to
the particularity of the Institutions. NGOs focus on actions such as trail, decision making
process lobbying, institutional platforms of protagonists, and more specific, parliamentary
intergroup (members of parliament form different political parties concerned by a same
topic).
In 2013, our press survey and our observations done in Brussels on actions repertoire
shows that many protagonists, specially in the NGO sector, are using many types of actions, because efficiency ask now to use communication as a cocktail at the same time
and in direction of several audiences. The goal is to raise awareness with a unique message. In that sense, under the pressure of digital medias, the frontiers between corporate,
advertisement and political communication have merged.
To analyse the efficiency of ICT on advocacy and lobbyings actions a model with two
dimensions is useful8. On one side, he considered collective actions, on the other, mediating conditions.
A - Structural dimension of collective actions
Such dimension can be divided into several items:
Campaign goal: is it weak or strong (target, adversary, or issue)

6
Grossman Emiliano & Saurugger,
7
8

Sabine (2006), Les groupes d'intrt, p. 16

Neveu, Eric, (2000), Vaincre lindiffrence, p. 40

Liu,

(2012), Chineses Journal of communication, Vol. 4 n2, June 2011, p. 146

 Number of organization involved: 1, 2, 10, 50, 100 It will influence the capacity of
relays, mobilization and perception by media and other protagonist.
Level of activity: high or low. Is the action simple and humble or would it use images
or demonstrations able to reach attention of politicians and media?
Types of activities and campaign: urban, rural, water, animal, nature, education, and
energy. Some topics maybe more sensitive than others. For example, health and youth
questions remains important for any type of population and audiences.
Audience reached, types and levels: one community, one town, residents, all citizens in
a State, and world level.
The combination and the intensity of these factors help to understand, or at least to qualify, the efficiency of a collective action. To make it short, a weak campaign goal with few
organizations involved at a local level would only produce local changes. Nevertheless,
many types of protagonist are now aware that several mediating actions are necessary to
fulfil an advocacy campaign.
B - Mediating conditions & ICT disposals
We consider that any type of action that would support an advocacy or lobbying campaign should maximize the use of media and digital tools. Internet use in the campaign
and activity may be designated as mediating conditions:
Consciousness level of Internet use: high, low
Type of use:
o Dissemination of information
o Recruitment
o Education
o Organize mobilization at different levels
o Promote discussion and debate.
With a different angle, Cardon, Granjon (2010) propose three aspects for the use of ICT
by NGOs.
First is attentiveness and counter expertise. Protagonists are able to share and to verify
officials statements and media reports and develop their own argumentation that
could be shared on a platform with documents under pdf format.
Second is subjectivity and diversion on media, images and symbols, for example, a
web site parody. After the oil pollution due to the BP platform incident in the Mexico
Gulf, a parody has emerged, reflecting the position of BP during the several month
crises:
BP
Spills
Coffee
on
YouTube
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AAa0gd7ClM ; (12 548 813 views on the 15
January 2013).
The third is grassroots mobilization: citizens commit themselves with the idea of reinforcing collective procedures and increasing attentiveness.

Van Laer and Van Aelst conceptualized a typology of a new digitalized action repertoire9. They based their thesis on two oppositions: Internet-supported versus Internetbased actions and low versus high thresholds actions. To briefly summarize, they distinguished real actions that are supported and facilitated by the Internet and virtual actions that are Internet-based. The second dimension evaluates the degree of risk and
commitment required to act. The authors also supported the case that the Internet will
not replace offline actions but instead the offline and online worlds will help each other.

Human rights issues and NGOs efficient lobbying

Human rights are real challenges for NGOs for several reasons. One of them is the difficulty to select measurable and reliable datas because human rights issues rely on values,
themselves related to cultures. Another point is to confront those datas with actors and
States, which don't always agree with such approach, arguing that reports and arguments
of NGOs are based on norms that could be not universally accepted. For example, the
Russian and Chineses position on human rights issues are based on that approach. Moreover, efficiency is a key point that we examine here. The word has two meanings:
1 - (of a system or machine) achieving maximum productivity with minimum wasted
effort or expense:
2 - (of a person) working in a well-organized and competent way: an efficient administrator10.
A - Two cases studies
In order to understand the logic and practices of lobbying on human rights issues, two
NGOs campaign are analysed. Despite our effort since July 2013, it was not possible to
proceed to several interviews as expected.
A.1 - The International Campaign for Tibet

The International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) works to promote human rights and democratic freedoms for the people of Tibet. ICT does the following:
Monitors and reports on human rights, environmental and socio economic conditions
in Tibet;
Advocates for Tibetans imprisoned for their political or religious beliefs;
Works with governments to develop policies and programs to help Tibetans;
Secures humanitarian and development assistance for Tibetans;
Works with Chinese institutions and individuals to build understanding and trust, and
explores relationships between Tibetans and Chinese,

Van Laer, J. and Van Aelst, P., Internet and social movment action repertoires: opportu-
nites and limitations, information, communication & society, pp. 1146-1171, 2011.
10
Souce : http://oxforddictionaries.com

 Mobilizes individuals and the international community to take action on behalf of Tibetans; and
Promotes self-determination for the Tibetan people through negotiations between the
Chinese government and the Dalai Lama11.
We conducted a semi directive interview with Vincent Metten EU Policy officer at the
ICT office in Brussels. He defines his activity as a work of political influence and informational activity and makes no difference between advocacy and lobbying. He considers the
following elements as best practices.
- A good quality of information is effective through a good network and regular contacts.
- ICT has also a subscription to a specialised company in charge to provide intelligence
and information. This allows being more proactive than reactive face to events and to
actuality. To be proactive means providing good information to people whom needs it at
the right time. For example, on the 22nd of October 2013, the second universal exam of
The Peoples Republic of China (PRC) takes place at the UNO office in Geneva. A
month before, ICT have provided to selected members, a twenty pages reports in order to
balance the official arguments that are provided by the PRC. A dedicated visit can also be
done to the participants before their travel to Geneva in order to raise their awareness to
the meeting.
- A third point is to provide precise and detailed information, material and recommendations to the stakeholders, ICTs communication activity.
- The last point, that could also be the first, because we consider it as the starting point, is
the quality of research and quality of information issued from this research Precisions
provide credibility and enhance the reception of the message. The recruitment and the
training of the staff is a key point to reach such a level.
As pointed out in the introduction, lobbying on human rights issues done by NGOs and
public organisations could be different form the one by corporate and private sector. Vincent Metten argues that lobbying on human rights issues is based on values, ethics and on
morals. Moreover, resources are lower that the ones of the corporate sector. He then advances than the human dimension and the transparency procedures are more important.
He also argues that the communication and lobbying techniques are the same. In other
words, emotion and human dimensions could be the real difference between the two categories of lobbyists, NGOs and corporate organisations.
Some obstacles should be pointed out. On the question of Tibet, bias and ignorance are
important. The debate is political and the PRC has strong strategies to counter this lobbying and some actors consider that the Dala Lama has a hidden agenda. More broadly, on
human issues, manipulation and actions of secret services is also possible.

11

Source : www.savetibet.org, consulted 2nd octobrer 2013

7

Considering the action repertoires, V. Metten does not really believe in petitions, online
or not. He considers that Op Ed is efficient to present an opinion. Protestations are also
an important element for three reasons. First, for the Tibetans themselves, to nourish
their motivation, second to gain attention to the media and to the general public, third to
show to the PRC that his opponents are active.
The capacity to provide information to the Member of European parliament (MEP) is a
key point. They appreciate to receive position paper, arguments and reports. Sometimes, a
successful action is to provide an amendment that will be included in officials European
texts. For V. Metten, a successful campaign of lobbying is the result of the combination
between medias, communication and direct statement to MEP and diplomats, in order to
touch at the same time several types of protagonists from different circles.
A.2 - The Control Arms campaign

Our second case, the Control Arms campaign by Amnesty international, represents a
model because it includes all structural and mediating conditions developed above. An
informal discussion was conducted during a workshop in Brussels; unfortunately, it was
not possible, due to time constraint, to ask the same questions to the Amnesty international officer in charge of this topic in Brussels.
Since 13 years, Amnesty international and its headquarters in London rule the Control
Arms campaign: Control Arms is a global civil society alliance campaigning for a bulletproof Arms Trade Treaty that will protect lives and livelihoods. A bulletproofs
Arms Trade Treaty means an international, legally binding agreement that will stop transfers of arms and ammunitions that fuel conflict, poverty and serious violations of human
rights and international humanitarian law.
The idea of an arms trade treaty first came from Nobel Peace Laureates, supported by
civil society organizations worldwide.
In 2003, the Control Arms Campaign was launched and has since gathered support for
the Arms Trade Treaty from over a million people worldwide.
In 2006, Control Arms handed over a global petition called the Million Faces to the
UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan.
In December 2006, 153 governments finally voted at the United Nations to start work on
developing a global Arms Trade Treaty. Momentum for the treaty has been building ever
since.
In 2009 the UN General Assembly launched a time frame for the negotiation of the Arms
Trade Treaty. This included one preparatory meeting in 2010 and two in 2011, before the
final negotiating conference scheduled for July 201212.

12

www.controlarms.org
8

Besides political aspects, the situation is quite complex. First, to develop precise arguments, the NGO must investigate arms trade, illegal air flights or non-respected embargos
by arms manufacturers. The members of the NGO do research at exhibitions (Milipol in
Paris), on some battlefields (Congo, Togo), or online by checking databases and the Web
in order to collect data, flight plans, arms manufacturers, photos.) To see some of theses
elements, see Andrew Niccols movie Lord of war.)
Amnesty International produce fact-checked reports. These well-documented reports became arguments, synthetized by a lobbying and communication team. In order to convince politicians and public opinion, a two-branch strategy is used: a lobbyists and a grassroots approach. Throughout the year, lobbyists working for Amnesty send press releases,
reports and arguments to the UN delegates in New York. Control Arms campaigners
lobbied states to make positive ATT statements, in particular to get support for the current version of the Chairs non-papers to be used as the starting point for the negotiation
conference. In addition, Control Arms members made a presentation to states and organized a number of well-attended side events. Then, once a year, during the general assembly, they tried to convince the delegate at the ambassadors level to vote for the ATT project.
But this strategy is not enough for an NGO, nor, more generally, for agents who need to
receive the support of the public sphere. A complete set of communication tools is used
to influence the public: press conferences, demonstrations in the streets that are able to
catch the attention of media, Web sites, including online petitions, Twitter, Facebook
pages, expert testimony or reports, support of stars (for example, in France, Lillian Thuram, a famous French football player). Some parody videos are also on YouTube (for a
teleshopping parody, see www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3OprnmlJmM).
The communication strategy fulfils the there conditions of Cardon Grajon (2010): Counter expertise, i.e. fact checked reports, parody, and grassroots mobilization.
According to the conditions presented above, that case is a multi dimensional one.
A strong goal, at UN level, with law implantation and vote procedures
155 affiliated NGOs in 132 countries in a network coordinated by Amnesty international
A high activity, during the entire year, by collecting datas, by communication campaign, with a peak during each UN general assembly
A sensitive subject: arms regulation would have positive impacts on children, civilians
and women

 A multilevel audience such as medical Professionals, global Investors, survivors of

armed violence, women, religious leaders and organizations, and parliamentarians, as
well as general public13.
The purpose of control Arms campaign is to mobilize media, to gain positive acceptance
in opinion, and to convince the public sphere, in order to put pressure on politicians, civil
servants and heads of governments engaged in the issue.
B - Discussion and conclusion
Two points could be discussed: legitimacy and indicators, but we are aware that the lines
between the two need to be clarified.
The legitimacy of NGO, moreover of civil society is largely debated since 1999, after the
Seattle events. A contribution by Jan Aart Scholte inspires the following paragraph. He
develops the questions of legitimacy identifying four components14:
Moral legitimacy. Because actions concern human rights, development, noble objectives and social consciousness, activities of NGO are considered as legitimate. Their
actions can often gain attention of the general public and media. A limit, already evocate, is linked with cultural relativism, norms and values that differ according to different conceptions existing between countries and civilisations.
Efficiency. According to Jan Aart Scholte, civil society and NGOs have significant
results: intense work to inform policy makers in order to impulse positives reforms on
juridical systems; concretes actions to develop and support humanitarian and reduction of poverty operations; surveys, reports and others field work which are useful to
inform media, public opinion and policy makers. This criterion to difficult to discus;
we think that facts, proven results and datas extracted from examples should be presented in order to precise such arguments.
Democracy. NGOs actions are a democratic factor because it can reinforce popular
participation in numerous occasions. For example, marginal groups can express themselves. Moreover, civil society actions tend to be transparent with availability of documents and transparency of accounts proposed on Pdf format on web sites. J. A.
Scholte consider that this dimension put pressure on officials bodies to be more
transparent and more open to the public for their modalities of exercise or decisions.
Social cohesion. J. Aart Scholte argue that civil society and NGOs actions contributes
to enhance social cohesion, face to the pressure of globalization.

13

Source ControlArms.org, consulted, 17 April 2013.

Socit civile et gouvernance mondiale , Jan Aart Scholte, Centre for the Study of Glo-
balisation and Regionalisation, Universit de Warwick in Gouvernance mondiale, Rapport de
synthse, Pierre Jacquet, Jean Pisani-Ferry et Laurence Tubiana, pp. 221-228
www.ladocumentationfrancaise.fr/var/storage/rapports-publics/024000230/0000.pdf, con-
sulted 2nd octobre 2013.

14

10

Nevertheless, critics can be made. Civil society and NGOs should prove by their acts and
actions their willingness to fulfil those four criteria instead of relying on it or simply to
take it as granted.
The question of indicators for lobbying will leads us to the conclusion of this work. Our
literature review was unsuccessful to find papers discussing indicators able to evaluate
from a quantitative and qualitative perspective lobbying activities. We try here to established a list that can be debated
For mass media, it is possible to count the articles, reportages, and others elements
done by the media. This count is the most ancient one and is related to evaluation of
an audience
For social media, it is possible to count the numbers of followers, the numbers of
tweets, of Like on Facebook. This count is made possible because of digital technologies. The most ancient one is the evaluation of visitors on the web site of the organisation.
Face to decision policy makers, criteria is the level of contact. In other words, when
an organisation can have access to high-level decision makers, to an ambassador, to an
influent MEP, or to an advisor at a ministry cabinet level, it reveals that the organisation is recognised and credible. It's a proof of the professionalism and its capacity to
provide credible and useful information and reports. In other words, doors are
open.
During a press conference or a protest, criteria could be the quality of the audience
or the quality of the participants (the presence of people involved in the process).
Of course, we are aware that this criterion is difficult to define and to make clear.
And finally, inside the lobbying process itself, an important element is the inclusion of
the arguments directly provided by the NGOS. In Brussels, scholars, journalists and
NGOs concerned by the lobbying have identified that protagonists of lobbying are
able to provide to the civil servant in the Commission and to MEP, arguments and
amendments. A copy and paste procedure allows the argument to be present on the
final text of the European institutions15.
V. Metten form ICT confirms it. An indicator of success is the capacity to be invited to
participate to important events. For example, during the UE Spanish presidency in 2009,
ICT was invited to a seminar on Human rights between UE and China. The credibility is
the heart of the process: if an NGO is credible, the lobbying done by the organisation will
also be credible.
Four elements of conclusion could be presented:

15

For more on that question see two NGOs Alter EU and Corporate observatory Europe. A
web site launch on 2013 try to identifies which arguments are coming from which actors
http://lobbyplag.eu/lp

11

 Advocacy and lobbying are deeply linked with information management,

At the point of the research, we think that tools and methodologies are similar between Ngos and corporate organisations,
Communication is a key component. Form an appointment with a diplomat to a
demonstration covered by TVs, the cocktail, i.e. the communication strategy, developed at the same time is important,
The descriptions and definitions of indicators is a difficult task. For digital media, its
easy to quantify. A qualitative evaluation should also be done. For meeting, internal or
inside lobbying with decision policy makers, it related to interpersonal communication, persuasion and credibility.
As The art of war16 or The art of negotiation17, we would like to consider lobbying as
an art, engaging personal communication, information management, influence, communication tools in a multidimensional cocktail.

References
Cardon, D. Fabien Granjon, (2010), Mdiactivistes, presses de Sciences Po, Paris
Coen, David. (2008), EU Lobbying: Empirical and Theoretical Studies. London: Routledge
Gollain, Vincent, Guide du marketing territorial, Editions territoriales, 2010
Grossman Emiliano & Saurugger, Sabine (2006), Les groupes d'intrt, Armand Colin, Paris
Guegen, Daniel, 2007, Lobbying europen, Bruxelles, Europolitique
Liu, Chineses Journal of communication, Vol. 4 n2, June 2011, 137-166
Neveu, Eric, Vaincre lindiffrence, CNRS editions, Paris, 2000
Orr, A. (2007). Political Participation and the Web 2.0. Paper presented at the Australasian
Political Studies Association (APSA) Annual Conference 24th-26th September 2007,
Monash University, Melbourne.

16

McNeilly, Mark R. (2001), Sun Tzu and the Art of Modern Warfare, Oxford University Press
Arifon, O. (2010), Langue diplomatique et langage formel : un code double entente,
Herms n 58 Les langues de bois . CNRS Editions, pp. 71-78.

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