Along with just about everything else, petitions have made their way online, with some questions about their effectiveness.

Allie Gottlieb's 6/21/02 Metro Silicon Valley article, highlighted some of the questions around for-profit online petition hosting services and their effectiveness for advocacy groups and causes. Chief among the concerns raised is that they may very prove to be an ineffective means of attracting an already uninterested online audience to take and sustain offline activity.

There is a bit of a difference between online (web-based) and e-mail petitions. Basically, with e-mail petitions, there is a concern around sourcing and the time threshold (or expiration date), as well as privacy concerns. Unless e-mail petitions specifically ask people to pass along under their *own* e-mail address with links back to the source, and the date by when action is to take place, you have long lists of commercially enticing valid e-mails and contact info waiting to be exploited by spammers.

Online petitions usually address the sourcing problems, but they don't provide verification of the signatories, and as you say, will attract some potential lunatic fringe folks, in addition to potentially compromising security around contact info. In the offline world, circulating petitions, complete with information on signatories and their contact info, outside of the target recipient may actually violate local, state, or other laws around privacy. Great caution needs to be exercise if anyone is asked for copies of petitions-- signatories and all-- online or offline, unless you can literally verify that each person gave their consent to do so. A good summary warning sheet on both types of approaches is available from TurthorFiction.com.

So why would any group attempt an online petition in the first place? Are there any clear cut measures of effectiveness or limitations of offline petitions, and their role in advocacy by groups, either as one activity, or a chain in a continuum of activity? Certainly, personal contact and letter campaigns by constituents are going to get more attention in general. But the dynamics of petitions really come to bear in those instances where there is a initiative or referendum you are trying to propose or to stop.

Decision-makers can very easily ignore any public input or gauge of opinion in making an affirmative or negative decision on an issue of importance to a group of interests. But, petitioning itself, when done effectively, provides the forum itself for the public to reflect its deliberation around an issue or action, and is a way to develop a list of potential supporters and helpers. In the offline world, the signatures themselves matter less than the visibility of people collecting the signatures, usually in proximity to the target of the petitioning. Petitioning is almost always attached to broader outreach and education around an issue, and media attention. But they carry much more weight when signatories follow up by expressing their views in a letter to the petition targets. And that's why, in addition to signing a petition letter, good petitioners always give signatories a copy of the letter as a starting point to inform follow-up individual communications.

In short, good offline petitioning is a tactic to show broad public/constituent support for something and to gather potential support for later follow-up, not a strategy, and most certainly not an activity unto itself. Online petitioning should be viewed the same way, as part of broader combined online and offline approaches to generate attention to a cause. Key to both is that they be presented in person and followed up within the context of the forum in which decision makers are to take their action. Since we have the First Amendment right "...to petition the Government for a redress of grievances", it would be a shame to not do so, and to do it effectively.