ABSTRACT
Epistemic communities and transnational advocacy networks traditionally seek to influence local norms from a global perspective. Through access to expert knowledge, highly informed issue selection and framing, and long-term management and steering of multiple strands of work, these interest groups have found success in influencing and institutionalizing international human rights norms in domestic contexts. Groups or individuals using social media advocacy set out to achieve the same ends. This research indicates, however, that the formation, modality, and perhaps impact of advocacy campaigns driven by social media platforms are inherently different from other ‘glocalization’ mechanisms. In order to develop a framework for necessary empirical research on this new form of advocacy, we must first analyse both the opportunities and limitations presented by this modality of global advocacy in institutionalizing human rights norms, as compared existing international relations models. Across the field of development cooperation, we consistently find advocate
reports, studies, and conference materials that explore what has been done to engage with new communication technology, and how advocacy organizations have embraced this new form of media; however, there is a paucity of empirical research linking such social media advocacy to public policy or state behaviour outcomes. Rather than exploring the ground-level impact of social media campaigns through outcome indicators, success is reported via process indicators. We can gauge the level of public engagement in a social media campaign, and thus estimate levels of awareness on a particular issue, but we cannot yet, at least empirically, identify the impact of social media on policy change. While others have focused on social media as a tool for groups to connect in the pursuit of their organizational missions, this research seeks to explore the use of social media as a means to achieve normative change. In this chapter, we first set out to provide a contextual overview of the
pervasiveness of social media followed by a comparison two primary global interest group models: epistemic communities (networks of experts who use collective knowledge to effect change), and transnational advocacy networks
(groups who use external influence to affect domestic change). We then use these models to map the more traditional course of normative change through human rights. Using this background information, we position social media as a tool for human rights advocacy in development cooperation, surveying both the opportunities and limitations of social media in bringing global norms to local contexts. We conclude by proposing a research agenda and methodological approach to fill the demonstrated gap in existing research.
