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Netroots is a recent term coined to describe political activism organized through blogs and other online media - including wikis and social network services. The word is a portmanteau of Internet and grassroots, reflecting the technological innovations that supposedly set netroots techiques apart from other forms of political participation. The term necessarily overlaps with the related ideas of e-democracy, open politics and participatory democracy, all of which are somewhat more specific, better defined, and more widely accepted. Netroots outreach is a campaign-oriented activity that uses the web for complementing more traditional campaign activities, such as collaborating with grassroots activism that involves get-out-the-vote and organizing through interconnecting local and regional efforts, such as Meetup, and the netroots-grassroots coalition that propeled the election of Howard Dean to the DNC Chair in January, 2005. Advocates claim that the essential quality of the netroots is its flatness and inter-linked web connectiveness: that it constitutes communication points that reach out to influence traditional media, but is not directed outward from any one point. Through events like a blogswarm, the netroots displays non-hierarchical and decentralized features.
US origins of term The first known use of the term in its modern definition is Netroots for Howard Dean, by Jerome Armstrong in December, 2002 on MyDD. Democratic political consultant Joe Trippi credits the success of Howard Dean to their listening and taking the lead from netroots activity. The netroots also played a key role in drafting General Wesley Clark into the 2004 Presidential campaign. The growing power of the netroots was seen most recently in the Paul Hackett campaign for Congress where blog users organized their efforts to raise more money for the political candidate than did the Democratic Party institutions. Netroots activists also supported Ned Lamont in his 2006 primary victory over Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman, claimed Ari Melber in The Nation magazine *. In a December 2005 interview with Newsweek magazine *, Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, founder of Daily Kos, described the netroots as, "the crazy political junkies that hang out in blogs." He is also the co-author (with Jerome Armstrong) of the book (ISBN 1-931498-99-7). Similar activities elsewhere So-called netroots activity also takes place in Iran which has a disproportionately high number of bloggers, in the UK where Work For You and strong support for e-democracy in the form of local issues forums.have become an approved form of feedback on government performance, and in Canada where heavy usage of broadband and a raucous bilingual four party political system have combined to create an active open politics movement focused on wikis, and where some parties have experimented with online authoring of platforms and answers to citizen questions. Theory The distinction between e-democracy and netroots activity is sometimes stated as the degree of awareness of political theory. Those who use the term tend to favour faction and tendency declarations, explicit analysis of rhetoric including metaphors and political framing, and use of argumentation frameworks. Most often they also aspire to neutral point of view as an ideal, at least in framing issue and evidence statements. Key theorists who influenced the netroots movement included Timothy Leary, Ted Nelson, Marshall McLuhan, Horst Rittel, Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, George Lakoff (probably most influential) and his students. Activism What distinguishes netroots activists from say Wikipedia authors is the focus not on the statement of a final consensus but on the debate and exchange of ideas. Their messaging, other communication, and online activism is geared toward persuasion and organizing via the participation of many contributors. The output includes political direction through fundraising via a netroots endorsement of candidates whom show a strong online campaign of grassroots supporters. See also | ||||||||
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