Internet petition

An Internet petition is a form of petition posted on a website. Visitors to the website in question can add their email addresses or names, and after enough "signatures" have been collected, the resulting letter may be delivered to the subject of the petition, usually via e-mail.

Pros and cons

The format makes it easy for people to make a petition at any time. Several websites allow anyone with computer access to make one to protest any cause, such as stopping planned development of a wetland or closure of a store.

Because it is easy to set up, it can attract frivolous causes, or jokes framed in the ostensible form of a petition.^{[citation needed]}

Without safeguards online petitions may to be abused if signers don't use real names. This may invalidate the legitimacy of the petition itself. Verification, for example via a confirmation e-mail can prevent padding a petition with false names and e-mails and many petition sites now have such safeguards to match real world processes such as local governments requiring protest groups to present petition signatures, plus their printed name, and a way to verify the signature (either with a phone number or identification number via a driver's license or a passport) to ensure that the signature is legitimate and not falsified by the protestors.^[1]

There are now several major web initiatives featuring online petitions, for example Change.org, Avaaz.org,Petitions.GoodEasy.info,Internet Petition and 38 Degrees. These are growing in popularity and in their ability to achieve political impact. The Economist comments that Avaaz has had "some spectacular successes" but raises questions about what objective measures can be used to assess "the reach of a global e-protest movement".^[2]

Some legitimate non-governmental organizations (NGOs) shun online petitions for various reasons. The track record of online petitions is also another reason why some NGOs shun them, as there are few examples of this form of petition achieving its objective, and critics frequently cite it as an example of slacktivism.

In February 2007 an online petition against road pricing and car tracking on the UK Prime Minister's own website attracted over 1.8 million e-signatures from a population of 60 million people. The site was official but experimental at the time.^[3] Shocked government ministers were unable to backtrack on the site's existence in the face of national news coverage of the phenomenon. The incident has demonstrated both the potential and pitfalls of online e-Government petitions. It remains to be seen if policy will be permanently affected.^[4]

History

E-mail petitions

A similar form of petition is the e-mail petition. This petition may be a simple chain letter, requesting that its users forward them to a large number of people in order to meet a goal or to attain a falsely promised reward. Other times the message will contain a form to be printed and filled out, or a link to an offsite online petition which the recipient can sign. Usually, the e-mail petition focuses on a specific cause that is meant to cause outrage or ire, centering on a timely political or cultural topic.^[1] E-mail petitions were among the earliest attempts to garner attention to a cause from an online audience.

World Wide Web

With the rise of the World Wide Web as a platform for commerce, activism and discussion, an opportunity to garner attention for various social causes was perceived by various players, resulting in a more formalized structure for online petitions; one of the first web-based petition hosts, PetitionOnline, was founded in 1999, with others such as thePetitionSite.com, iPetitions, GoPetitions and others being established in the years since. Petition hosts served as accessible external locations for the creation of a wide variety of petitions for free by users, providing easier interfaces for such petitions in comparison to the previous e-mail petitions and informal web forum-based petitions. However, petition hosts were criticized for their lax requirements from users who created or signed such petitions: petitions were often only signed with false or anonymous nomenclatures, and often resulted in disorganized side commentary between signers of the same petition.

The rise of online social networking in the later 2000s, however, resulted in both an increase of Internet petition integration into social networks and an increase of visibility for such petitions; Facebook, Change.org, Care2, Avaaz.org and other sites serve as examples of the integration of Internet petitions as a form of social media and user-generated content. Such networks may have proven to be more fertile ground for the creation of, signing of and response to online petitions, as such networks generally lack the heightened level of anonymity associated with the earlier dedicated petition hosts.

Electronic petitions and e-government

Simulated bus advertisement used to promote an e-Petition to the British Prime Minister^[5]

The UK government e-petitions system was suspended in April 2010 but then reopened in a new guise in August 2011, with time allocated for parliamentary debate a possibility for petitions attracting more than 100,000 signatures.^[6]

Some parliaments, government agencies and officials, such as The Scottish Parliament with the e-Petitioner system (from 1999), the Queensland Parliament in Australia,^[7] German Bundestag^[8] (from 2005) and Bristol City Council^[9] in the U.K have adopted electronic petitioning systems as a way to display a commitment to their constituents and provide greater accessibility into government operations.^[10]

Under the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009 the petitions duty requires all principal authorities to provide a facility for people to submit petitions electronically. This requirement will come into force on December 15, 2010.

Other groups are attempting to establish electronic petitioning as a way to streamline and make more accessible, existing citizens' initiative processes.^[11]

Debate over efficacy

As is the case with public perceptions of slacktivism, Internet petitions are both a popular resort of web-based activism and a target of criticism from those who feel that such petitions are often disregarded by their targets because of the anonymity of petition signers; Snopes.com, for example, sides itself against the usage of Internet petitions as a method of activism.^[1] On the other hand, the creators of petition hosts, such as Randy Paynter of Care2 and thePetitionSite.com, have defended web-based petitions as being more feasible, credible and effective than e-mail petitions,^[12] claiming they are not fairly judged as a method of activism by their critics.

Free Internet petition scripts

1. EzyPetitions [1]
2. Petition script [2]

See also

• e-Participation
• Virtual volunteering / online volunteering

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} Mikkelson, Barbara (2007-06-09). "Internet Petitions". Snopes.com. http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/petition/internet.asp. 
2. ^ A town crier in the global village, The Economist, 2 September 2010. Accessed 20 January 2011.
3. ^ "Roads petition breaks a million". BBC News. 2007-02-10. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6349027.stm. 
4. ^ PM emails road pricing signatories, Number10.gov.uk, 20 February 2007. Accessed 31 August 2008.
5. ^ "British e-petition". City of Adelaide - the Splendid Clipper Ship. CSCOAL. http://cityofadelaide.org.au/british-pm-petition.html. Retrieved 15 July 2010. 
6. ^ "HM Government e-petitions". http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/. Retrieved 08 August 2011. 
7. ^ "Queensland Parliament E-Petitions Queensland Parliament". http://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/view/EPetitions_QLD/. 
8. ^ "E-Petitionen an den Deutschen Bundestag". https://epetitionen.bundestag.de/. 
9. ^ "Bristol City Council E-Petitions Bristol City Council". http://epetitions.bristol.gov.uk/. 
10. ^ "Petition effectiveness: improving citizens’ direct access to parliament". Parliament of Western Australia. 2007-08-23. http://www.parliament.wa.gov.au/web/webpages.nsf/WebFiles/ASPG+2007+-+Palmieri/$FILE/Palmieri.pdf. 
11. ^ "Online e-Petitioning in Michigan signmyname.org". http://signmyname.org. 
12. ^ Paynter, Randy (Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 01:58PM). "Slacktivism: Why Snopes got it Wrong About Internet Petitions". Frogloop. Care2. http://www.frogloop.com/care2blog/2010/4/28/slacktivism-why-snopes-got-it-wrong-about-internet-petitions.html. 

External links

• Petitions at the Open Directory Project