Keywords: Storytelling, Digital Communications, Environmental Activism
This toolkit is a compilation of tools and lessons from DataCenter’s years of campaign support work with grassroots organizations that focus on the role of research in informing campaign strategy.
Authors: DataCentre, Oakland, USA, 2015
Essential information: The first step to any kind of target research is to get the basic information on a company or governmental body. This lays down the foundation for your future research and helps you get the ball rolling.
Control and command: Understanding who makes the decisions within the body you are researching becomes essential for developing your demands and identifying who to direct them at.
Show me the money: Evaluating the financial condition of our targets helps us understand their vulnerabilities and strengths in a campaign in order for us to identify the right leverage points.
Political relationships: Political relationships largely impact how decision-makers act. Both political and corporate decision-makers are influenced by the political partnerships they benefit from and feel accountable to.
Social relationships: Our targets are complicated, sometimes contradictory, human beings who care about their personal relationships. Understanding what personal relationships might influence our target(s) decisions help inform a good escalation strategy.
Media and reputation: Our targets are invested in protecting their reputation in order to maintain their positions of power. Finding out how they are portrayed publicly is often a way to generate more research to get the “dirt” that makes them vulnerable. Researching what kind of reputation they are trying to portray vs what they are actually doing is a good way to expose their contradictions.
Organizing opportunities: Building tactical alliances are essential for comprehensive campaigns. You should always be finding ways to connect with different groups who would benefit from the policy change you are advocating for.