Study shines light on what makes digital activism effective

Digital activism campaigns tend to be more successful when waged against government rather than business authorities. There have been many activist campaigns against corporations, but they don’t seem to have succeeded as well as those that had governments for a target, Howard said.
Effective digital activism employs a number of social media tools. Tweeting alone is less successful, Howard said, and no single tool in the study had a clear relationship with campaign success.
Governments still tend to lag behind activist movements in the use and mastery of new social media tools. They sometimes use the same tools, Howard said, but it’s always months after others have tried them.