The Elite Politics of Media Advocacy in Human Rights

ABSTRACT

Advocacy nongovernmental organizations based in the North adopt digital tools to bypass repressive regimes, raise awareness amongst global publics, sustain grassroots activists in the South, and engage in political action. Social media was expected to offer innovative platforms for mobilizing participants to act on behalf of “distant others.” But the practices of some organizations signal that something else is at play. Rather than empower individuals, digital campaigns reify elite politics, using outsider strategies to support insider lobbying. Through communicative processes of mediatization, organizations pay homage to the existence of a movement, but only afford thin forms of participation. Using the framework of media advocacy to explore Human Rights Watch and the Enough! Project, we argue that social media becomes a top-down platform that exacerbates the elite design of organizations, enabling them to assert legitimacy for political actions, while disingenuously marketing themselves as democratic with bottom-up credibility.