Network-Centric Thinking: The Internet's Challenge to Ego-Centric Institutions

When advocacy groups embrace digital democracy, the reverberations shake the whole organization

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The tools of digital democracy enable us to become activists with a new flexibility and independence. Email lists, online petitions, meet-ups and blogs have altered citizens' expectations for how advocacy groups should engage their members. MoveOn.org and the Howard Dean campaign have pioneered new models for democratic, flexible, "network-centric" approaches, but many organizations stick resolutely to traditional "ego-centric" methods. There's a simmering tension between ego-centric thinking and network-centric thinking – the tension between the institutional power that emanates from an organization and the transactional power that inheres in its members' myriad interactions.

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[Henry Peise]

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