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

PlaNetwork Journal -> Network-Centric Thinking: The Internet's Challenge to Ego-Centric Institutions: "Network-Centric Thinking: The Internet's Challenge to Ego-Centric Institutions
Jed Miller and Rob Stuart

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