One of the core activities of CCCE is tracking and studying various issue campaigns. We are particularly interested in campaigns that redefine the boundaries of traditional politics and communication. For example, many of the political issues that engage citizens today involve broad coalitions of both traditional political organizations and direct activist groups and networks. Such campaigns combine conventional citizen activities such as voting and contacting government officials with direct action such as boycotts, public information campaigns, and the use of the Internet for educational and movement mobilizing purposes. Many of these campaigns are also transforming the traditional geographic locations of politics from nations and particular institutional jurisdictions within them, to more fluid arenas of politics ranging from the local neighborhood to global action networks. We are interested in understanding how traditional and direct citizen action work together, and how new communication media such as the Internet shape the course of these campaigns.

At present, this portion of the CCCE web site offers examples of different organizations and resource sites that are typical of these campaigns. In the future we plan to add visual representations of these campaign networks that show the strategic and changing relations among organizations involved in these campaigns. We also plan to develop various ways of describing and assessing how these campaigns attain various political goals, such as getting citizens involved in public life, shaping the coverage patterns of traditional news media, and influencing corporate behavior and government policy. Our ultimate goal is to make a wide variety of these campaigns available for policy makers and scholars to study, and for citizens to follow and to join, in ways that advance the goals of meaningful civic engagement.

CCCE does not advocate particular positions in these campaigns. We are interested in understanding how they work.

Campaigns

Nike/Anti-Sweatshop Campaign

Campaign against the WTO

Campaign against the IMF/ World Bank

Microsoft Antitrust Campaign

Labor Standards

Fair Trade Coffee Campaign
For the Global Exchange Fair Trade coffee campaign, look here.
For a list of other Fair Trade coffee links, look here.

***Starbucks Campaign*** For the Organic Consumers Association Starbucks campaign click here. For a narrative account of the earlier Global Exchange Starbucks campaign, look at the Deborah James interview here (the link to the interview is at the bottom of the page). For the more recent Global Exchange Starbucks campaign, look here.