Civic Engagement and Policy Setting Before the Age of Social Media: How Citizens Used Petitions to Influence Government∗

What are social media’s prospects for meaningfully influencing public policy in the future? This paper draws on my (and co-authors’) research on petitioning—one form of direct contact between citizens and government officials—to provide context for the efforts unfolding online today. I examine petitioning during several critical moments—in the first Congress, during the Bank War of 1833–1834, and during the Progressive Era—to characterize the conditions under which direct contact is most likely to influence policy. ∗Updated March 9, 2015. Prepared for Conference on Social Media at Boston University. This conference paper adapts and re-purposes material from several full-length research papers: Ansolabehere, Palmer, and Schneer (2014), Schneer (2015) and Carpenter and Schneer (2014). †Ph.D. Candidate, Harvard University, Department of Government, [email protected].