The NY times article got a very basic point wrong.
Q: How do you judge the success of the campaign to raise awareness by calling congress people?
A: By the number of calls/contacts made.
Instead they compared it to the SOPA protest that "stopped" the bills and hence declared it a failure.
The goal of raising awareness was most certainly achieved (because the frikkin NYT wrote a whole article about it)
This is just the first salvo in a long war - no need to declare victors & losers already.
The reason so many campaigns use "raising awareness" as a goal is because it is trivially, almost tautologically achievable. Let's say the numbers were 10% of what they are. Hey, raised awareness, success! Let's say they were 10x what they are. Hey, awareness!
Furthermore, to be more brutal about this, I think "getting an article in the NYT" can no longer be a success outcome for awareness in a world with such fast attention cycles. There's an adage in politics that an issue has to be in the press for something like 5 consecutive days for it to have real electoral impact. Seems like that is more akin to the target here.
Yes, it means we can't automatically declare victory, but it also defines a victory that's earned.
I'd be willing to bet that the article was written on the 11th or even before that. The campaign started with a nearly impossible goal, unless Obama himself had come out to declare surrender, they were always going to be able to print that.
The reason the NYTimes author (and others) compared 'The Day We Fight Back" to the SOPA protests is likely because 'The Day We Fight Back' used the success against SOPA as its primary example of what online protests can do. The campaign set SOPA as the benchmark, not The New York Times. Its website, before the current updated version, repeatedly evoked the defeat of SOPA as the measuring stick. It did so in the text on the site and the promotional video.
Even the name "The Day We Fight Back" implies that this is a fight that can be won in a day. Supporters later pointed out that this is a long war, not a fight for a day. But the initial promotion of this campaign did little to encourage people to take this fight and make it part of their lives for the foreseeable future. And the fact that supporters are justifying the legitimacy and effectiveness of this campaign by citing one-day numbers only furthers the notion that a single day can make a difference in what will inevitably be an ongoing battle for the rest of our lives.
Setting a specific date for the action was wrong. In reality it was critical to getting any participation at all. If we'd have themed this as "Fight Back For The Foreseeable Future," I assure you we'd have gotten very little participation. Any large movement is made up of a series of smaller actions.
For example, in the buildup to SOPA we had Internet Censorship Day in November, the Godaddy boycott in December, and then the blackout in January. To see this on a larger scale, simply skim the timeline of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 [1].
Q: How do you judge the success of the campaign to raise awareness by calling congress people?
A: By the number of calls/contacts made. Instead they compared it to the SOPA protest that "stopped" the bills and hence declared it a failure.
The goal of raising awareness was most certainly achieved (because the frikkin NYT wrote a whole article about it) This is just the first salvo in a long war - no need to declare victors & losers already.