Avaaz: can online campaigning reinvent politics?

 The petitioning group Avaaz is polling its 17 million members to redefine its priorities as part of a huge exercise in global democracy. But does its brand of online activism actually work? 

How do you run an organisation with 17 million bosses? Avaaz, the online campaigning giant that has taken action on Palestinian statehood, phone hacking and News International, and the pre-trial detention of Bradley Manning, among much else, is making its annual attempt to find an answer to that question this week.

Avaaz's 2012 campaigns included a petition with nearly 1m signatures calling for universal education in Pakistan after the shooting of 15-year-old schoolgirl activist Malala Yousafzai. It was delivered by a UN envoy directly to the Pakistani president – who signed it himself. Avaaz also amassed 1.8m signatures for Palestinian statehood, and was part of the internet-wide efforts against new censorship laws in January.

But now, in a bid to decide what to do next, the five-year-old activism organisation is holding what one staffer describes as a "global party conference" to let its members try to set the agenda for the year ahead.

Where ordinarily such an endeavour would involve rounding up a group of people to a desultory out-of-town hotel, this one's virtual: some just chip in through ticking boxes on polls, others engage in lengthy debates on online threads, and some suggest face-to-face action with local groups. Avaaz's 80 staff, dotted around the world, have their own ideas and plans, but in a similar manner to the Occupy or Arab spring movements, claim it is being run from the bottom up.

Suggestions are flooding in. Among hundreds of pages of comments, and tens of thousands of polling responses, numerous priorities are listed: "How can we stop the radical Islamist groups in Syria and stop the Assad's regime at the same time," asks Omar, from Syria. Shanti, from Nepal asks: "Please campaign against the killing of innocent Shias of Pakistan. More than 100 people died in the blast in Quetta two days back." Peter in Australia notes: "The right to secular education for all children is essential for the future of humanity."

Where the Occupy movement has foundered since the dissolution of its camps around the world, and the Arab spring nations have seen mixed fortunes, from the re-emergence of hated laws and elites in Egypt to outright civil war in Syria, the online activism movement is apparently flourishing: Avaaz had six million members two years ago, 10 million in January 2012, and more than 17 million today. Similar groups such as 38 Degrees and Change.org have similarly grown in scale and high-profile actions. But with scale comes challenges: what have the groups actually achieved? Who's really in charge – the paid staff or the diffuse member base? And now governments are starting to take digital democracy seriously – with official petition sites, open policymaking and more – what's the point in the long term?

Its next plan is to expand its "daily briefing" news site, to combine collected global reporting with calls to action – a shift the staff have been keen to implement for months and which is so far finding favour with members (65% counted it as one of their top three directions for 2013).

If this kind of nimble, sophisticated, issue-based campaigning continues its hold – and, given the current campaigns both for and against gay marriage, India's war on women, drones and surveillance, there's every reason to think it will – it could mark a fundamental change in politics. And in all probability, says Zacharzewski, the losers will be the political parties, as people focus directly on each individual issue they support rather than signing up to the bundle of compromises that makes up a traditional party manifesto.

"I think parties have a huge structural problem," he says. "One of my trustees says the parties are dead and not coming back. I think that's a bit strong, but I think the concept of the party as a vehicle for mass compromise is foundering on the fact that people aren't willing to put up with mass compromise any more.

"The next five or 10 years will show whether government and online politics can reinvent itself in the way that speaks to a networked, personalised, individualised society – because if it can't, we might be in 1765 with the French revolution ahead of us."