‘We the People’: Five Years of Online Petitions

In order to understand how citizens used the opportunity to directly seek redress from the White House, and how the administration responded, Pew Research Center conducted a detailed content analysis of “We the People” petitions. The analysis shows that no one type of request dominated the online petition system, with users of the site instead addressing a wide range of topics. The topmost subjects included petitions pertaining to the health care system (8%); disease awareness and related issues (6%); veterans’ and military issues (6%); immigration (5%); requests to honor individuals or create holidays (5%); requests to investigate criminal cases (5%); and animal rights (5%).

In terms of whether these petitions had any impact, the study suggests there were a variety of outcomes: At the most meaningful level, one petition was instrumental in creating a significant piece of legislation: A January 2013 petition regarding the unlocking of cellphones led to a bill that President Barack Obama signed into law in August 2014. The petition called for making it illegal for telephone companies to “lock” their phones by preventing a phone purchased from one telephone carrier to be used on another carrier’s system.