Archive for October, 2007
So here we are in late October of 2007, 15 months after the launch of e.politics. On the East Coast, Fall is slowly, belatedly settling in — the sky darkens early now, the leaves show signs of withering, and the mind naturally turns to questions of change. What’s next in this online endeavor of ours?
Here’s the scoop: as of January 1st, I’ll be trading my day job as online communications manager at the National Environment Trust for the life of an independent consultant. After four years of stable employment, it’s time to ride the waves of capitalism once again, and in the process (I hope) help a bunch of organizations get the most out of our little world of online political communications. NET will actually be disappearing along with my job; it’s being absorbed into the Pew Environment Group at the Pew Charitable Trusts. If all goes well, I’ll continue working with them extensively, but I’ll obviously be expanding my client base as fast as possible.
Exciting times! Without the hassles of a day job (getting dressed, showering, etc.), I should be able to put more effort into e.politics just as the primary season really takes off. And, if the consulting business goes well, I’ll be learning from a whole slew of new projects — and sharing the results with y’all. Some of you reading this have been along since the beginning, and this site would have burned out long ago without you and everyone else who’s joined in since. I appreciate you more than I can say. Your next mission: how about that guest article you’ve been thinking about? It sure ain’t gonna write itself.
That’s the news from e.politics — it’s time to have us a little adventure. Over the course of November, I’ll be moving to an undisclosed bunker somewhere in Northwest D.C. (terrifying the cat in the process), so don’t fret if the site goes dark for a couple of days here and there — I’m probably just a-haulin’ boxes. And maybe putting a little time into that robot/kung fu army….
– cpd
October 19th, 2007
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The San Francisco NetSqared group got a great overview of Google Earth’s potential for online advocacy communications on October 9th, courtesy of Google Earth project manager Steve Miller. Two audience members have written the presentation up for our enjoyment, complete with screenshots and links to more resources: check out Britt Bravo’s version on the NetSquared blog or his own site as well as Lorna Li’s take (BTW, the most alliterative author pair-up I’ve ever seen).
You’re not going to walk away from either article ready to make your own maps, but you’ll get to see some of the potential of this great tool and you’ll leave armed with examples and links to how-tos that’ll get you started. Plus, either article is a good resource for that most difficult of lobbying efforts — the one within your own organization.
– cpd
October 17th, 2007
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I’ve never been entirely satisfied with the comment policy on this site, so let’s take this fine Fall morning to make an arbitrary executive decision. The problem is that because of comment-spam, and despite a good spam filter, enough crap slips through every day that I’ve kept the system set to require site administrator approval for all comments. When you add a note to a story, until it’s approved, you can see your comment (tagged as “waiting for approval”) but no one else can. While this policy helps keep the spam under control, it doesn’t exactly make for live conversation, particularly if I’m off gallivanting around instead of checking my email to see if new comments have arrived.
So here’s the new policy, based on an incredibly exacting (two whole minutes!) review of the options available in this installation of WordPress: once you submit a comment and have it approved, your future missives will sail directly into the pages of e.politics, unreviewed by human eyes other than your own. Your identity is tied to your email address, so as long as you use the same address every time, once you’ve been established as human rather than robot (not to discriminate against our metallic brethren), you can participate in any discussion in real-time. Any other suggestions for improvements? Send ‘em along.
– cpd
October 17th, 2007
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Cross-posted on techPresident
A chat I had with a couple of folks from Radio Singapore International this weekend called up something that’s been playing around in my head for a while now: the idea that we’re seeing the birth of a host of alternative political organizations (and cults of personality) that are outside the power of traditional political gatekeepers to control.
The radio journalists were asking questions about MoveOn.org, an organization that’s propeled itself into the stateside eye lately because of the “General Betray-us” NY Times ad. What jumped into my mind, though, was something said at a recent panel discussion on presidential campaigning: that Wesley Clark has retained a political presence in large part because his email list/online fan club will still turn out in some numbers for causes and candidates that he supports.
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October 16th, 2007
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I’ve been looking for a good reason to return to last week’s question of online political etiquette, and fortunately commenter Ron Goodwine provided an excellent excuse when he left this note yesterday on the original original e.politics Graeme Frost story:
So long as the Dems can find off limits people to fight their battles, the GOP is just SOL? You can’t be serious!
The Dems have made an art out of finding people who “can’t be challenged” to spout their talking points. Like Ann Coulter, I’ve had more than enough of it. The fact is, the Dems USED that kid and they should be condemned for it.
(more…)
October 16th, 2007
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News arrived via Katrin Verclas today that online advocacy provider Convio (which recently ingested competitor GetActive) is opening itself up to the wider world of online advocacy. According to the company’s Open Initiative site, Convio is allowing programmers access to its API, giving outside developers the ability to write software that interacts with data in the Convio system. Besides this new toy for our friends in the ones-and-zeroes community, the company also has a Facebook advocacy aplication in beta stage, integrates its data with Google Maps and with Salesforce.com and other CRM providers, and is offering advocacy widgets for use on social networking sites and blogs.
Smart move all around: most online advocacy providers have traditionally tried to live in closed worlds, keeping their clients wedded to custom systems that generally aren’t flexible (I had a hell of a time getting one to dispay a YouTube video the other day, for instance). But as the variety of online channels constantly expands, and as we in the advocacy community get more experience using them effectively, we’re not going to be satisfied with tools that are rigid, limited and expensive. We need to reach supporters where THEY are, using the methods that they prefer. Traditional email lists will continue to be powerful tools for the foreseeable future, but they’ll be more effective if integrated with other forms of outreach, particularly using social networking sites. And, who knows what cool applications our programmer colleagues will come up with? Ultimately, opening its platform should only make Convio and its products more valuable down the road.
– cpd
October 15th, 2007
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Interesting move: Google has stopped publication of a political campaign’s search ads that used MoveOn.org as a hook. According to The Examiner,
The ads banned by Google were placed by a firm working for Republican Sen. Susan Collins’ re-election campaign. Collins is seeking her third term.
Earlier this week, Google told Lance Dutson, president of Maine Coast Designs, that the ads he placed for Collins had been removed and would not be allowed to resume because they violated Google’s trademark policy.
Google’s Web site states, “Google takes allegations of trademark infringement very seriously and, as a courtesy, we’re happy to investigate matters raised by trademark owners.” That suggests Google acted in response to a complaint by MoveOn.org.
The article goes on to note that other Google ads mention corporate names without being removed, though not whether those companies have challenged the use of their trademarks as MoveOn appears to have done. Assuming that that’s all this is — that MoveOn raised the point and other organizations or companies haven’t — then, no big deal, since anyone with a trademarked name could challenge a critical ad on the same grounds. But if any such decisions were ever made based on the politics of the situation, that would be another matter entirely. Google is such a powerful shaping force in the modern marketplace of ideas that it has to stay scrupulously neutral toward content. Thanks to Patrick Ruffini for the tip, which came to me via a Google alert email….
– cpd
October 12th, 2007
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Get into politics, find yourself shredded in public — even if you’re twelve years old. When Graeme Frost delivered the Democrats’ weekly two-minute radio message a few days ago and focused on the Childrens’ Health Insurance Program, I doubt many people expected this kind of vicious reaction online:
Typical of the tone was what Mark Steyn wrote on National Review Online: “Bad things happen to good people, and they cause financial problems and tough choices. But, if this is the face of the ‘needy’ in America, then no one is not needy.” Nameless commenters to conservative blogs were even harsher. “Let ‘em twist in the wind and be eaten by ravens,” wrote one one on Redstate.com, who was quoted in the Baltimore Sun. “Then maybe the bunch of socialist patsies will think twice.”
Karen Tumulty’s Time story, which supplied that quote, also includes a response from the boy’s father. It concludes:
“I find it morally reprehensible, and the act of a true coward, to publicly (world wide) smear a man and his family and not sign one’s own real name to what they have written. I sign my name to what I write.”
Salon’s Joan Walsh tallies the lengths that some noteworthy right-wingers went to: in this case, more than the usual blogger Googling was involved. (Note: if you see Michelle Malkin poking around your yard, start dialing libel attorneys.) Can we all agree that just maybe this kind of personal attack on a random citizen should be off-limits? The anonymity of the ‘net can shield the powerless, but it can also lead people to write things that for good reason would never pass their lips in public. If those unnamed commenters had to walk up and tell that kid in person that he should “twist in the wind,” might they think twice? In a few cases, probably not: some people are just jerks, online or off.
– cpd
October 11th, 2007
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Cross-posted on techPresident
The Democratic National Committee continued their consistently excellent use of an email list today with a message keyed to local political organizing:
Our organizing plan for 2008 has one critical component: you.
Next month, we’re asking you — and we’re relying on you — to stand up and take ownership of your own neighborhood. It’s a key part of our 50-State Strategy, and the cornerstone of our plan for Democratic victory in 2008.
On Saturday, November 3rd we need you to host your friends and neighbors for the first national organizing event of the Presidential race — months ahead of the Republicans, and a year before we elect a Democratic president.
I love these guys — they actually get it. An activist list is more than an ATM; it’s made up of real live people who want to DO something. Previous DNC emails have asked readers to send a thank-you note to volunteers, to participate in advocacy-style email-your-congressmember campaigns and to use the committee’s Party Builder online organizing application. Each message has a fundraising link, of course, but raising money is usually secondary to building a connection with list members and encouraging them to act — either nationally or locally.
By comparison, the Republican party emails over the past few months have largely been scare messages about Hillary Clinton (actual sample subject line, verbatim: “Waiting for Hillary’s Judicial Nominees????”) or MoveOn.org, tied to an explicit ask for cash. No offline organizing, no opportunity to actually participate in the campaign — all they seem to want is your money. As a lefty, let me be the first to say, keep it up RNC!
Update: A proud DNC staffer has pointed out the success of one of those advocacy actions, with last week’s request for messages to Congress supporting Children’s Health Insurance Program expansion yielding almost 200,000 responses. Impressive, particularly since they made people write their own note rather than just click to send a pre-written one.
– cpd
October 10th, 2007
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Michael Bassik reports today in techPrez about some changes to Facebook that should make it a much better platform for political organizing. Specifically, by January, the “success penalty” for building a large Facebook Group should disappear, since group administrators will no longer be blocked from messaging the group once it exceeds 1000 people. Also, changes to a group such as new videos or photos or a new event will automatically show up in members’ newsfeeds.
Michael is very bullish on the improvements, saying that “by changing the messaging policy, Facebook will soon find itself the center of online activism.” Hmmmm, let me quibble with “the” center — how about “a” center instead? I know that social networking enthusiasts often believe that we’ll all soon be running our online lives through some site or another, but I’m more skeptical (as usual). Absolutely, plenty of people will spend hours and hours a week on Facebook — and plenty won’t. Question for the soc net enthusiasts: how much will an average Facebook supporter donate per ask, compared with an average email list member? I don’t know the answer, but I bet we’ll be looking for it soon.
Another Bassik prediction: “companies like Convio and Democracy in Action will find new sources of revenue in building ‘message your member of Congress’ applications and licensing them to groups for use within Facebook.” That’s a good trend to watch — and the more vendors who get in on the deal, the better off the users will be.
– cpd
October 9th, 2007
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Washington Post online politics reporter Jose Antonio Vargas wrote over the weekend on the Obama campaign’s use of niche social networking sites for voter outreach:
And as of Friday, he’s the first candidate to have profiles on BlackPlanet.com and MiGente.com, popular soc-nets in the black and Latino communities, and also on newer soc-nets such as AsianAve.com (for Asian Americans) and GLEE.com (“GLEE” stands for “Gay, Lesbian and Everyone Else”).
Jose quoted me at the end of the article and I’d like to expand a little on what I said there. Specifically, I talked about going where your audience is, not exactly a new topic on this site. For most campaigns, deciding on which social networking sites to hit, if any, is a resource-allocation question: we have X amount to spend on voter outreach, and we’d like to get the most votes possible for it. In a congressional, state legislative or local race, niche social networking sites aren’t likely to yield enough supporters in the right places to be worth the time, but a MySpace profile may be a good investment. Though of course, even for some local races, ethnic niche sites (for instance) might well be perfect targets — it all depends on which voters those campaigns need to reach and the relative costs of reaching them through different means.
For presidential campaigns that are already maintaining social networking profiles on several sites, adding a few extras probably isn’t going to stretch resources much — national campaigns can pick up extra supporters a few thousand here or a few thousand there, and they’re going to be looking at plenty of different niches, online and off. As with most communications decisions, we don’t have hard-and-fast rules to go by, only tendencies, trade-offs and opportunity costs.
– cpd
October 9th, 2007
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I’m just back from traveling through Texas and Louisiana, and it’s always great to come home to an article as full of fun as this one: New Scientist reports from an e-crime summit in Pittsburg that in the coming years, “voters will increasingly be targeted by internet-based dirty tricks campaigns, and that the perpetrators will find it easier to cover their tracks.”
Politics of the nasty, low-down and dirty variety, just the way we like it. How about anonymous voice-over-IP phone banks to spread “information” about a rival candidate — like a push-poll but without the poll. Hire the right hacker, and you can have zillions of pre-recorded messages go out over a captive bot-net, with the owners of the sending machines completely unaware that they’re participating in the campaign. Besides VOIP, good ol’ spam will also work nicely — let’s us go tell some voters that their polling places have changed or that they need to renew their registration before they can vote. That’ll confuse some folks, maybe enough to swing a precinct or two here and there.
Online campaigning is also vulnerable to straight-up criminals, with fake donations sites a perfect way to phish for credit cards and bank accounts. The “nice” thing is, this stuff is already relatively easy:
The low probability of getting caught online, combined with the fact that anti-spam laws and “no-call” lists exempt political messages, makes the threat real. “The fact is that all of the technology for all of these things to happen is already in place,” Soghoian says. “I’m not sure this will happen in 2008, but it will happen.”
Of course, if a candidate gets caught doing something nasty online, they’re sure to take a lot of heat. Dirty tricks are more likely to be employed by outside groups who’ll be structured in such a way that you’ll likely have a hard time proving that anyone on the benefiting campaign is connected.
– cpd
October 9th, 2007
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