e.politics: online advocacy tools & tactics

Archive for March, 2008

Steal These Ideas: NetSquared Mashup Finalists Advocate with Data

NetSquared has been holding a little contest of late to promote the use of data mashups as tools for the betterment of life and society, and the 21 finalists might give you a few ideas about how an advocacy or communications campaign can use mashups to make information accessible to people who aren’t total data nerds.

Many of the finalists use mapping layers, such as a project devoted to the preservation of linguistic diversity and another that tracks threatened houses in New Orleans, while others involve social networking tools, video or rss feeds. Bonus: Cisco’s a sponsor, and the 21 projects will share a $100,000 grant. Pretty cool stuff all around — for those of us who aren’t numbers or software people, it can be hard to envision exactly HOW data can tell a story, so being able to see concrete examples is a help.

– cpd

Add comment March 30th, 2008 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us

How Obama Changed the Dynamics of Online Fundraising

Check out today’s Post for a good look at HOW Barack Obama has raised over $100 million so far this year — spoiler: it wasn’t by accident. Matthew Mosk examines how the campaign has used both Google ads and display ads in online publications ranging from Daily Kos to the Washington Times to bring supporters into the fold:

Obama’s online investment has not come cheap. In January, he spent $768,000 on Web ads, while Clinton spent $171,000 and McCain spent $151,000, campaign finance records show. In February, when Obama spent $2.6 million on ads, Clinton spent $198,000 and McCain spent $111,000.

As Zack Exley notes, the ads are tied to an often-subtle email strategy to build connections with list members over time:

“If you just look at the e-mails and the rhythm — the Obama campaign has not asked for money every time they could have,” Exley said. “They’ve tried to really show people that they’re not just after your money. They’re not treating you like an ATM.”

The result: tens of millions of dollars from small donors, people that the campaign can go back to over and over for money. The takeaways: 1) guess what, the internet can connect a candidate with motivated supporters and donors, 2) if you do it right, you can multiply those rewards with a relatively small investment of time and money. Good tactics matter!

– cpd

Add comment March 28th, 2008 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us

Fishy Online Game Makes a Point but Remembers the Fun

Here’s a fun new Flash-based toy from Joseph Gordon and some of my other former NET colleagues at the Conserve Our Ocean Legacy Campaign: see if you Have What It Takes to be an Ocean Survivor. Guide your tuna through an ocean full of hooks and nets while you also dig the dramatic soundtrack and exciting 3-D backdrop (with moody clouds and stab-of-sunshine lighting effects). Once you cruise to a brutally high score, you can leave it online for others to read and weep. The game does a good job of integrating the learning component, since you get a brief educational bit about each nasty tool that eventually does in your brave fish, and you’re also encouraged to sign on to an email petition (hello, list-building). Nice work all around, guys.

– cpd

1 comment March 27th, 2008 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us

E.politics in AP article on McCain Blogette

Want to read more e.politics but suffer from a shortage of blonde? Never fear — Associated Press reporter Libby Quaid has a good article out today on John McCain’s daughter Meghan’s blog, McCain Blogette, and includes a couple of solid quotes from a phone chat we had last week. For instance:

“Voters seem to make decisions ‘based on personality at least as much as policy,’ Delany said. “And if a blog gives them a view into someone’s personality that they didn’t have before and helps to create a personal connection, that may help to turn the casual visitor into an actual supporter.’”

Of course, McCain Blogette beats us on one significant front — here in the e.politics bunker, we rarely hand out style advice, and for good reason: I fear we shall never reach the esteemed height of “Best Dressed Blogger” in her pages. Back to the AP article — note Julie Germany’s deft “US Weekly” reference.

– cpd

Add comment March 27th, 2008 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us

My First Joomla Site

Well, it’s been an interesting last couple of weeks — while in the midst of a full-on conference frenzy, I’ve also been designing, building and (finally) launching a brand-new advocacy site, the first I’ve tried to build using the Joomla content management system. It’s alive! The Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development is a coalition site aimed at hunting and fishing groups in the Rocky Mountains, trying to get the groups signed on to good energy-development practices in the Mountain West. The site’s quite simple and a CMS like Joomla is almost overkill, but it makes the thing very easy to maintain, which I hope will help the campaign use it as an actual communications tool — over the years, I’ve seen too many of these things essentially sit on a shelf once built.

The process was definitely fun — in the few days between traveling for SXSW Interactive and Nonprofit Technology, I learned the essentials of both CSS page layout and Joomla templating, which I do not recommend doing at the same time unless you’re really into teeth-grinding frustration. But everything’s worked out fine and the client’s happy, so cha-ching! and we don’t have to eat the cat THIS month. BTW, Joomla and CSS purists will note that I cheated in a couple of places if they view source on the site (image map? what image map?), but what is a rule if it can’t be broken?

– cpd

4 comments March 26th, 2008 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us

Back to Business

Well, the conference frenzy is over and it’s time to quit yelling at misguided old men and get back to work for a change. E.politics has been learning mad new online skillz of late and is now in the process of building or unleashing three advocacy sites upon an unsuspecting world, of which more in a bit. Also, Politics Online, SXSW and the Nonprofit Technology Conference have yielded notes or ideas for a slew of articles as yet unwritten, so we have our work cut out for us around here. Everybody step back; who knows how big this thing’s going to get.

It’s also about time for the political world to get back to bidness too, right? For starters, congressional races are warming up and there ought to be a ton of work going on soon at the local and state levels as well. The presidential race has been fun, but let’s turn the amplifier down from 11 on that one for a bit, since it’s clear we’re not likely to know much new for at least another month. In the meantime, see (or build) anything interesting? Pitch it this way — enquiring minds want to know.

– cpd

Add comment March 26th, 2008 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us

Pat Buchanan on Barack Obama and the Reverend Wright’s Lack of “Gratitude”

An open letter to Pat Buchanan:

Hi Pat, how’s things these days? Don’t know if you’ve heard about it, but there’s this device out there now called the “internet.” An interesting idea: the ‘net can put your words in front of a large audience. In the old days, you could say something relatively inflammatory, even in print, and generally have it read or heard really only by people who already agreed with you or at least shared your basic attitudes. Nowadays, though, someone like, say, Media Matters can pick up one of your columns and distribute it to a very different group of readers, including a few who might not share the assumptions underlying a statement like this, which you wrote yesterday in response to Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright’s now-famous screed:

America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.

Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.

Now, I’m not going to go into great detail about how I think you might just be missing the point, though I will suggest that perhaps you’d be more persuasive if you considered the question of whether anyone ASKED those “black folks” whether or not they wanted to be brought in chains to the New World, kept in servitude for centuries, stripped of their cultures and their very names and forcibly converted to an alien religion. Oh, and largely trapped in relative poverty and second-class citizenship up until my lifetime, and I ain’t that old. But I digress.

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7 comments March 22nd, 2008 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us

Resources for NTC Panel, E-Advocacy: Mission over Membership

Greetings from New Orleans and the Nonprofit Technology Conference, where e.politics is bearing up nobly under the strain of going to fantastic cities and hanging out with bright and interesting people. Rough life, I know

As a takeaway for the participants in our online advocacy panel on Friday, below are a ton of articles on various aspects of the question of spreading a message and working to change politics and policy online.

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2 comments March 20th, 2008 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us

Cutting Political Bloggers Out of the Loop

Are big-name political bloggers just another endangered intermediary? That basic question came up in the Politics Online Conference session on Web 2.0 and politics, soon after the mention of the role of comments on news organization sites in helping activists bypass media filters. The basic point: just as commentors on mainstream sites can speak directly to those sites’ readers, political campaigns are working hard to reach voters directly online, without needing the support or even the notice of prominent bloggers to do so.

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Add comment March 13th, 2008 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us

The Growing Political Role of Reader Comments on Newspaper Blogs

Plenty of people have tried to start nonpartisan political discussion sites over the years, but most have dried up and blown away for reasons covered on e.politics before. But this election cycle has seen something new — now that many news organization websites have blogs that allow comments, they’re becoming a true public forum for the exchange of ideas and (often) insults.

The Ron Paul army was particularly active on The Caucus and The Trail before the wind finally went out of their sails, for instance, and these sites have also seen heated discussion among supporters and opponents of Obama, Clinton and McCain. At the Politics Online Conference last week, Patrick Hynes also mentioned some of their less positive uses, for instance as a medium for the distribution of rumors and innuendo. And, tons of folks are also taking advantage of news story discussion boards for blatant self-promotion, dropping links to their own articles into their comments. Yet another example of the internet as a disintermediator: political activists use the comments sections as a way to reach the news organizations’ readers directly, generally bypassing the editorial approval process as long as they don’t use dirty words or otherwise get rude.

– cpd

1 comment March 12th, 2008 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us

E.politics @ SXSW: The Photographs Don’t Lie

For those of you unable to attend our SXSW panel, you poor benighted souls, here are a few photos courtesy of Michael Bassik, Tanya Tarr and Josh Skidmore. For details about the discussion, see coverage by the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram and Capitol Valley. Note: despite all apparent evidence to the contrary, I do in fact own more than one shirt.

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4 comments March 12th, 2008 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us