e.politics: online advocacy tools & tactics

Quick Hits — April 24, 2008

• Espionage Against Pro-Tibet Groups, Others, Spurred Microsoft Patches.
• New Freedom, and Peril, in Online Criticism of China.
• In every measure, Obama clobbers Clinton online. Also, Barack Obama Takes Lion’s Share of Online Video Viewerships.
• Obama Uses YouTube To Lobby The Public After Losing Pennsylvania.
• Notes from the eCampaigning Forum 2008.
• Cuddle Parties: When Touchy Feely Goes Goofy.
• Why Democrats Rule the Web.
• Smug Alert in SF. Thanks, Slate
• Lost in the Smoke-Filled Room: Unexpected Talent. On the benefits of a primary process. C.f. The Primary ‘Bounce’.
• Government to Seek Terrorists in World of Warcraft: The Full Proposal.
• Welcome to the high-tech age of consumer jihadists. Suggested by Burt Edwards.
• Look Ma, I’m on CIA.gov.
• Anti-war site lets you spend $3 trillion your way.
• Obama’s GOP Shadow.
• Laughing Baby vs. the YouTube Commenters. C.f. The vile state of Internet discourse knows no borders.
• Colbert Snags Clinton, EdWORDS and Obama in One Cast.
• Fight, prefrosh, for social justice — via e-mail.
• Newspaper Ads Drive Online Research, In-Store Purchases.
• Online Advocacy — Using Petitions for List Building.
• Obama Talks About (Internet) Rumors.
• MTV News Still on the Edge of Political News. Kurt Loder rides to the rescue one last time.
• Twitter Away Your Life With Social Networking. And, Is Twittering Sustainable?
• The Twittering Class and the Primaries.
• Tips for success in a Web 2.0 world.
• Do Progressive Techies Have a Google Blind Spot?
• Drive additional web traffic with email.
• Facebook Chat — distraction or benefit?.
• Sick Profits Video Contest. User-generated content goes to the doctor.
• Despite Negative Press, Facebook Is a Powerful Agent for Social Change. But wait: 51% of Donors ‘Not At All Interested’ in Social Networks.
• The New Guards: The Players. A look at potential Republican MoveOn equivalents. C.f. MoveOn.org Asks McCain To Drop Pastor Who Blamed Victims For Katrina.
• EEN’s Avatars Campaign Brings Online Marketing to Life. Online/offline connection.
• Huckabee to follow in Robertson’s footsteps? Yet another independent audience?
• Radiohead Launches Social Network.
• Nerd alert or sublime beauty? Full Earthrise and Earthset in Hi-Def, from the Japanese Kaguya lunar orbiter. I can see my house from here! Via Space.com.

– cpd

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Campaign Internet Staffers are Expected to Know Everything — and Still Live in a Box

In her presentation this morning, Morra Aarons-Mele made an excellent observation: internet staffers for political campaigns are expected to do everything and to know everything. The same is true in the advocacy world: when I was at the former National Environmental Trust, at various times I was a graphic designer, an HTML coder, an online communications strategist, an email advocacy guy, a database manager, a blog outreacher, a site statistics analyst, a social networking pro, an online advertiser and a trainer of interns — sometimes all in the same day. About the only things I didn’t do were to blog for the organization and to raise money online, and that was only because NET didn’t do those things.

Web staffers are expected to have a broader range of skills than any other part of a campaign or organization (example: do you expect your press relations folks to be fundraising experts?), and yet they’re still often underpaid and kept out of critical communications decisions until late in the process. Bizarre. Oh, and BTW, I can’t fix your computer — it amazed me how often people confused my job with that of our actual (and excellent) IT guy.

I can only assume that this situation exists because the ‘net seems like voodoo to traditional political staff, who often seem to have little idea what actually goes into online communications. As the ‘net insinuates itself more and more into politics at all levels, a change had better come — as Zack Exley put it, you won’t hire an internet person and put him or her in a box, you’ll hire communications staff who actually understand how to use the internet.

– cpd

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Notes for Knight Digital Media Center Presentation on Congressional and Local Campaigning

Along with Dennis Johnson, Karen Jagoda and Morra Aarons-Mele, I had the pleasure of giving a presentation this morning on congressional and local online campaigns for the assembled journalists at the Knight Digital Media Center’s symposium, Election ’08: Unleashing the Cyber-watchdogs (i.e., after a week of luxuriating in the California sun, it was time to sing for my supper and justify the trip). My notes are below; if they’re too cryptic, drop me a note for details.

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