Archive for June, 2008
In which e.politics awakens from a short summer nap.
- Update: Auto-replace as a political tool — with blowback.
- Did Google use its network of online services to silence critics of Barack Obama?
- Obama Network Organizes and Revolts Over Spying. Via Make Something Happen. C.f. When your organizers organize you and Telecom Amnesty Foes Lobby Obama Using Obama Tech.
- How Obama can lessen the intensity of the opposition.
- On the Web, Supporters of McCain Wage An Uphill Battle.
- McCain’s ‘Dr. No’ Web Video Meets With A Collective Shrug.
- Freedom’s Watch Hits Obama for Delay on MoveOn Statement.
- Canadian military defends the planet! At least someone’s learned from Tunguska.
- Scholar Looks for First Link in E-Mail Chain About Obama. Complete with an Obama E-Mail Timeline. C.f. In Flag City USA, False Obama Rumors Are Flying.
- Republicans Offer Online Lunchtime Chats To Answer Convention Questions.
- Netroots Nation Organizer Says McCain Welcome to Attend.
- Nonprofits Look for New Ways to Shape Campaign.
- Advocating for Obama on a Second Life community site. When I saw the site, there was a McCain ad on it — contextual advertising strikes again.
- In 2008 election, the Internet goes local, local, local.
- Fundraising is for the birds, let’s see some real action.
- Note this observation in a long piece on demographic changes and the political parties: “The trend generally bodes well for Democrats. Major metro areas are growing faster than the country as a whole, the party’s strength with young voters promises a lasting edge, and well-off, highly educated urban voters are valuable campaign contributors in the Internet age.”
- Army’s History of Iraq After Hussein Faults Pentagon. Released early on the website, natch.
- Looking at the Future of ‘E-Politics’. Let’s hope it involves tons of booze. But first, ePolitics: What’s happening right now?
- 10 SEO myths debunked.
- 9 widget myths debunked.
- Down to the Sea in Ships, and Then Some. You think YOU have an interesting life?
- Political Freelancers Use Web to Join the Attack. Via TechRepublican.
- Three Keys to Successful Online Campaigns.
- The Web Is Where It’s At for Youth Vote. Via PoliticsOnline.
- How to get Web 2.0 resourced at your organization.
- A look at Al-Qaeda’s Growing Online Offensive, while While Extremists in Tribal Areas Use Gory DVDs to Celebrate, and Exaggerate, Their Exploits.
- MySpace Teams With NBC To Continue Citizen Journalist Craze.
- CBS Finishes Acquisition Of CNET.
- Camping out in space. ISS crew gets a new tent and a cool soundtrack.
- Boss Hu avoids tricky questions in online chat. Via PoliticsOnline.
- ‘We don’t want to go to another friend’s funeral.’ Citizen activism — the kids get off my lawn for once, form local anti-drunk-driving Facebook Group.
- Learning from YouTube Masters. YouTube’s Steve Grove goes through online video Shao-Lin training.
- On luxury bottled water and the madness of crowds.
- Now, a REAL energy crisis: Fuel Prices Hurt Brothel Business.
– cpd
June 30th, 2008
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Below are resources for a little presention I like to call,
Cheap, Quick and (Sometimes) Dirty: Creating Integrated Online Campaigns Using Off-The-Shelf Parts
(Delivered at the DemocracyInAction Conference on June 26, 2008)
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June 26th, 2008
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Perhaps the biggest-name speaker at Personal Democracy Forum this year was to be Elizabeth Edwards, blogger and wife of former presidential candidate John Edwards. Weather intervened, however, since a storm system interrupted flights and trapped her at home in North Carolina. Enter Skype, the online voice/video phone system — Andrew Rasiej was able to interview her live and in front of a large audience, with her image projected on the main-stage screen.
It was the first time I’ve seen that at a conference, and it was remarkably effective. Her projected image was much easier to see than she actually would have been on-stage, and the back-and-forth was quite natural. Of course, it was difficult for audience members to ask Edwards questions directly, but she could hear enough for the system to work. The audio did crap out at one point, but a quick “hang-up” and a new Skype call got things moving again.
Some highlights from the talk:
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June 23rd, 2008
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A great point from Clay Shirky in the audience at PDF: if you really look at MyBarackObama, it seems like a social network but it actually contains relatively little lateral conversation. I.e., it’s portrayed as a social network, but people aren’t using it as one — it’s not as much of a person-to-person communications tool as we normally think of social networks as being. So, does that make it a top-down tool masquerading as a bottom-up tool? And if it’s not a real social network, what is it?
– cpd
June 23rd, 2008
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Quick insight from Ana Marie Cox on a media panel at Personal Democracy Forum — she brought up instant messaging as a political tool, noting that the Clinton and Obama campaigns spent a lot of time this primary season communicating with reporters (and no doubt bloggers) via IM. Endless flurries of of behind-the-scenes emails flew around this season, as campaigns frantically spun the discussion, and IM was clearly being used in the same way. Of course, since it’s behind the scenes, we can’t see it and its ultimate influence is nearly invisible. In online politics, what you can see isn’t necessarily what matters. Update: Adam Conner caught the tidbit that Howard Wolfson (Clinton) and David Axelrod (Obama) were IM’ing back and forth during the primary season. The next Carville/Matalin?
– cpd
June 23rd, 2008
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Cross-posted on techPresident
The primaries are dead; long live the primaries! Before we plunge into the inevitable frenzy of the Fall campaign season, let’s take a few minutes to draw some conclusions about the world of online politics from the candidates’ experiences in the race so far.
1. We’re in a social media world, whether you like it or not.
Before we crown Barack Obama the King of internet Politics, let’s ask him how he feels about all those Reverend Wright YouTube clips scattered at the base of his throne. Sure, the Democratic nominee-to-be benefited from the ‘net in significant and almost certainly decisive ways, but he also got kicked around plenty online. Just about every candidate suffered similarly, from the anti-Hillary “1984″ ad and the John Edwards haircut video to that great footage of Rudy Giuliani in a dress. By feeding true believers a steady diet of similar red meat, blogs and online discussion sites helped to spread these and other less-than-flattering tidbits far and wide, with the most “successful” ending up in endless rotation on cable news. Of course, for every “1984″ video, someone created a “Yes We Can” — the double-edged sword of social media.
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June 22nd, 2008
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- Obama Plans National Push on Ads and Turnout. Note particularly the use of consumer data/microtargeting with email and direct mail. C.f. Obama Campaign Dispatching Thousands
- Obama Drops Out of Public Financing; Announces By Email/YouTube. Apparently considered writing each supporter a personal note on a crisp, new $20 bill, but ran out of pens.
- Identifying and dissecting smear emails. Written by friend-of-e.politics Lori Robertson.
- McCain campaign releases facebook game: Pork Invaders.
- Horton ad maker strikes again.
- Republican Dough Raisers Resist Going Grassroots.
- Obama and His Movement: The Internal Battle Begins. The peasants are revolting!
- Obama: Master of Facebook politics. The view from New Zealand.
- Add-Ons to Online Social Profiles Expose Personal Data to Strangers. One reason you don’t see e.politics installing many Facebook Apps (the other is that most of them are annoying).
- Communicating with Congress: How the Internet Has Changed Citizen Engagement.
- How Ron Paul supporters could still make a difference.
- Thoughts on McCain’s “Spread the Word” Program.
- Online Fundraising and the Hype Cycle. Via Eric Rardin.
- Mysterious Hillary4Mccain.com Directs Voters To McCain Campaign Site.
- Advertising and social media: a match made in heaven or hell?.
- Washington Post Reviews Youth to Power. Damn kids, get off my lawn!
- Training helps bloggers hone professionalism. See also Bloggers Get Obama Accuser Hauled Off in Handcuffs.
- Digg Buries Daily Kos. Get it? Digg buries…?
- ‘I’m Voting Republican’ Is Top Of The Pops Online, while ‘Obama Girl’ Celebrates One-Year Anniversary.
- McCain staff makes a funny: “We are having trouble over here figuring out these newfangled internets. We have, however, posted a letter via Pony Express to the Obama campaign asking if they might enlist the services of Father Pfleger on our behalf to help us in setting up our webcams.”
- What’s wrong with Obama’s FightTheSmears.com.
- Web 2.0…The Machine is Us/ing Us. Via my old roommate David Newland, who needs freelance writing/film work if you’ll have him.
- Campaign 2008 And The Internet.
- Blog content takedown notices. The AP’s stupid decision to take on bloggers — you saw they got a guy busted, right?
- PDF preview from Wired’s Threat Level.
- Credit Card Firm Cut Limits After Massage Parlor Visits, Feds Allege. Moralism meets financialism: using data mining to punish consumers for certain purchases.
- McCain Salutes Russert, Obama Makes The Ask.
- How to make a post go viral in four easy steps. Todd Zeigler rides a wave of Twitter obsession. See also What it takes for an ad to go viral.
- Why a scared expression brings a survival advantage.
- Ancient roots of nerd-dom: Romans Used 20-Sided Dice Two Millennia Before D&D. Pardon me while I make a saving throw against geekiness (oops, failed).
– cpd
June 22nd, 2008
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Hi folks, e.politics is fixin’ to relocate to NYC for a couple of days, planning to hang out at the Personal Democracy Forum and check out the scene. Note the just-announced presidential Twitter debate — clever idea, and a well-timed promo hit as well. Look me up if you’re around; we’ll sniff out good party Monday night.
Thanks to everybody who helped spread the word about Online Politics 101 — in its first 48 hours on Earth, it was been downloaded more than 2000 times and had scored a good dozen blog hits and at least two stumbles (whatever those are). Good times all around; we should start a cult. I’ll be in charge of blatant, shameless self-promotion.
After PDF, it’s back to DC for the Media Future Now luncheon discussion, “Who Owns What?” — we’ll be looking at intellectual property in a digital age from a cultural and political point of view. I’m brushing up on my late-80s/early 90s hip hop beats and collaborative-culture rhymes, working toward a fully realized rip/mix/burn social media tirade of epic proportions — oh, yeah. After that, it’s the Democracy In Action conference and a presentation we’re tentatively calling “Cheap, Quick and (Sometimes) Dirty: Creating Integrated Online Campaigns Using Off-The-Shelf Parts.” Should be a hoot.
– cpd
June 21st, 2008
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Almost two years in the making, the new version of “Online Politics 101: The Tools and Tactics of Online Advocacy” is now ready for downloading! New chapters cover online political advertising, political databases, choosing the right tools, along with expanded chapters on social networking, fundraising, video, blogs and more. It’s an essential guide to doing politics on the internet, and it’s absolutely free.
– cpd
June 19th, 2008
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Updated January, 2011
Political databases generally don’t get a whole lot of attention in the press or in public, but they underlie much of the technology of modern politics. Email advocacy and fundraising systems are really just specialized examples of CRM (customer/constituent/contact management) software, while blogs and website content management systems are database-driven, as are online ad serving systems. Robocalls, phone banks and direct mail depend on databases of voter registration and consumer behavior, and database experts frequently spend large amounts of time sorting their lists and testing different messages and asks.
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June 19th, 2008
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Updated January, 2011
If I had to pick a most-neglected aspect of internet politics, it would be online advertising — until recently. In particular, electoral campaigns used to spend relatively little money advertising to web audiences, particularly compared to the huge amounts they raised online. While it’s typical for commercial marketing campaigns to spend 15% or 20% of their budgets online, for political campaigns the comparable range before 2010 would have been 3% to 5%. This seems particularly strange considering the targetability of online advertising (the ‘net naturally breaks down into demographic and interest-based niches) as well as its trackability. During the 2010 election cycle, this situation finally started to change, with campaigns turning to Google and Facebook ads in particular.
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June 19th, 2008
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Updated January, 2011
If you want to build a following online, a good strategy is to go where the people are — and in 2011, plenty of them have flocked to online social networks, particularly (in the U.S.) on Facebook. Earlier versions of this guide focused on strategies for MySpace and the plethora of other social networks, but over the past two years Facebook has come to dominate the social side of online advocacy to an unprecedented degree. Facebook (and to a lesser extent, niche social websites like Black Planet) have in some ways become the modern equivalent of town squares, places where people from all walks of life can mingle and connect in a public environment and where campaigns can fish for support in a pond both broad and deep.
Since 2008 edition of this guide, political campaigns and nonprofits have hit social networks hard, but before we dive in, let’s answer the basic question of what a social networking site IS. An online social network is a website on which people and organizations can set up profile pages with basic information about themselves and then link to other people’s pages — it’s that simple. Readers typically browse profiles by searching by keyword or name or by following links from one person to another, and they can also leave comments behind as they go.
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June 19th, 2008
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Updated January, 2011
Okay, I’m sold — let’s get started. So what ARE the essential tools of online politics, and are they the same for every campaign? I’d argue that the answer to the second question is pretty close to yes: regardless of their ultimate goals, most campaigns will end up needing three basic online components:
- A central online hub, usually a conventional website but sometimes (and particularly for citizen activists) a Facebook page, YouTube channel or blog.
- Some way to keep in touch with supporters, usually via email list but also including Facebook and other social networking websites, RSS feed, Twitter or text messaging.
- Online outreach, to connect with potential supporters and to influence the online discussion in your space, often meaning blogger relations but also including traditional media relations, social networking outreach, RSS, participation in back-channel email/IM discussions, online advertising, the production of podcasts and video pieces, etc.
(By the way, I’m indebted to Josh McConaha, formerly of the Democratic National Committee, for that division: when asked on a panel in the winter of 2007-8 to name the three essential tools for online politics, he listed a website, email and blogger relations or some other way to influence the discussion. My list just expands on his.)
The exact mix of tools you use depends on the goals you’re trying to reach and on actual means you have available to reach them. If you’re trying to organize high school and college students to speak out about human rights issues, you’re likely to use Facebook and (if it ever comes back from the grave) MySpace. If you’re a think tank or policy-heavy nonprofit, or if you’re just a good writer with something to say, a blog or family of blogs may be the right answer. If you’re raising money for a candidate for office, you’re likely to use email and a website that takes credit cards, with Google Ads helping to build the donor list over time.
The chapters that follow will look at the major tools available to political communicators as of January, 2011, along with tactics for specific applications like fundraising and influencing legislation or the media.
Next: Websites
June 19th, 2008
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Hi, y’all, just pulling it together after last night’s blow-out at the Reef — we had at least 100 folks show up to enjoy a what turned out to be a beautiful early summer evening. The crowd was heavy on the Adams Morgan/Mt. Pleasant/Col Heights neighborhood side, with a sprinkling of journalists, writers and online politicos, and conversation raged late on at least two floors of The Reef. I even saw some digits exchanged. Success! We’ll have to do that again some time.
In other news, I’m working on an updated version of Online Politics 101, trying to get it ready to launch next week, while also building out a website for a client. So, e.politics may not get updated as regularly until after the PDF and DIA conferences at the end of the month.
In the meantime, you can get your fix via a rebroadcast of today’s Digital Politics show on SignOn (Internet) Radio — the segment should be posted over the weekend. Host Karen Jagoda (she of the E-Voter Institute Survey) and I talk about the presidential campaigns, governance, citizen activism and a ton of other interesting topics through the lens of online politics. The segment runs about 25 minutes, so get a cup of coffee and settle back for a spell.
One more upcoming event: I’ve been invited to be on a June 25th panel on intellectual property and digital culture for the Media Future Now lunch series (I think I’m along for comedic relief). For details, go to the Media Future Now site, or if it (ahem) still hasn’t been updated, you can contact Andrew Mirsky directly for details.
– cpd
June 13th, 2008
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