Archive for June, 2008
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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Hey kids! Two upcoming events of note:
- Personal Democracy Forum is looming up a lot more quickly than I realize — it’s less than two weeks away now. I hope they have a sizeable red carpet; lots of Big Name (in our world) speakers will be hanging out, and I hope to see you there, too. Look for e.politics to be wandering the halls at random, searching out pockets of booze and tossing the occasional conversational grenade. Dig the cool setting — is a purple loincloth required or just de rigeur?
- Also coming soon: the Democracy In Action user conference, in DC June 26-27. Registration ends June 16th, so get on it. E.politics has been coaxed into giving a presentation at this one, tentatively titled “Cheap, Quick and (Sometimes) Dirty: Creating Integrated Online Campaigns Using Off-The-Shelf Parts.” Catchy, eh? Hope you’ll make it there as well.
– cpd
June 10th, 2008
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The End of the Beginning!
- Mike Allen: “‘Thank you, Senator Clinton,’ says the home page of BarackObama.com, which harvests e-mail and text addresses with a form inviting: ‘Take a minute to thank her for her hard work and for supporting this campaign.’” (The Caucus has a screenshot). C.f. By Text, E-Mail and Blog, Obama Thanks Clinton, Primary Campaign ’08 Goes Out in a Digital Flurry, a look at Hillary’s site on The Day and her drop-out announcement email. But wait! Angry Clinton Supporters Start Rallying for McCain Online.
- Update: An Obama Delegate’s Road to Politics Began With an Online Donation.
- Update: Obama quote: “What I didn’t anticipate was how effectively we could use the Internet to harness that grassroots base, both on the financial side and the organizing side.” Via PoliticsOnline.
- Update: ACU blows it on threat of CPAC facebook group legal action.
- Update: Media Death March: The Incredible Shrinking Newspaper.
- Obama, Propelled by the Net, Wins Democratic Nomination. C.f. Mike Cornfield: No Internet, No Obama.
- McCain Googles for Veep.
- Obama and the Holocaust. Also, The Right Quarrels Over MyBarackObama.com. Alert: social media backlash. C.f. (in the second article) the section on the citizen journalist who caught Obama’s most “bitter” of campaign moments.
- The Clinton Campaign and the Media. The Times would like to know what you think about its coverage.
- Oh, the Changing Blogosphere.
- Frist Email: “Democrats win landslide victory”.
- NYTimes to open content via API.
- Will Linkbait Ruin the Internet? Note the fake story about the kid who stole his dad’s credit card so he could pay the hookers.
- Planning an Online Viral Marketing Campaign.
- Step-by-step guidelines for proper online ad buys, from the Internet Advertising Bureau.
- Building a (Fundraising) Base with Pledges.
- I’m Not a Superdelegate, But I Play One on the Internet. Suggested by my former NET colleague Henry Coppola, who’s currently playing a jobseeker.
- Interactive Billboards?
- Phoenix lander is on Twitter.
- Abstinence campaign begins with email.
- YouTube causes Obama to quit his church.
- Using Facebook to organize your protest. Your booze-fueled Tube protest, that is.
- Email Marketing for MySpace Artists.
- Up Next: The Right. The Next Right makes The Post.
- For Superdelegates, ‘Huge Relief’ at End of Primary Season. They’ve been hounded via phone, email, telegram, carrier pigeon, smoke signal, waterboarding…
- Sudden Disconnect Over Social Networking Deal. Via Hank Dearden.
- Lessons and Ideas to Replicate from Campaign ’08.
- Website Lets You Send a Post-Rapture E-Mail to Friends ‘Left Behind’.
- New Blogging Network Editor Hopes To Transform Social Networking To Social Action. Josh Levy, celebrity blogger.
- Republicans Use Democrats to Attack Obama.
- The general election map. C.f. other electoral college vote maps via PoliticalWire.
- Obama Money Machine Grows.
- Do Journalists Care About Blogs?
- The Internet Comes to Maine.
- Let’s Just Admit Slatecard is the Republican ActBlue.
- Newspapers Mull Future amid Digital Media Boom.
- ‘Greenest’ Adults Are Also Influencers, Most Tech-Savvy.
- RNC Facebook Group Membership Drive Inadvertently Propels DNC Facebook Group Membership.
- Internet, Hotlines Help Earthquake Survivors Find Relatives.
- Billionaire Entrepreneur Slipped Drugs To Tech Execs, Feds Allege. Once again, we’re going to the wrong parties.
- At the Tip of Iran’s Spear. Imagining the strategic calculations of the head of the Quds Force.
- Tupac Backs Barack! A political endorsement from beyond the grave…Biggie must be a McCain man.
- The strange allure of making your own fonts. Amateur typography: tragic obsession or something truly dangerous?
- News headlines from an alternate universe. Where do we sign up? Suggested by my old Austin buddy Eric Cifreo.
– cpd
June 9th, 2008
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Want to remember the 2008 Democratic primary process one last time before it fades into gauzy memory? Check out the video below — very nice work by Chadwick Matlin and the folks at Slate (via The Trail).
If only we could have lived it at that speed…
– cpd
June 9th, 2008
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This little vignette from Mike Allen’s Politico Playbook today (I can’t find it in the Ben Smith article he cites) — Matt Drudge attended Hillary Clinton’s Saturday campaign-closing event at the National Building Museum, “Fedora-free, no less. And a gracious guest.”
Drudge had damn well better be grateful to Hillary Clinton as well as gracious — without the Clintons, who would he be? Breaking the news about the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky affair created his website as a significant media entity, letting him ditch that convenience-store job forever, and a symbiotic relationship with Clinton-hating right-wing radio has helped sustain him since. This year, his evolving relationship with Hillary Clinton’s campaign (did she use Drudge to distribute negative stories about opponents?) has drawn notice and a certain amount of flak for both.
By now, Drudge has built a solid niche for himself, in part by acting as an online battlefield for Republican campaign operatives, and The Drudge Report no doubt will be with us for quite a while. But with the Clintons fading from the scene at least for now, how will Limbaugh and crew fill their time? Will they and their listeners be able to work up the same kind of visceral rage against Obama and a Democratic Congress that led millions of people (and the Wall Street Journal editorial board) to believe sincerely that Bill and Hillary killed Vince Foster?
Another ‘net-related nugget related to Clinton’s speech: Obama apparently watched it over the internet. Live or later? Is watching over the web somehow different from watching it on TV?
– cpd
June 8th, 2008
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According to an email that landed in the e.politics bunker moments ago, the Obama campaign is looking to hire tech geeks in a number of flavours: “programmer, database, voterfile, analytics, IT, etc.” Sounds like a great opportunity, both for progressives to Make A Difference and to learn from what appears to be a crack online political operation. If you’re interested, email me directly and I’ll put you touch with the Appropriate Authorities.
Update: Enough with the email barrage! Here’s a URL you can use instead.
– cpd
June 6th, 2008
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That was quick — the RNC has already sent out an email attempting to raise money using the specter of an Obama presidency as a hook (I bet that message has been in the can for quite a while). Some hightlights:
The liberal special interest money machine is already rallying around their presumptive nominee…Big Labor, Trial Lawyers, MoveOn.org and other radical protest groups have pledged to spend at least $750 million to defeat Republicans and elect liberal Democrat Barack Obama president. One union head has said, “Losing is not an option, so money is not an object.”
These leftist special interests expect payback in the form of passing their tax-and-spend, ultraliberal agenda if the Democrats seize complete control of the government. And since he is the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate, they know Obama will succumb to their demands.
Ah, such language — add in a couple of references to “capitalist running dogs” and you have something with all the sophistication of a 1970s Chinese communist propaganda piece, plus the originality of a low-grade sitcom. Seriously, “leftist?” Clearly Obama = Che, and a Democratic victory will end in all of us tilling the soil by hand on collective farms. Liberal this, liberal that, and special-interest trial lawyers everywhere! It’s the Michael Dukakis strategy all over again, minus Willie Horton (but just you wait, with a black man on the ticket…).
Obviously, this is a red-meat piece aimed at the party faithful, but if this kind of stale blather is all these guys have, oof. Have fun in the wilderness — and you might need to take some lessons from those “leftists” who’ve spent the post-Reagan era in political exile.
– cpd
June 4th, 2008
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That huge house on U Street may be long gone, but there’s a burnin’ in my heart that just won’t follow it into the sunset. In other words, I got the fever for a party, the kind that tears the paint off the walls and the pants off the guests. The solution? Outsource it!
Thursday, June 12th, 6 pm — Have a Beer with E.politics at The Reef
Yes, in the proud tradition of searching high and low for a tax write-off, I’m throwing a party on the main floor of the The Reef in Adams Morgan after work on Thursday, June 12th.
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June 3rd, 2008
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A conversation with the multimedia editor for a Hong Kong-based broadcast entity sparked an interesting chain of thought today — one way for traditional media people to think about the media convergence and the internet is this: stop thinking of things in terms of delivery channel and start thinking of them in terms of media type.
In the offline world, massive gulfs yawn between the worlds of radio, print and television. Not only has each evolved its own approaches, tools and methods, but they’re tribes as well, since relatively few people appear in more than one medium. (For instance, how many actual TV reporters, as opposed to pundits, started in print? Not nearly as many as started in broadcast, I suspect.) In the online world, by contrast, drawing distinctions among channels is meaningless, since audio, video and text are delivered the same way: they’re just slightly different flavors of digital content.
(more…)
June 3rd, 2008
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Well, e.politics may have been on break for the past couple of weeks, but the wider world of electronic politics has kept on keeping on in the meantime. As an example, check out the find-your-polling-place ads that Barack Obama is running in advance of tomorrow’s South Dakota primary, including a slick video ad. The click-through page (screenshot below) has a voting place look-up form and basic instructions on the kind of identification voters will need, etc. Straightforward, targeted and useful — typical of the performance we’ve seen from Obama’s online team this year.
– cpd
June 2nd, 2008
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