The MySpace Mess

Wow.  I went onto MySpace for the first time today and was greeted by a huge, unappetizing Wendy’s hamburger.  The whole thing was a gaggle of banner ads and consumer-driven navigation.

As a three-year facebooker, this was an odd experience.

I plugged in a search term and found four thick rows of sponsored links before I got any search results.

The whole thing was kind of like a nightmare—pictures of minor celebrities doing strange things, banner ads with seductively creepy women, and a wireframe architecture that was a cluttered, headache-inducing wreck.  

To Be Anonymous or To Not Be Anonymous

Dan Gilmore’s book We the Media focuses much attention on privacy and anonymity.  That’s what I want to look at today, because it has significant implications in the age of social computing.

As Gilmore points out, “Technology has given us a world in which almost anyone can publish a credible-looking webpage” (174).  I might extend this sentiment by proposing that technology increasingly allows us to have a credible-looking existence.  By that, I mean that social computing has taken individual branding to a new level.  Online tools are readily available to help create entire personas.   

And people, many people, have done just that.    

There are countless examples of folks who have made their voice known online and attracted hundreds, if not thousands of “followers.”   It’s amazing how this has empowered so many who previously had no outlet.   This has been both a good and a bad thing, although I think the general trend is toward the good.

As more and more people make their voice known, credibility becomes increasingly important, and as Gilmore suggests, credibility and anonymity are closely connected: “Credibility…comes from a willingness to stand behind [your] arguments when a compelling reason to stay anonymous is absent” (181).

Media discussion boards are good examples of online credibility.  Take a peek at a Washington Post comment section after an article.  You will see hundreds of angry, thoughtless diatribes about everything related or not related to the article.  Of course mixed in, you’ll find thoughtful and serious posts; but these get crowded out under the din of the obnoxious, intentionally disruptive, anonymous poster—or the “troll”.  I’d suggest that this is largely a function of the fact that the Post allows anyone to comment and comment anonymously. 

On the other hand, the Wall Street Journal requires you to provide your real name and email address.  To comment you must be a paying subscriber.  The quality of these posts is generally more thoughtful, with the angry diatribe posts, few and far between.  It seems that when people are forced to identify themselves in some way, the trollness subsides.  Trollism is of the same family as mob behavior. 

I’m not trying to suggest that we eliminate anonymity on the web anymore than we would in the real world.  But that’s just the thing.  If you had an entire conversation with someone and then learned that he had simply been playing an obnoxious devil’s advocate the whole time, it would be odd and uncomfortable.  At the same time, most people don’t want to announce to world who they are when they’re at the grocery store.

Gilmore basically is basically suggesting that like everything else that’s new, the norms are now being established.  As those norms solidify, one’s ability to be anonymous should be preserved, unless that person wants to “go public.”  At the same time, if you really want to establish credibility, you need to lift the anonymous veil sooner rather than later.

Too Much Tweeting?

I’ve noticed on my Twitter feed that certain folks/organizations tweet all the time—five, six, ten times a day.  They tweet so much that I begin to gloss over their tweets and look for those that don’t tweet so much.  Maybe it’s just me.

At the same time, if an organization tweeted one awesome tweet a day wouldn’t that be more effective?  Maybe…maybe not.  I’m just not sure yet.  One tweet a day means that you might miss it, but with so many tweets you might miss the important one anyway.

Maybe Twitter needs some method to weed out the less important tweets?  Does that already exist?

Mobile Technology as Campaign Tool—part 2

Interestingly, In Tracking Your Supporters: Events and Location-Based Services Jim Udall discussed the potential of using your mobile device as a locator.  There seems to be promise in this as groups will be able to come together with ease.  It does beg the question, however, when would I really need to use this?   Still, it’s cool/scary (depending on your perspective) that technology like this is readily available to anyone.

Mobile Technology as Campaign Tool

Mobile technology as an essential political tool is now a given.  The Politics-to-Go Handbook identified this as early as 2005—as groups we already using SMS text messaging to help them achieve some pretty remarkable things (see Orange Revolution or Howard Dean circa 2004).

With that said, I’ve noticed a trend with devotees of online/mobile communication tools.  Namely, the tools themselves are seen as the primary means to achieve an end.  An example of this is Howard Rheingold’s claim in The Missing Link: How Mobile Technology Connects Internet Activism with the World that Kerry lost the 2004 election in large part because his mobile campaign was not as effective as Bush’s.  See, now, I’m just not that sure about that.  I’d say that Kerry lost the election because people thought Bush would make a better president.  The fact that Bush was better at mobilizing voters is simply a function of the will of those voters to vote.  We saw a similar thing in 2008.  The will of the people to vote for Obama was enormous. He did not win the election because his mobile team were all-stars.

With that said, mobile communications are huge—no denying that.  But we need to remember that they are only as powerful as the candidate or cause.  Hark back to Nazi occupied France.  Somehow the resistance was able to communicate.  (see Inglourious Basterds :).  I mention that only to suggest that if the motivations are there, people will find ways to communicate.  Different tools will simply help them do it in different ways.

When I think of the future of mobile technologies for political communications, I see the Internet playing the biggest part.  SMS will fade away as text messaging becomes more akin to online chatting—most mobiles phones already have this capability.  As change unfolds, I’m not sure how campaigns will effectively use the mobile device—as chatting is deliberate and requires agency by the chatter and is usually done by people who know each other. 

As the internet will increasingly be on a phone, mobile campaigns will need to adjust.  Strategies useful in the last election will be less so in the next one.  The whole process of texting will soon be like the fax machine; namely, it has some use, but not a lot.

I know that this has become somewhat of a theme on my posts, but as a majority of the population adopts these new technologies, it will become harder and harder to reach people with the ease that campaigns can reach the early adopters today.  Take, for example, telemarketers/automated campaign calls—no one likes them.  Still, there was a time in the not so distant past when those types of strategies were effective.  People only have so much time for causes and campaigns not directly related to what they are doing--if your organization is lucky to slip in with someone, that's good.  But expectations should not be based on the success of the 2008 historic presidential election.

 

The Argument--enter the new Washington insiders

“No matter who was right, though, the whole debate was premised on a fundamental assumption about politics that no one on either side seemed to question—that money and tactics alone could revive the party” (Bai, 174).

Matt Bai’s compelling read, The Argument, provides a look at the anatomy of Democratic party politics between 2004-2007.  The book is about the fight for the “soul” of the party and offers arresting views of the inner workings of party politics.  Most importantly, the book reveals that no amount of radicalized communications will lead to a cogent "argument" that unifies the party.  What is needed is not new strategies, but new ideas. 

Bai is an excellent writer, and his book reads like an expert treatment for a movie script—I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s been optioned.  He details each character in the drama from his personal experience of them, and then sets them up for fantastic conflict.  One particularly striking conflict was that between Rob Stein and Erica Payne, two key players in the seedling days of The Democracy Alliance, the progressive response to the withering Democratic party after the dismal 2004 election returns.

With a slide show, Stein and Payne had energized a sea of big money Democratic donors disillusioned with the establishment.  Stein illuminated how Republicans had so effectively won elections over the years.  Payne fundraised some of the biggest donors in New York and California.  Their implicit proposal was to replicate what the GOP has done and take back the electorate. 

Once they had amassed millions for this project, Payne and Stein saw very different visions of how to best use the money.  This came to a head during the election for the first chairmanship of the young organization.  Using backchannels, Payne out-foxed Stein and convinced a majority of the donors to elect a complete political outsider from SOHO to the chairmanship.

These type of mini-dramas abound throughout Bai’s book and provide key insights into a shifting tide in the Democratic Party—from big-money maneuvering to mass-interest influence--but still bereft of broad galvanizing ideas.  The new chairman, Steven Gluckstern was “a guy almost no one in Washington power circles could remember meeting [and] a sense of severe anxiety began to set in among the party elite” (107). 

Bai uses these type of shifts to highlight how the party was moving away from its past into a new unknown.  Who knew what would happen if you empowered millions over the Internet.

Well, we have an idea now that Obama has been elected.  However, it’s interesting to note that the old and the new blended together in the end.  The new internet political movement certainly helped thrust Obama into the White House, but once he got there, he promptly set up a team of old school democratic operatives, including Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff.  And remarkably, as Bai suggested, even now, there remains few ideas that democrats can really stand behind.

In the end, Bai’s book is an excellent history of a specific moment in time documenting the inevitable adoption of digital political strategies to win elections.  However, I think it’s yet to be seen how powerful the internet will be to shape policy.  Bai does give some interesting examples of this, such as when MoveOn pressured Sen. Salazar (D-Col.) to vote the right way on the Supreme Court compromise.  But this example is much like a presidential election—they’re highly charged and everyone seems to care.  Washington insiders, on the other hand, have always made their keep by mastering the unsexy side of politics, and then welding that mastery to fit whatever they are advocating.

I don’t see these insiders going anywhere.  Particularly since any powerful Washington insider knows that as long as you don’t get bogged down in abortion, guns, or God, you have a pretty good run of the place—internet or no internet.

More importantly, the democrats might have the House and the Senate thanks to slick new strategies, but they still lack a clear argument.  And the GOP will be at their heals in no time.

Twitter chat

Learned in class last week about Twitter chat.  Interesting.  This seems like an amazing use of Twitter.

Why?  Well…let’s see…

First, let me define what I mean when I say Twitter Chat, because I’m sure there are a host of different definitions.   Based on what Alan Rosenblatt of the Center for American Progress and William Buetler and Leslie Bradshaw of New Media Strategies said, the Twitter chat has these simple elements:

1. A common topic

2. A unique hash tag

3. A common time

4. A core group of people wanting to discuss

If you come equipped with those four things, you are ready to go.  Basically, you get the word out that you will have a conversation about the topic at a certain time, and everyone gets on and discusses.  Simple.

So what?

Well, having worked in online Communities of Practice for years, I know a lot about the challenges of getting people online together at the same time—and getting them to contribute.  Typically, you have lots of lurkers and few posters…and those that might post are a bit intimidated by those that do.  So you end up with two or three people in a chat—and unless they are super interesting, that can get old quickly for everyone.

The Twitter chat seems different for several reasons.

-The Twitter format encourages quick posts, which mimics the way people talk.  I say something, you respond.  Although the posts might not be as thoughtful, it more resembles an actual dialogue.  For more substantial conversations, an asynchronous discussion board is more appropriate.

-A Twitter chat can satisfy the urgency of the moment.  Right after an election or a Redskins loss, people have a lot to say.  Twitter chat it perfect for that.  And everyone knows where to go.

-It super easy.  All you need to do is search for the hash tag, and you can read and post.  There’s just something a bit much about a discussion board.  This is a amazing alternative.

 

Context is King

Although Person-to-Person-to-Person was completed in 2006, many of the digital political strategies are the same today as they were then.  The main things that are changing are the tools—email, social networking, meta networking, microblogging.  Although each of these tools requires different skills, the strategies seem to be similar to what they were before all these tools were available.

The one key item that these articles don’t really seem to focus on is the item that seems to be the most important: have a cause and a context that people care about.

Eric Alterman’s essay provides the most useful takeaway from the readings when considering digital political strategy over the longer term.  Namely, context is king. 

As people’s tolerance wanes for campaign after campaign asking them to “share” or “sign up” or “join the conversation” the context of the campaign/message will be the driving force for success.  For example, I might love badminton but not be willing to join a campaign by the badminton society to get more high schools to offer badminton as an official sport.   However, if the context were right, my motivations could change.  The campaign could be connected to the Olympics or to a HHS drive to improve the health of kids. 

Take the Obama campaign.  This is widely sited as a primo example of successful online organizing and activism.  Indeed, it was, but that success was in direct proportion to the peoples’ desire for change and the context to channel that desire.  The campaign’s great accomplishment was that it made easy giving money, staying connected, and organizing.  But the fuel was an implicit energy and motivation not only to join the Obama movement, but also to change the status quo.

Things get difficult when you try to gain traction around a campaign that less exciting than Obama.  The methods described by these essays deliver the desired results only if three key prerequisites have been met: 

1. You know how to use the tools

2. People already care about the topic

3. The context is right

This might seems somewhat obvious, but the second and third prerequisites cannot be stressed enough.  My experience has shown, for example, that the association community has not been able to effectively use social media.  What’s odd about that is the association community is a natural pre-formed group who care about specific topics.  Certainly, this could change as society acclimates to these new tools. 

On the other hand, as people grow more accustomed to social media, social networking, etc. they will prove much harder to reach—as they will be more discerning about who they open themselves up to online.  In fact, I would propose that in time it will be as challenging to reach people online as it has been offline.

I’m not even sure if “thinking like a rock band” will suffice.  The fact is that people have a very limited amount of time, and few campaigns will be as interesting as Obama’s.

At the end of the day, context drives the campaign.  In the Obama campaign the context was clear: the chance to be part of something historic—and to catapult the old out and bring the new, the very new.

These tools and strategies can be very, very powerful indeed.  But if the context is not right, it’s like sending out a mailer to a purchased list—not a lot of return.