Topics | Spring 2007 Roundtable
1. Personal experiences in graduate school
2. Origins of studying interests
3. Influential people for graduate work
4. Most memorable conference experience(s)
5. Biggest challenges and rewards in graduate school
6. Teaching elementary and high school students about the Web
7. Politicians doing smart things on the Web
8. Brainstorming a "web use" seminar for politicians
9. The future for studying the social dynamics of technology
THREAD #7
Paul DiPerna:
We're going to move onto the intersection of politics and public policy with the Web...
What politician, or political organization, has impressed you the most with his or her "web campaigning"? Why? Feel free to suggest more than one if you like..
Fred Stutzman:
Can I say no one?
And I say that as nicely as possibly, because there's no doubt that candidates have done great things with the web.
Ultimately, though, what is the character of the relationship between politicians and the web?
For most of them, the web is just a more-efficient fundraising vehicle. This is evidenced in the fact that mailing lists are still the preferred norm for raising funds - candidates are simply using their web properties to funnel supporters into their fundraising systems.
All of the lip service that gets paid to social media and social networks? In the end, people really aren't going to spend much time "hanging out" with candidates online. However, if the candidates can find a way to get people's email addresses from their Facebook profiles, well, social networks will be a huge success.
I think the problem here is that social systems operate best in an organic, bottom-up fashion. All of the incidences of activism on social media sites have been bottom-up. And unfortunately, political candidates really don't lean toward the bottom-up mentality. To that extent, I believe theres a tremendous opportunity for peer-to-peer mobilization, but when the mobilizing actor is a single, central feature in the network, I think there's significantly less viability there.
Miia Akkinen:
Finland's prime minister Mr. Matti Vanhanen, who has been dating on the Internet. Any publicity is better than no publicity, or how do you say it in English...
From a recent article in the Inquirer:
"The tabloids of Helsinki are all a flutter over the Finnish Prime Minister's high tech relationship which started and ended using technology. According to Reuters, Matti Vanhanen met Susan Kuronen on the Internet and recently dumped her in an SMS message. Now Kuronen has rushed to the tabloids and gossip magazines in a technology kiss and tell. She told Me Naiset (Us Women) that 'Matti' dumped her in an SMS message where he just said, 'that's it'. We assume he was using a Nokia. Until it ended, the romance fuelled much tabloid excitement earlier this year and prompted French President Jacques Chirac to declare that Vanhanen was Finland's sexiest man."
Paul Lawton:
I think that, with the potential that the web has for politics, it is still being held at arms length by the big politicians. I think this is a mistake. There are really no politicians (save for Howard Dean) that I can think of off the top of my head that have effectively leveraged online campaigning.
Sure, many candidates have "blogs" - but many miss the point of blogging all together - with infrequent, impersonal posts that are little more than "copy/paste" from their campaign materials.
Why aren't they on Facebook? Where is the Myspace pages? Where is the open commenting? When I think about this, It makes me shake my head a little.
Sarita Yardi:
I haven't been impressed by any political campaigns. Politicians have created a web presence wherever people are at the time, but I haven't seen them do it any innovative way that distinguishes them from the way that marketers and advertisers also leverage the easy access to a critical mass of people. Not that both groups don't do that well, and effectively, but I'm still waiting for the merging of an innovative use of the Internet with a particular political message. I think it will happen sooner or later!
By the way, Paul, the politicians and political campaigns are on MySpace and Facebook. As of April, Barack Obama has over 65,000 supports on Facebook. But, if your point was that they are not doing anything particularly exciting to leverage those 65,000 supporters, then yes, I would agree. :)
[later follow-up...]
Paul Lawton:
Just thought I would throw this out, as the Obama thing was something I possibly should have looked into before making the claim that no politicians are doing social networking.
Then I read this today on Slashdot:
fistfullast33l writes:
"TechPresident, which is covering the use of technology by Presidential Campaigns for 2008, has a very interesting article on how Obama's MySpace page is currently the subject of an underground battle for control by the campaign itself and the volunteer who created it in 2004. Joseph Anthony worked with the campaign initially and grew the site to include over 160,000 unsolicited friends that the campaign could use to reach out to. It currently is the main Obama page in the Impact Channel on MySpace. However, as Obama's campaign became more centralized and formal, the decision was made to attempt to acquire control of the site from Anthony. They asked him for a price, which he offered up as $49,000 plus part of the $10,000 fee paid to MySpace for the Impact Channel. Obama balked at the price, and decided to start afresh rather than pay the money. The fight broke out into the open when Anthony posted a response on his blog to rumors that the campaign was spreading regarding him wanting to cash out. MyDD has more."
Read more of this story on Slashdot.
I wonder what other campaigns are going to learn from this "mistake."
Paul DiPerna:
This has been a pretty fascinating development. In a follow-up to his original post, Micah Sifry offered a nice recap and analysis on TechPresident, and I agree with his assessment.
Barack Obama's internet team botched this situation...
To put this in an offline perspective -- I can't imagine a presidential campaign organization taking over a closely aligned volunteer organization's physical space and equipment in this manner.. say, at the state level... and not offering any kind of compensation. Somewhat different because we're talking the web, but the inherent value should be comparable. Is there a legal infraction by Obama? Probably not. Should there be a responsibility of goodwill towards a volunteer leader and innovator? I think so. I'm thinking about this like a matter of "property rights", but in the fuzzy cyberpsace context it's hard to say how this should have been resolved.
To me, it just hits that yuck threshold..
Like others have said in blogs, probably anyone with future big time political aspirations are now making sure they have registered profiles on the major social networks sites (and domain registries), if only to avoid this kind of public conflict.
Sarita Yardi:
Another reference (just posted to the AoIR list) which looks to be a pretty expert panel for this subject.
The book looks like an interesting read!
Internet and National Elections: A Comparative Study of Web Campaigning
Quote: "Drawing upon a common conceptual framework, the book examines how the Internet is employed by a variety of political actors. At the conclusion of the discussion a reception will be held celebrating publication of The Internet and National Elections."
Fred Stutzman:
Thanks for sharing Sarita, this looks interesting.
Also potentially of note is a study I recently came across, examining the effects of various technologies on political participation.
I think the factor analysis is interesting.... to see significant effects for active participation via social networking is a little bit of knowledge to store in the back pocket.
Sarita Yardi:
Interesting!
Do you think, along the lines of the excerpt I pasted below, that youth political activism on the web (and the inevitable producer/consumer discussion that comes with it) can be paralleled to the more general active/passive discussion that has been in popular press recently? It essentially used bunk (in my opinion) arguments to suggest that most people on Wikipedia and other major sites are just consuming and not actually participating. I think their methods were flawed and especially the way they presented the numbers to make this claim, but maybe I am biased towards the argument I want to believe. :)
[Some relevant online sources about this...]
"Who's Really Participating in Web 2.0" by Bill Tancer, TIME
"Participation on Web 2.0 sites remains weak" by Eric Auchard, Reuters
"Digital Renaissance: Young Consumer and Citizen?" (pdf) by Claes H. de Vreese, AAPSS, 611, May 2007
Quote from de Vreese 2007: "In essence, it suggests that among young people, communicating online and making use of online services correlate strongly, significantly, and robustly with online political participation (such as, for example, taking part in online polls, online petitions, e-mail letters to the editor, etc). This suggests that a specific kind of "digital citizenship" is observable. These findings run somewhat counter to the typology suggested by Livingstone, Bober, and Helsper (2005), who found that civic-minded young persons was a distinct category, while our findings show that civic-mindedness, digital political participation, consumption, and online social networking can go hand in hand."
Fred Stutzman:
I'm not sure what you are describing as bunk - if you're describing TIME's numbers, I agree. Those are completely, utterly bunk. Seeing that piece in Time really lowered my opinion of that magazine (if that is possible).
[see Fred's post about this on his blog]
Sarita Yardi:
Sorry, yes, TIME's article and the people who were responsible for it was what I was referring to as seeming utterly invalid!
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