Political Video Tu- Thursday?: The Race So Far

I couldn't help but post this, since it basically recaps everything I've done on this blog for the past nine months. Thanks, Slate!

Book Review: Interface

Whenever it comes to mixing technology, message crafting, and the presidency, people tend to get a little... hyperbolic. From The Manchurian Candidate to The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror, it seems that the entertainment industry is particularly keen on telling stories about how our leaders are probably out to kill us. However, when treated with a deft hand, this kind of storytelling can offer revealing look into the ways in which electoral politics can both free and enslave, depending on perspective.

Neal Stephenson and George Jewesbury's Interface presents a world in which mass media conglomerates plan to seize full control of the United States through a chip-augmented Illinois governor blessed with the power to perceive and adapt to any and all changes in public opinion. For political consultants, this sort of prediction would probably be met with either snorts of derision or shrugs of it-could-happen. With some of the sci-fi gee-whiz peeled away, Interface becomes an interesting examination of the reliance on a fetishization of political statistical analysis.

Interface highlights the worst habits of political strategists and marketers, like the temptation to view the public at-large as little more than poll numbers and demographics. It also serves as an reminder about the power and importance of grassroots involvement in politics. By breaking out of the typical, passive roles that they are often assigned, voters have the opportunity to affect real political change on their terms instead of being lead by the nose by powerful outside forces.

MAINTENANCE!

With the end of the semester fast approaching, I've taken down quite a few entries for tune-up purposes. I know leaving them up would make more sense, but it's easier to keep track of which ones I've gone over if I send them all back to drafts. So, eager fans, bear with me for the next week. After that, everything should be back to normal.

Political Video Tuesday - There are cameras in Florida, you know.

We all know of famous cases of Internet-fueled flaps that brought down both candidates and Congressmen alike. There was Trent Lott's race-tinged speech at Strom Thurmond's birthday party, or George Allen's unfortunate "Macaca moment" during the leadup to the 2006 midterms. During this primary cycle, videos of Obama pastor Jeremiah Wright stirred up a controversy that resulted in what some call the most important speech on race in America in over half a century.

Now, we may have another smoking gun clip on our hands. This time, the issue at hand is the seating of Florida's delegates at the Democratic National Convention. Supporters of plans to rescind threats to not seat the state's delegation claim that, among other things, the Florida Democrats were essential bystanders, wringing their hands on the sidelines as their Republican counterparts hatched a dastardly scheme to push up the primary (comment 219 on the New York Times link sums up their case pretty well).

Then, this happened:



DailyKos has all the discussion you need, but I gotta ask: where's the anger towards the state party (the rightful target, if there is such a thing), and how long before this gets picked up outside the blogosphere?

Obama's blue plate special.

Guess who’s coming to dinner? If you said Barack Obama, you’d be on to something.

When the money’s tight and every race counts, campaigns need to pull out all of the fundraising stops in order to insure that interest remains high and money remains forthcoming. With his latest online initiative freshly in my mailbox, Barack Obama is once again taking this advice to heart. Between now and March 31st, donors to Obama’s campaign will be entered into a pool of potential dinner guests who get to share a meal with the candidate himself.

There are multiple reasons to like this approach. For one, it seems to adhere to the idea that the most effective use of the internet as a political tool revolves around digitally organizing people for real-world events. The whole appeal of this fundraising push centers on the fact that donors can share dinner with the candidate and fellow supporters. If the campaign had touted this as a virtual dinner, staged remotely with more winners, the buzz wouldn’t be nearly the same.

Second, the campaign’s tactics reaffirm the idea that people will always be up for a game. Like the office workers who enter March Madness pools despite not following college basketball, potential donors this week will likely be spurred on by the promise of a potential “win”. Though the odds may be long for the donors, the results are the same for the campaign: increased cash flow at a time when opportunities for positive campaign news are at a premium.

Finally, this homespun approach to campaigning reflects the fact that the Obama campaign understands of the power of grassroots and netroots organizing, and provides another opportunity for Obama to appear “of the people, by the people”. In the campaign email that I received was quick to point out Obama’s populist appeal:


While Senator Clinton and Senator McCain have accepted millions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs, this campaign has relied on more than a million individual donors giving only what they can afford. Just last month, more than 90% of the donations to Obama for America were for $100 or less.

Whether or not this gimmick translates into increased fundraising (something that Obama’s campaign has had little trouble with, anyway) remains to be seen. However, as a fan of both political strategy and Barack Obama, I support the fact that the campaign is countering the kitchen sink with the kitchen table.

And yes, I donated today. Fingers crossed!

BOOK REVIEW: Poli-fluentials: The New Political Kingmakers

You know, all good streaks have to end sometime. Over the past few weeks, I've had the opportunity to read some of the reports from George Washington University's Institute for Politics, Democracy, and the Internet, and I've been more impressed by each successive document. That is, until this week. This week, I found that IPDI can completely whiff once in a while. But, hey. 75%'s not bad, right?

It's not that this report doesn't contain interesting material and draw compelling conclusions. It does. The problems that I had with the document stem from two different oversights: a) though it claims to approach its classification process scientifically, the approach researchers use is flawed, and b) it's not telling our class anything that we didn't know thanks to Malcolm Gladwell.

The classification system that the report uses to categorize individuals as "poli-fluentials" is hampered by its limited criteria and small sample size. Setting aside the structural flaws, the report also does a fairly shoddy job of explaining exactly how to take advantage of such individuals, or even how to identify them in the first place. It's like they had a really interesting idea for a report, but then simply lost steam when it came time to flesh it out.

Problematic for our class is also the fact that this report is redundant. Much of the territory covered in this report was covered more engagingly by Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point. Slapping some specious political statistics on Gladwell basic ideas doesn't make for an enlightening reading experience. Rather, it leaves me scratching my head, wondering what all the fuss is about.

Political Video Tuesday - Raining McCain

Um... what?

I... um... what?

This seems like a mistake. And yet. This might be the most endearing thing to come out of McCain's campaign. If this is actually legit, then kudos. If it's a fake... well, that might be even more impressive.

Easter Break

It's Easter, so no updates for a few days. Also, this.

Cool Sites - Ringtones08

In keeping with the spirit of this week's book review, I thought I'd turn your attention to a site that's pretty much keyed in on the whole mobile politics kerfuffle.

The good folks over at Ringtone08 feel that your phone's ring might as well reflect your politics, catchy Fergie tones be damned. To this end, they've created a site where users can not only find and download ringtones of their favorite candidate free of charge, but create and market their own free ringtones.

While most of the content so far has dealt with the presidential election and recent Eliot Spitzer scandal, I'd be interested to see if any intrepid state or local candidates harness this sort of mobile strategy for use by their supporters. It seems like a concentrated group of people, living in a relatively compact area, could really use something like this effectively as a means of candidate branding. Of course, that also assumes that the ringtone is catchy (an unfortunate prerequisite, perhaps, but present nonetheless).

Oh, if you're curious, I'm now sporting the "Yes, We Can" Obama tone. I'm not only a Ringtones08 advocate - I'm also a user!

BOOK REVIEW: The Politics-to-Go Handbook: A Guide to Using Mobile Technology in Politics

As far as politics and technology goes, the one medium that I had little exposure to before coming to Georgetown was the world of mobile politics. While the combination of widely available mobile technology and political action seems like a natural fit, it wasn't something that I'd had any kind of personal relationship with. That all changed upon reading yet another of IPDI's fantastically effective handbooks. Like most of IPDI's work, this handbook is designed for practical application, and is generally free from both the Utopian technological determinism and over-skeptical Luddite warnings that poison many works on political technology. The authors of this book realize that, like everything else in the world of political action, mobile technology represents one possible approach to political media. While not a magic bullet by itself, mobile technology can be used effectively in tandem with other technologies, and is particularly well-suited to organizing specific actions and alerting supporters of opportunities for independent activism.

While much of the book deals with ways in which campaigns themeselves can use mobile technology as part of their digital strategy, time is also devoted to examining the effects of mobile proliferation on things like citizen journalism. In a world where everyone has a camera/recording device in their pocket, the opportunities for event-related spin are reduced. One only needs to look as far as George Allen and the infamous Macaca moment, or even to the "Don't tase me, bro!" debacle at the University of Florida, to realize the potential that unfiltered transmission grants to the world of news coverage.

Time is also spent examining the United States' relative lack of mobile penetration, an interesting read for anyone interested in the quagmire that is the American telecom industry. With our current tangle of service providers, it's no wonder that the potential for mobile activism in the US is nowhere near that of other, more effectively linked countries like Korea. However, that is a diatribe for another day.

For anyone who doesn't have time to read the entire handbook (hint: make time.), here's a handy executive summary that hits the highlights. Pay special attention to numbers one, three, five, and eight. Just sayin'.

Political Video Tuesday - The Living Room Candidate

If you're a complete political advertising junkie like me, you're probably in heaven these days. With the emergence of cheap broadband and a new commitment by campaigns to capture the internet market, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting some well-done, persuasive videos. Some are amazingly aware of their audience (Mike Huckabee's fabulous Chuck Norris ad), while others sort of... miss the mark (basically any Hillary Clinton video targeting the youth vote). However, for some, this glut of new content isn't enough.

To all of the true geeks out there who want some honest-to-God historical context for today's ads: your time has come. Thanks to The Living Room Candidate, a feature that's part of the compelling Museum of the Moving Image, American Presidential election fans can get their fill of campaign advertising from Eisenhower forward. Each race is treated to a general overview, and ads from both candidates are presented for comparison.

Cooler still, the site allows users to use preset categories to view similar ads from different races, making categorization and trend-spotting even easier. Plus, full transcripts of each ad are available, which came in handy once I got the following song stuck in my head:



Sadly, the site's one drawback is its lack of embedding options. Head on over anyway, though, and get ready to lose a couple of hours.

A belated valentine to Ron Paul

I know this is a bit late, but here goes.



Ron Paul, you're a crazy person. A crazy person with ideas, but a crazy person all the same. I'm sorry that my roommate accosted you about Facebook. He's quite a handful. I wish you weren't a mad scientist, but alas.

Happy belated Valentine's Day,
Tyler

BOOK REVIEW: Person-to-Person-to-Person: Harnessing the Political Power of Online Social Networks and User Generated Content

We're up to another one of those fantastic IPDI reports on today's book review, a treat for you and I alike. Today's covers topics that I have become intimately familiar with over the course of the past academic year: social networks and user-generated content. While there's no question that these areas are having a definite impact on the world of political campaigns, this report examines exactly how campaign managers can replicate and profit from an essentially organic political process.

The report is amazingly comprehensive, running the gamut from digital effects on traditional media forms (Chuck DeFeo's chapter on talk radio's transition into the blogging community) to encouraging offline contacts and action once online communities are established (Brad Fey's chapter on the shifting nature of word-of-mouth advertising). All of these chapters are presented in plain-speaking, easy-to-implement forms, which seems to fit IPDI's commitment to producing applicable handbooks rather than starry-eyed book of theory.

Personally, my favorite chapter covered the use of video games as a persuasive political tool. The chapter mainly focuses on the concept of adver-gaming, or the use of video games as a medium for message presentation and reinforcement. This approach mirrors game studies specialist Ian Bogost's concept of procedural rhetoric, a topic that I'm keen to explore as part of my thesis research next year. Bogost's argument that games persuade by "running processes and executing rule-based symbolic manipulation" lends itself well to the inclusion of nuanced, persuasive content within the video game system. The fact that the political half of the industry is picking up on the concept is heartening, and suggests that further exploration is necessary.

Political Video Tuesday - 23/6

I'm not sure how many other internet humor fans are reading my blog out there (though, judging by my general friend base, I can sort of assume that there are a few of you), but today's site should appeal to pretty much everyone I know. It's called 23/6, it's run by the Huffington Post and former Daily Show staffers, and it specializes in, among other things, some of the most amazing spoof political advertisements that I've ever seen.

You might be familiar with the group's most famous cast of characters: the Swift Kids. Playing off of everyone's favorite irascibly outraged veterans' group, the Swift Kids ask the tough questions. Witness!



Aside from the Swift Kids, 23/6 has much more to offer. Witness x2!





Aww, who am I kidding? It's all about the kids, man.

Social Network Update VII - For A Good Cause

I thought I'd take some time to plug a social network cause that's actually having a big impact on my out-of-class life at the moment. As many of you may know, we here at CCT are in a potentially drawn-out fight to get another full-time media and politics professor hired for next fall. Without going into too many details, things aren't looking exactly rosy. Thus, in the spirit of online activism, we decided to go to the internet as a means of organizing the masses.

When we decided to go online, however, we were faced with a dilemma: exactly how would we structure our movement, and what tools would we use to get our message out and action taken?

Since our campaign was going to be fairly local and specialized, we decided that a combination of private communications and information offers and public action opportunities would be the best way to alert our peers to our problem and give them a chance to help us out. To this end, we decided to use two tool that have become quite familiar to readers of this blog: Facebook and Care2.

Since our outreach was going to be targeted at members of our specific peer group, the four of us behind the campaign began by sending out Facebook messages to all of our contacts at Georgetown and other Consortium universities. Facebook allowed us to reach people who we were already connected to and to inform them of where the situation stood regarding our need for a professor.

However, Facebook alone was not sufficient. Since it is not designed with activism in mind, it lacks easily adaptable features for action-related activity. We could've had people join a group or an event (which we did create to serve as an advertisement), but that wouldn't have the same impact as something more intuitively designed. It would've also restricted activity to out peers who were already signed up to use Facebook - not exactly the best strategy in this case. Thus, we turned to another website to give our supporters an easy way to help us: Care2's Petition Site.

We created this petition, copying the appeals that we'd used in the Facebook message and event portions of the campaign, and set a deadline for signatures. Once people began to respond, we sent out blast messages to everyone who had yet to sign the petition, and continued to advertise it in away messages and status updates on AIM, Facebook, and GChat. In the end, after circulating the petition around our limited target group for two weeks, we ended up collecting 80 signatures. We've submitted the petition to the head of our program, and are now waiting to hear back.

UPDATE (4/2): Well, a response came down. From unnamed sources come reports of an emergency staff meeting in which the most vocal member of our little group was been labeled "a troublemaker", our petition as "crummy", and our definition of media and politics as grossly lacking.

(Side note: for a program so enamored with technology, the idea that a technology-oriented petition would be ridiculed by the very people pushing these techno-Utopian pronouncements strikes me as off. If we'd written this in a paper instead of targeted it at them, they'd be falling over themselves to help us publish.)

However, for all of the unprofessional cheap shots, we've also heard that a new professor will indeed be hired to teach media and politics at CCT this fall. So, though we may be firebrands, we're at least successful firebrands.

Spring Break!

Just a note to let everyone know that I'll be taking the week of in honor of Georgetown's spring recess. I plan to use the week to finally get around to emptying out my draft log and establishing some order around here.

Wish me luck.

Cool Sites - Barack Obama Is Your New Bicycle/Hillary Is Mom Jeans

While this week's cool sites might not be as calculatingly awesome as some of the flashier ones that have popped up over this election cycle, they do have one thing going for them. What they lack in technical whiz-bang, they make up for by effectively capture the most important voting block of all: fans of Internet memes.

These two sites, writer Matthew Honan's Barack Obama Is Your New Bicycle and Jacob Walker's Hillary Is Mom Jeans, both strive to hammer home the same message: Barack Obama is cool kid, while Hillary Clinton is more of the student government square. Admittedly, these aren't exactly fresh topics; however, what the sites lack in originality of message, they more than make up for with intriguing delivery. Visitors to the sites (a membership which I hope, by now, includes you, dear readers) are greeted by little more than a giant hyperlinked statement regarding what makes Obama cool and/or Hillary lame. These phrases are generally life-affirming and nonsensical. For instance, Obama's site is filling with Christ-like examples of generosity ("Barack Obama sent you flowers", "Barack Obama helped you move a sofa"), while the Clinton site focuses on behavior normally associated with terrible roommates rather than presidential candidates ("Hillary forgot to water your plants", "Hillary works for Blackwater").

Now, why do these sites work? For one, they appeal to the surreality that seems to be inherent in Internet humor. In fact, these sites are far better examples of Internet humor than they are of political humor. The jokes here aren't focused on policy, issues, or even the ongoing campaign; rather, they're tangentially connected to the public's general opinion of the candidates. This sort of presentation could just as easily have been assigned to another well known figure a la the Chuck Norris joke movement. The fact that they happen to be about politicians gives us campaign junkies all the more reasons to smile.

Secondly, the presentation has a big impact. Many online humor sites are bogged down with non-optional streaming video, bulky Flash pages, and content that prizes involved style over substance and, importantly, frequent updates. With the minimalist presentation, the creators are allowed to focus on crafting a catchy meme that is memorable and easily repeatable. I would argue that this is the same kind of approach that we see in most successful online memes.

Another important factor in the success of these sites as memes is audience participation. Although it is the newer of the two sites, Hillary Is Mom Jeans might actually win the day in this regard. While Honan's site has the virtue of being the originator of the style, Walker made a crucial improvement to his site's layout: the addition of a user-submission box. Rather than generating all of the content internally like the Obama site (which doesn't even feature Honan's contact information, let alone a submission section), the Clinton site encourages audience ownership of ongoing creation. This factor is key for the success of any would-be viral movement, and it's nice to see this particular meme moving quickly in that direction.

it also appears that Honan approves as well, stating in a TechBlog interview that "Jacob Walker created this great parody site of BOIYNB. He really nailed it, I think. It's a riot, but it also demonstrates why her campaign is in trouble".

Quite right on all accounts, Mr. Honan. Quite right.

BOOK REVIEW: An Army of Davids

Oh, Glenn Reynolds. You almost had me. Really, you did. I was going along, reading through my copy of your long-titled An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths, and I was really on board. See, in the beginning of your book, you seem like a reasonable individual. You take on the music industry in a way that I can only describe as reasonable. Sure, in order to do so you had to fund and establish your own home studio, but that's part of it, right? A great example of how the emergence of relatively cheap, pro-sumer electronics has combined with the an independent spirit to revolutionize popular music. Rad!

Then, I got worried. The chapter on welcoming "big box" booksellers to a neighborhood rubbed me wrong, somehow. Fuck atmosphere or alternative selection! John Grisham and a latte for $15, right? It seemed like an interesting argument to make, considering that many in the retail world would consider stores like Borders or Barnes and Noble Goliaths rather than Davids, but ok. I got it. They were offering a David-y service, creating community rather than maximizing profit. Corporate bookstores... have our best interests in mind?

After that, though, you lost me, Glenn. The whole bit about citizen surveillance of terror suspects is what got me to close the book for good. While I can admit that the examples that you used were persuasive, the fact remains that encouraging that kind of Junior Stasi spy-on-your-neighbors bullshit is not the kind of technological effect that I consider laudable. In fact, I'm not even sure it completely fits, considering the fact that all of these Davids with camera phones and a nosy disposition are generally taking orders from the biggest Goliath there is (the government) when it comes to figuring out who's supposed to be dangerous this week.

Thus, I will not be finishing your book at this point, Glenn. I just don't have it in me this week.

Political Video Tuesday - Viva Obama

Well, if Obama plans on capturing a primary victory in Texas next week, he'll certainly need to capture the sentiment expressed in this video. Personally, I'd be satisfied if I could capture one of those fine-looking hats that those gentlemen are wearing.

For good measure, and for all of my Spanish-speaking friends (Emily, I'm looking at you), here's another video. Viva Obama, and viva reggaeton.

Social Network Update VI - The Competition

For today's social network update, I figured I might give Barack Obama's groups a breather this week in favor of scanning around for the competition. That's right, the other guys. The opponents. The rivals. I'm talking, of course, about Hillary Clinton supporters.

Before Obama fans can get geared up to take on the Republicans in the fall, we have to survive a challenge from within our own party. Clinton has a strong base and great name recognition, but she isn't exactly the sharpest candidate in terms of digital campaign strategy. How does this lack of online acumen translate on Facebook and Care2? Well, there's only one way to find out.

FACEBOOK

The first thing you'll probably notice when searching Facebook for Hillary Clinton is the negative groups. Simply put, there are lots of them. Out of the first 10 results for a group search on Facebook, eight groups are anti-Clinton. They run the gamut, from ideological ("Hillary Clinton is the Anti-Christ! VOTE CONSERVATIVE!") to sexist ("Hillary Clinton is a Man and I will not Vote for Him") to the hyperbolic ("If HIllary Clinton is Elected, I'm Moving to Canada!"). By contrast, a group search for Barack Obama reveals a completely inverted ratio, with only two anti-Obama groups ("Stop Barack Obama", "Against Barack Obama") and none of the overt vitriol found among the Clinton groups.

So, what gives? Why is Hillary Clinton so grossly unpopular on Facebook despite locking Obama in a virtual stalemate nationally? My guess is that Facebook just doesn't cater to Clinton's natural constituency. Not only is it an online community (an area of organization that doesn't exactly play to Clinton's strength), but it's a primarily youth-based group. Despite having the support of George McGovern, Clinton has failed to gain the attention of McGovern-style supporters; by and large, young voters and intellectuals have flocked in droves to Barack Obama, leaving Clinton's cupboard relatively bare.

CARE2

Over at Care2, things are just as bleak. While the folks on Care2 are far more civil than their Facebook counterparts, they're also far less interested in the Clinton campaign. Care2 lacks both the negative groups that are so popular on Facebook and the positive groups that could actually do the campaign some good. While Barack Obama's Care2 supporters hover somewhere around 1,000 (not great by any stretch of the imagination, Clinton's numbers are even worse; in the two groups that support her, Clinton can count just over 200 Care2 members as active supporters.

Obama decided early on to make online organizing a cornerstone of his campaign, and it's paying off. Clinton's skill at 90s-style politics left her both unfamiliar with emerging trends and unwilling to take the risks necessary to overcome the gap. If there's one base cause for her flagging online support, that might be it.