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.