Posts Tagged: politics

Thoughts — 2 Comments
5
Nov 08

Regarding the Facebook Effect

Over the coming weeks and months, the role of the internet and social media in the 2008 will be debated.  Wired News leads with the headline “Propelled by Internet, Barack Obama Wins Presidency.” Similar sentiment resounds in a New York Times piece entitled “The ’08 Campaign: Sea Change for Politics as We Know It.”  Joe Trippi, comparing Obama’s ’08 effort to Howard Dean’s, states “they were Apollo 11, and we were the Wright Brothers.”  In my writing I’ve tried to tamper expectations regarding the political effect of social media.  That said, I do think social media helped win this election, though not in the way one might expect.

Before we proceed I want to unpack (and delineate) the effects of the internet and social media.  To keep this post topical, I’m not going to debate the effect of the internet.  The internet proved to be a financial and informational juggernaut, powering both the Obama and McCain campaigns.  Obama was prescient to opt out of campaign financing, as the internet provided him a supply of funding that was simply unprecedented.  That was a huge factor in his victory, a point beyond debate.

The effect of social media is more nuanced.  Howard Fineman of Newsweek wrote of the Facebook effect, something that I’ve heard a lot about over the course of this election.  The Facebook (or YouTube, or MySpace, or … ) effects attempt to connect social media use with political participation.  Early in the campaigns, we talked about how candidates could use these tools to engage their supporters, how these tools had a potential transformative effect.  Comparing statistics on the number of candidate Facebook friends was a fun pastime, but one always wondered what the effect of this virtual support might be.

I’d like to present an alternative statistic for analyzing the role of social media in the campaign.  It comes from a 2008 Pew Internet and American Life Study entitled “Home Broadband Adoption 2008.”  The report finds that 55% of American homes have broadband internet, and that approximately three-quarters of Americans are internet users.

Home Broadband

Pew is careful to point out systematic underrepresentation of some populations (low income, elderly) in broadband adoption.  I read this as a broad swath of Americans having access to the full potential of the internet.  One reading of “full potential” is that more Americans have access to streaming video and all of the other nifty things the broadband internet can do.  Certainly, that is important.  What I think is much more important is the “everyday life” impacts of broadband access on the deliberative political process.

Social Networks like Facebook reveal our lives to one another in novel and interesting ways.  I’m able to friend you and watch your life pass by in a News Feed.  Because of the pragmatics of daily life I probably wouldn’t be able to keep up with that information otherwise.  A side effect of this is that I’m also influenced by you – your decisions about the information you share or the identity you create.  And in this very personal, important election, many of us chose to wear our beliefs on our sleeves.

This phenomenon didn’t just occur in online social networks.  Every time a relative forwarded an email, every time an IM friend passed around a YouTube link, every blog post you “stumbled” upon because of someone else’s social action – these constitute important influence processes.  And because the internet is now this vast place where most of us can reliably find those we care about, where we can connect with them in a variety of formats, the influence of our everyday acts now carry more weight.  The media we consume online, the information we push around is social – because social is the ends to the widely-adopted internet’s means.

This is not to detract from Facebook or Myspace or any of the countless participation efforts that were launched this year.  I’m sure these efforts paid dividends in many ways.  But Obama was not elected because of a “Facebook Effect.”  No, what happened is that the internet helped us pull the veil back on one another.  It provided us a panoply of channels to discuss and share our beliefs, sometimes with intent, and sometimes by complete accident.  It provided the third space for political discourse that the futurists talked about.  It is not surprising there was a moderating effect.  As we connect and learn more about one another, we’re finding ways to share our beliefs and find common ground.  It is in everyday activity, where the sharing of media becomes social and influential, we see the true political power of the internet.  While I’m convinced that plenty of people changed their votes because of knocks on the front door, I’m also convinced plenty of us observed our friends, were engaged by their support, and decided that pulling the lever for Obama couldn’t be all that bad.

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23
Jun 08

Doug Rushkoff on Obama’s Brand

In the post Obama and the Internet, I discussed the power of Obama’s brand. Via techPresident, an essay by academic and critic Douglas Rushkoff exploring participatory politics and Obama’s powerful brand.

Brands were invented primarily to replace local commerce and social activity with mass produced goods and corporate-provided services. Brand mythologies alienate people from one another and insert themselves in the place of real relationships. Instead of buying meat, corn, drugs, or soap from local producers, we buy them from A&P, Green Giant, Wal-Mart or P&G. These national brands have great mythologies, but serve to disconnect us from one another, and distribute power to those with capital and away from people who actually do work.

The danger in Brand Obama is that our focus on a heroic or mythic presidency could easily distract us from the hard work and reality of creating change ourselves. “Hard working” democrats loved listening to Hilary Clinton talk about how hard she was going to work for them because it made it seem like the president is in position to stay up all night and, through the extra effort, get food on our tables or money in our bank accounts. It just doesn’t work that way, and Obama’s refusal to, say, cut gas taxes over the summer to cater to this mentality speaks volumes.

Read the full essay.

Thoughts — 2 Comments
16
Jun 08

Obama and the Internet

This morning, Pew released summary findings from their ongoing study of the Internet and the 2008 election. Alan Rosenblatt’s written them up for techPresident. In the context of Obama’s recent victory in the 2008 primary, I thought I might revisit some of my previous thinking on Obama and the internet.

There seems to be consensus that Obama is the internet’s candidate. Pew’s findings confirm this, as do countless anecdotes about Obama’s internet prowess. When thinking about technology and campaigns, we have to think about directionality. The common assumption is that technology generates awareness; i.e. campaigns should create technologies to market a candidate. This internet-centric view affirms the value of the internet as a game-changer, in which a candidate can win because of the internet.

The opposing view casts the internet as a harness; rather than generating interest online, interest is generated in many spaces, and internet technologies exist to harness the interest. Instead of looking as a technology as an end, technology becomes one of thousands of means through which interest, communication and money is funneled. I’ll argue that this model, as opposed to the game-changing model, is the model of Obama 2008 and successful future candidacies.

Candidates are brands. This was never more clear to me than the years between 2000 and 2006, where “W” and Bush/Cheney bumper stickers proliferated. Affixing that bumper sticker was a signal of class, status and ideological affiliation – that one could “afford” to support Bush, and all that Bush’s brand embodies. With all due respect to the other candidates, Obama has emerged as the brand of 2008. His message, youth and pan-cultural appeal have created a perfect storm, and now he’s bigger than Apple, Google, Nike and Vitamin Water all put together.

So lets get back to technology and directionality. In January I wrote a piece for TP called Social Networks and Youth Voter Activation. Rejecting the game-changer model, I argued that social networks act as harnesses for activated interest. If you’ve got a population that is activated by a brand, they’ll turn to the information tools at hand to further that interest – through information seeking, friend-finding, volunteering, donating, etc. Therefore, the first part of Obama’s success wasn’t the tools he developed, but rather the tools that were at hand, that we all knew how to use – Facebook, YouTube, etc.

Tools are only part of the equation – they only provide a venue for communication. In The Social Filter, we see how communicative norms have changed around the technology, to allow all of us to become “personal marketers” to one another. Yes, I hate the idea of personal marketing, but the fact is when you send a YouTube link, invite someone to a Facebook group, broadcast a Twitter of support – you’re marketing to your networks. This is very low level, contextually-appropriate marketing (and if you’re like the 95% of the homophile us, your friends share your interests), but it is marketing nonetheless. Such marketing builds a cycle of activation, one that drives interest back into toolsets, marketing to personal networks, and so on.

This is not to say that Obama hasn’t developed cool tools. I’m sure he has. But I’ve used his creaky social network, and I can guarantee you that Obama’s success online has nothing to do with the tools he’s developed, and everything to do with the tools we already use. These tools of social interaction provide spaces for communication, spaces into which we share our messages, contest our beliefs, and negotiate our candidate of choice. That Obama’s demographic is very clearly the users of these tools, that he has creative types working for him, that he isn’t fighting peer-production only makes this cycle more successful.

Obama’s is the model of successful internet campaigning. Supporters must be activated, they must use the tools they know and understand, and the campaign has to take its hands off. This formula has created a cycle of activation, one that will continue to grow through the general election and thereafter.

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28
May 08

Reminder: Personal Democracy Forum 2008

I wanted to remind you that my great friends over at techPresident and the Personal Democracy Forum will be putting on the Personal Democracy Forum 2008, on June 23 and 24 2008. I’m totally bummed that I’m not able to attend, but the folks over at PDF have told me they’ll offer discounts to any Unit Structures readers who would like to attend. In my opinion, the PDF conference is the vanguard event in the poli-tech space, and if you’re working/developing/interested in the space you should absolutely attend.

If you’d like to get the discount, just drop me an email and I’ll connect you. To register for PDF 2008, visit http://pdf2008.confabb.com. Find out more about the conference at the PDF blog. On an unrelated note, I’ll be up in NYC later this week. If anyone’s around and would like to meet up, drop me a line!

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7
Jan 08

Social networks and youth voter activation

Cross posted to techPresident.com.

Since the 2008 races began, we’ve collectively watched the social technology space for emergent technologies that connect or motivate potential voters. I’ve looked for silver-bullet tools – a great Facebook app that brings the candidate to the voter, or a new type of social network tool that gets out the vote, raises funds efficiently, etc. Largely, I’ve been disappointed; the candidates haven’t developed too many cool or innovative tools, and the neat third-party ideas haven’t gained all that much traction (with a few notable exceptions). Even last week I was telling friends and reporters that this was the YouTube election, which unfairly writes off the whole social network space.

After watching the Iowa returns and reading blog and press accounts, I’m starting to see a potential third way for social network technology. Caveat, I don’t have ethnography to back this up, this is just my opinion, but I think there’s something here. So the old model of social network sites and campaigns proposes that some uber-tool, say a great Facebook app, leverages all sorts of information and eventually gets out the vote or raises funds. That is, the end goals of the electoral process can be attacked programatically, that all problems are solvable with enough data. A nice idea, but not true. Facebook’s Beacon and Social Ads are insightful here; even with unlimited data and great programming, machines attempting to “socially” influence fall short; the algorithms and points of interaction just aren’t human enough. I don’t want to join Blockbuster just because I’m served ads with the face of some guy I’ve met a few times, and I probably won’t switch my vote just because a candidate is spamming my newsfeed.

Lets step back for a second and think about where social networks excel: Birthday reminders. When I log into Facebook, I can see whose birthday it is today, and within a few seconds go post a “happy birthday” reminder on my friend’s wall. I’m happy, my friend is happy, and the whole transaction has cost me no more than thirty seconds. What can politicians learn from social network birthday messages?

Social networks encourage interaction, and the birthday wall posting is an example. There are two important factors in this transaction: the ease with which you can see your social network (the friend list) and ease and multiple methods which you can contact that friend through the network. By multiple methods, I mean wall posts, private messages, poking, superwall, etc. Unlike email, which is single mode and carries all sorts of social context, multiple methods of contact enable one to choose an appropriate space for messaging, one that fits the context. As political messages are sometimes controversial, having multiple message spaces enables the individual to consider the best space in which to pass the message, and act accordingly. That is, humans can effectively tailor their message to the space.

So what does all this mean? Social networks provide excuses for interaction. An articulable friend list makes it easy for one to envision and contact their network. And multi-modal messaging makes it more appropriate to pass political messages; if you’re not comfortable directly soliciting new friends to come to a fundraiser via direct, personal message, you could post a casual invite on their wall. Because there are multiple contexts and expectations, the humans can suss out the best venue for their messages and act accordingly. This effectively means more messages, passed by humans, in more appropriate, less spammy contexts. This means humans influencing humans, virtual shoes hitting the pavement.

One large question remains: how does this cycle of connection get started. In the technocentric vision, there’s some great algorithm in the sky that motivates us. In the scenario I’m posing, activation comes from far more traditional means: advertising, media coverage, empathy to candidate, etc. A potential connector is reached via the media and decides its time to start working for his or her candidate. The connector turns to online information sources, subscribes to mailing lists, Googles the candidate, and starts passing messages to like-minded friends in the social network context.

The obvious downside of this approach is that it reifies existing models, it blasts the technocentric approach, and it treats social networks as a message channel, not some revolutionary new social space. That is, its somewhat reality based. Simply because a generation uses social technology it does not mean that the entire playbook has to be thrown away. Young people see ads on TV, they page through the newspaper left open in the kitchen, and they pick candidates for reasons similar to anyone else. What is different about the social network users is that once activated and motivated, they can very effectively leverage these high-availability, low-spam, popular message networks to influence friends and contacts. In fact, the throwaway, simple nature of messaging in social networks is its virtue; a 2500-word email with graphics doesn’t work, but a young person may decide to click through a wall post or private message from a friends. And of course, once a cohort of supporters are identified, it becomes trivial to be always connected and activated in an SNS.

Web 2.0 technologies have long forced candidates to step back and take their hands off, there’s only so much they can control. Social networks are just another example; supporters will use the networks for purposes they devise. The record youth turnout in Iowa wasn’t caused by social networks, but one can imagine that wall postings, reminders, events, and personal messages kept young people activated, motivated and interested. It wasn’t a huge group, a Facebook app, or some algorithm that provided motivation, but rather interpersonal contact in appropriate venues. To this extent, social networks are part of a communication ecology, albeit a very important one for a very important demographic. Candidates should consider how best to leverage this reality, as it provides both a challenge and tremendous opportunity.

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26
Nov 07

We’re not sheep, you’re just not paying attention

Following MoveOn’s new Facebook membership-drive/petition, a number of important Web 2.0 bloggers have, on cue, posted about privacy apathy. These bloggers argue that we’re sheep, that we don’t care about privacy, and that like Newsfeed, we don’t care about Beacon and our cross-site privacy. These bloggers look at Facebook’s growing numbers, see the impressive trends, and conclude we don’t care about privacy or anything else Facebook does. This logic is flawed, of course – it’s sort of like saying any American who doesn’t renounce their citizenship and move to Canada agrees with President Bush.

Facebook’s brand represents a place, that place being a virtual community made up of our friends, family and contacts. To put it more bluntly, at the macro level, we’re brand agnostic when it comes to social network sites – we go where our friends are. Over the years, we’ve reified the commodity nature of these networks, migrating every few years.

If we think of the space as a commodity, it becomes apparent that the real value of the site is in connection and communication among ties. Therefore, an optimal design strategy for the site is pure transparency, where the site simply acts as the vector for useful connections. A flawless, perfectly efficient flow of information between individuals should be the goal of any social network site.

So if we really imagine Facebook as a collection of our friends, what does the brand entity of Facebook represent? The brand entity of Facebook is governmental; the only time one interacts with Facebook as entity is when they are being controlled or punished. Facebook as brand represents surveillance and domination.

You might be wondering what the point is, so I’ll get to it. For many users, Facebook does represent a community, with friends, strangers, police and government, and an economy running on social and economic capital. While this community is far from democratic, the users and their government have worked out a balance of power, negotiating and re-negotiating this balance as Facebook and new entrants introduce change.

Of course, Facebook users have little individual agency when it comes to political action. Yes, they can join groups, or add a protest application, but short of committing Facebook suicide, what can they do? The protest action comes in the form of privacy. Over the past three years, privacy has skyrocketed inside of Facebook, with millions of users making the profiles friends-only. If you’re a Web 2.0 blogger who only uses Facebook as a rolodex, this doesn’t appear strange. But to the millions of early adopters who used Facebook as a nexus for social information, this seriously devalues the network.

Think of it this way. A few years ago, Facebook was a city where no one felt the need to put locks on their front doors. Nowadays, we’ve got strangers, a police force that will kill us if we don’t use our “real names”, and surveillance bots that track us across the web and report what we do to our friends. Of course we’re going to deadbolt the house.

But here’s where things get tricky. As we’ve discussed, a social network should be transparent, connecting friends and sharing useful information. Friends should be the main feature, not the network (Facebook) itself. As people shutter themselves and share less information, Facebook is using Beacons, Applications, etc to create a pseudo-information market, hoping that I won’t notice this information is useless.

When I joined Facebook, I cared that I could find my friend’s address and see his or her pictures. However, I don’t care when my friend buys something or superpokes someone else. Since I’m getting less of that good information, Facebook is trying to stave off the what’s next problem by flooding me with “constructed” information. In making Facebook’s useless-information-production apparatus central, the real value of the network decreases.

The Web 2.0 bloggers look at Facebook’s adoption numbers and conclude that we’re not responding to the service’s continued intrusions. We’re just sheep, they say. But when you stand back a bit, things get a little bit more clear. Among mature users, privacy is skyrocketing as users shut themselves off to the world around them. And as millions of individuals join Facebook, and the useless-information-production apparatus of Beacon and Applications flood us, the site becomes less about one’s friends, and more about Facebook itself.

As Facebook becomes more about Facebook and less about our friends, we should consider what prompted these changes. We should also consider where these changes will take us. If Facebook becomes less about our friends and more about the brands we support, can we rationally make an argument that the site will stay relevant? Of course not. We’re not sheep. In fact, the users who have reacted to Facebook’s transgressions are shaping the site in powerful ways. Next time you log into Facebook, ask yourself just how much of the information spam you encounter is actually useful. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.

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17
Oct 07

10 Questions Launches

Some big news from techPresident - this morning, they launched 10Questions.com, in cooperation with the NY Times and MSNBC (and supported by a ton of political blogs). The premise behind 10Questions is simple – you upload your video questions for candidates, the crowd decides on the top 10 questions, and the candidates respond. You’ll be able to submit questions for the next 28 days – my friend and fellow techPresident contributor Ruby Sinreich has already submitted hers.

This is a great idea and a very positive step forward for participatory politics. It’s also one of the cooler mashups of Web 2.0 technologies and politics. Check it out, submit your videos, enjoy. Congrats to Micah, Josh and David!

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