License plate advertising could be the new thing
Recently, California has reported (via mashable) that it is considered selling advertisements on digital license plates as a creative way to raise money to fight the state’s high budget deficit. These ads would only show when the car was stationary. Some people are concerned about safety, saying that flashy advertisements on license plates could be distracting. Others are in favor of this plan because it will
bring money in for the state. Still, other people are more concerned about the over-saturation of advertisements already out there. Billboards are everywhere. Giant posters on the sides of buildings are everywhere. Print ads are everywhere. Pop-up and banner ads on the internet are everywhere. Even our cell phones are not safe from ads. What I’m interested to see is how this will play into political campaigns. California tends to be a “hot” state with intense elections, both state and national. Let’s pretend this plan happens. Let’s also pretend it can be cost-effective. What would happen if someone is stuck in grid-lock traffic on the highway and every car in front of them had the same political candidate’s name on it? Isn’t that what you’d want? Your campaign would be seen be a large mass of people at the same time. Political candidates could even have more than one ad that could share their goals if they get elected or facts about why they are a good choice for office. Personally, by the time election day comes around, I’m tired of all of the political messages on television. If I had to suffer that plus staring at them while sitting in traffic because it is literally on the car in front of me, I’m not sure if I’d be more knowledgeable about the election or if I’d just be irritated by the bombardment of advertisements everywhere I go.
Using Social Media in a Slightly Different Way
Twitter, Facebook, and similar information sharing social media networks usually inform followers what someone is doing, what is new with them, or what is on their mind. However, former governor Rod Blagojevich are using social media to update followers on their corruption trial. This is a slightly different way to incorporate social media into one’s daily life. Talk about finding a new way to get the media on your side. Blagojevich’s corruption trial involving his activities while governor of Illinois began this week and Blagojevich tweeted that he was excited for the trial to begin. Blagojevich is charged with racketeering, bribery conspiracy, extortion, and wire fraud. Clearly, Blagojevich is using social media to his advantage. He has constantly affirmed that he did nothing wrong while he was in office and revealed his confidence again via Twitter saying, “The truth is on our side.”
Former Governor Rod Blagojevich
Often, media is restricted in high profile court proceedings. Here, Blagojevich is doing his part to share what is happening inside with everyone interested on the outside. This brings up a unique issue between those in the public eye and the public itself. I feel that frequently we here celebrities, politicians, and other high profile individuals complaining about a lack of privacy. They say they are never actually alone and that they don’t like what it has done to their daily lives. In this case, Blagojevich is inviting the public to be more involved in his life. Most politicians would prefer to keep events inside the court room strictly inside the court room, regardless of guilt or innocence. I find it intriguing that Blagojevich’s newest campaign is not for an election, but merely for support and he eliminates all barriers in his power to reach his audience. Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and YouTube provide the means to share any information with social media users. This is both good and bad information; biased and unbiased. There is also a greater element of freedom which is also a risk. Politicians know this. Celebrities know this. That being said, is there really room for a private life when you put yourself in the public eye? It will be interesting to see if Blagojevich can win a victory of support through his information sharing as the trial goes on. Despite any public favor gained through his latest campaign, those inside the court will be the ones to decide regardless of how many tweets Blagojevich makes protesting his innocence.
CNN’s Infusion of News, Politics, and Social Media
The major news network CNN and anchor Rick Sanchez have bridged the gap between airtime and watchers. Rick’s List airs daily from 3-5 pm ET on CNN during which Rick discusses hot topics, news, and other issues, which sounds like any ordinary news show. The catch is this: Rick uses social media to connect to watchers in real time. He shows on air the tweets at him and facebook wall posts consumers leave in response to different segments on the show allowing the audience to actually participate in the broadcast! Prior to the show, Rick will even ask his twitter followers for input. Recently, Al and Tipper Gore have announced their plans to separate. The Gulf Spill is still suffering massive setbacks to stop the oil from spewing out. Israel unrest is becoming a major threat and concern for the US. In response to these events, Rick asked his followers “u guys want more gore, oil, or Israeli?” via twitter giving them the chance to weigh in on what they want to hear about.
The downside to this infiltration of social media and news is that it leaves room for bias. Rick’s recent tweet exemplifies what I’m getting at. On the news of the Gore separation, “Breaking News! We just got word about the Gores. Working guests now. What do you think? How much of this is NEWS & how much GOSSIP?” That is the question: how much of this is gossip and how much is real? This feeds into a bigger issue. How much of this is opinion and how much is fact? The news is supposed to be an unbiased representation of what is occurring in the world at-large. Yes, the audience deserves to have its voice be heard but in an already dramatically polarized society, have we crossed the line? Is there still such a thing as an unbiased media?
From Jack and Diane to Senate Seat?
Change is Good…
Twitter Intrigues the White House
If You Can’t Say Something Nice…
Labour chairman David Wright Labour MP Party of Telford, allegedly used the words “Scum sucking pig” in a Tweet, to describle the Tories, (conservative party in the UK). Currently he is claiming that a third party tinkered with his account adding the words scum sucking- to what should have read “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig.”
What can you learn from Canadian politicians?
Below is an article from the Ottawa Citzen about Canadian politicians and social media.
Here are some key takeaways:
- Don’t be afraid of a Facebook “Fan” page over a “Friend” page. “Friend” accounts do max out at 5,000 friends. If you want to reach the most people and encourage them to become passionate about your policies, a “Fan” page is the way to go. If you’re worried about personal information, keep your “Friend” page to interact with friends and family and you “Fan” page to discuss your campaign and policies.
- If you do separate your “Friend” and “Fan” pages, make sure you’re still demonstrating your charm and personality on your “Fan” page as well. Let the voters get to know the person behind the politics.
- Use social media to encourage your supporters to join you as you campaign offline whether that be through events, fundraising, or bringing your name up in a conversation.
- Have a plan behind your social media usage. Know what you’re trying to accomplish and why before you even put your fingers to the keys. Make your goals specific. How many followers do you want? How will you engage them? What offline actions do you want them to take?
Bob Rae has a problem with Facebook.
“I’m only allowed to have 5,000 friends,” laments the MP for Toronto Centre. “I have about 1,600 people on the waiting list that I can’t add.”
Facebook isn’t budging. They’ve told Rae if he wants to have more friends, he should start himself a fan page.
But Rae’s not interested. “Fan pages are different. A fan is not a friend.”
U.S. President Barack Obama’s successful use of new media in his presidential campaign has generated an enthusiastic buzz about social media’s potential for linking politicians with the public. Unsurprisingly, Canadian politicians have since been jumping on to popular networks like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in hopes of connecting with a wider audience.
But many politicians are learning that just getting a Facebook profile doesn’t turn everyone into the next president.
“In Canada, politicians are doing an incredibly poor job,” says Daniel Paré, a communications professor at the University of Ottawa.
While U.S. and British politicians are at the forefront in using these technologies, Paré says the sense of enthusiasm among Canadian MPs just isn’t there.
“They are light years behind.”
The problem for most of our MPs is that they lack a new-media plan, says Rahaf Harfoush, a media strategist on Obama’s election communications team and author of Yes We Did: An Inside Look at How Social Media Built the Obama Brand.
“The reason the Obama campaign was successful was because everything we did was part of a larger overarching strategy,” she says. “There was a strategic, logical reason behind every single thing we did.
“But here, they just go on Facebook because it’s easy; they go on Twitter because it’s easy. No one’s actually using these tools as part of a community-building effort.”
The Obama campaign focused on connecting the online and the offline, she says — getting people who connected to the campaign via the Internet to volunteer on the ground, fundraise and recruit their friends.
Charlie Angus, 49, and the New Democrat MP for Timmins-James Bay, believes in the power of social networking after a YouTube video aimed at getting a new school for a First Nations reserve in his riding went viral, but he avoids Twitter with a passion.
“Politicians are going to be out blowing their fingers off with their BlackBerrys every time they write,” he explains. “They need to ask: ‘Why do we need to hear all of this stuff and what’s the point?’ ”
The most important rule in using these tools, says Angus, is to keep it strictly professional.
“I don’t post family pictures or personal information, I don’t post what I’m doing on my off time. I post music because most people know I had a band. And I do politics. But I do nothing personal, at all.”
Some older MPs are particularly mystified by these new tools, says Niki Ashton, an NDP MP for Churchill and at 27 the youngest member of Parliament.
Ashton is regularly on Facebook, updating her status with what’s going on in the House of Commons and posting related articles and links. But her profile is also a personal account she uses to communicate with her friends and family. Her public and private online lives are one.
“For me, it’s just the way I communicate along with my generation. So it’s very much normal and I’m glad I can fit my work into it.”
Ashton agrees that social networking can be a valuable tool to rally supporters to a cause.
She points to last year’s campaign to keep federal funding for social sciences and humanities research scholarships open. By connecting with student groups protesting the issue on Facebook, Ashton’s online petition garnered more than 20,000 signatures. It was later tabled in the House of Commons.
Social media wasn’t the only reason for the campaign’s success, says Ashton. It did, however, raise awareness among university students and linked her to other interested Canadians.
Ashton makes her updates herself. While she’s familiar with Facebook and enjoys using it, she says showing personality on profiles that are also used professionally can be a balancing act.
“Yesterday I wrote that I watched Twilight: New Moon,” quipped Ashton. She was surprised to see how many people jumped on to comment.
“Yeah, OK, I’m a human being. What’s the problem with that?”
Rae, 61, says that with very few exceptions, he’s the one who posts updates to his own Facebook account.
“The more [updates] become impersonal and the more they just become the master’s voice and you know you aren’t getting the real person, the less useful they become,” he says. “Because then people just feel they’re being abused.”
Ottawa South Liberal MP David McGuinty, 49, isn’t jumping on the social media bandwagon anytime soon. Aside from his website, you’ll only find him on Facebook — and there only with a fan-page placeholder. It has nothing but a link to his website and the phone number of his office, but it’s there to make sure no one starts an account on the site pretending to be him.
“Social media is important but I don’t think it’s taken seriously,” says McGuinty, and sites like Facebook and Twitter do little more than turn politicians into personalities.
“I don’t think a legislator is supposed to be a personality. I think a legislator’s supposed to be a legislator. I think a member of Parliament is supposed to be a good MP.”
With four or five staff working in two offices, he says, there’s no time to update profiles or feed tweets to the masses.
“I don’t have the time. If I took the time to do that, I wouldn’t have the time to do my work,” says McGuinty. “If I spent an hour a day on that, it’s an hour less that I can spend on really productive files.”
Harfoush says a successful social media strategy doesn’t need a lot of time or resources.
“I think you can be effective with whatever resources you have. You don’t have to be on 14 social networks, you can be on one social network where your constituents are and be just as effective.”
Ashton agrees with Harfoush about the importance of online dialogue. She thinks most MPs don’t give it enough credit as a viable communication tool.
“It’s incumbent on us as public people to recognize that it is a legitimate way of communicating,” says Ashton. “Does posting on Twitter mean you’re going to vote? No it doesn’t. But it’s about becoming engaged in our community.”
Connecting the twitterverse to the real world should be any MP’s ultimate social media strategy, says Stephen Taylor, an Ottawa-based conservative social-media consultant who runs the Blogging Tories and Right of Twitter websites.
“Poking someone on Facebook is worth nothing,” says Taylor. “But inviting them to an event and actually seeing them at that event, offline, is certainly something that is currency for a politician.”
The future for politicians and Twitter, says Taylor, will be learning to integrate location-based technologies that will allow MPs to let their constituents know where they are and how to reach them. For example, a politician back at home for the weekend could broadcast a GPS address of a local coffee shop for an impromptu chat with constituents.
It’s a new technology, but based on old political strategy. “If politics is local, you should tell them where you are locally,” says Taylor.
Party politics adds another level of complication for MPs and social media. Some parties discourage Facebook and Twitter use, considering them either irrelevant or a dangerous means of letting MPs breach the party line.
Instead of banning social media use, parties should seriously consider developing policies and practices that introduce their members to these tools and how to use them effectively, says Paré.
“There are benefits to be had, but at the same time to reap those benefits you have to manage it carefully.”
The challenge for MPs and parties, says Harfoush, will be whether they can handle the public response — especially when it’s critical, even harsh. While disabling comments and remarks on blogs or social networks may seem like an easy way out, it’s a big no-no.
“People will set up a fan page and not let anyone comment on anything. It defeats the purpose of being part of a community.”
The road to meaningful online communication between MPs and the public will not be an easy one, says Harfoush. But it will ultimately pay off, both in better government and electoral success for politicians who learn how to use new media to communicate with their constituents.
“It just requires a shift in approach, a shift in perspective.”
Obama and Politics 2.0: Documenting History in Real Time
In July of 2008, Nancy Scola wrote a really insightful post documenting a critical aspect of the Obama Social Media Campaign – Video. Enjoy!
I’m taking a crack at liveblogging an event tonight [ed. -- now last night] at NYU featuring Arun Chaudhary, director of video field production for the Obama campaign, in conversation with Ellen McGirt, senior writer at Fast Company and author of magazine’s April 2008 cover story “The Brand Called Obama.” Arun left his job as an adjunct film professor at NYU to produce video that pulls from public events, behind the scenes, and one-on-ones — unique creative content that populates BarackObama.com and a YouTube channel. Let’s get started.
Asked about the new media team, Arun describes at least 50 people crammed into one corner of an office building floor with with “pictures of JFK and graph paper tacked up on the wall.” Arun says the new media team spends a fair amount of money, but they’re buying fishing poles rather than fish; the broadcast quality footage they capture, for example, can be used for advertising in addition to online video. Asked about past campaigns he tried working with, Arun says they saw media as “too precious” to take creative risks with.
Arun explains his hire by the campaign by saying ‘you can learn the politics. You can learn how to navigate these worlds. But you can’t really learn the trades very quickly.’ The campaign has been attracting successful people that way, he says, naming Facebook’s Chris Hughes, who came on to handle social-networking. Arun then screens a well-crafted mock movie trailer calling people to a rally in New York’s Washington Square Park that features Obama in slightly goofy situations. Ellen: “We’ve never seen anything like this before”:
Ellen asks if the technology was in place three years ago to make video like this. “The technology was there three years ago, but I don’t think the right audience was,” says Arun. Back then, he jokes, there were just six hundred of the same people commenting on political blogs and that’s it; online participation today spans a wider segment of the population.* Ellen ask how he managed to get approval for the trailer video from the campaign and the candidate. Arun laughs a bit nervously, “I don’t know if the candidate saw it,” but says that it made its way, he believes, to the level of campaign manager.
The next video was crafted to call people to the pre-Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Iowa, as, Arun says, showing organizational strength was the key to getting attention and momentum in that state. Ellen asks if there was a concern that Obama and guest attendee John Legend were the only African-Americans seen in the clip. Arun pointed to the Internet Archive’s Prelinger Archives as the source of the overly white footage. (At the actual event, the video team had five cameras and five videographers in place capturing footage.):
Next video. An Iowa call-to-caucus piece, says Arun, is a campaign classic. It both asks Iowans to caucus for their particular candidate and educates voters on how to actually go through the confusing caucusing process. Both the Obama campaign and the Edwards campaign went the route of a dated instructional-style video, he says. (Arun praises the Hillary Clinton campaign’s call-to-caucus video which featured Bill Clinton eating a cheeseburger and saying something along the lines of “exercising is hard, but caucusing is easy.”):
It was the campaign’s “traditional media” team, says Arun, that whipped together a quick response to the Clinton campaign’s 3 a.m. phone call ad. But the new media team tracked down the young girl in the stock footage, Casey Knowles, an Obama precinct captain in Washington State. In the one-minute video, Casey deconstructs the techniques in the Clinton ad — the blue tint to the footage, the “scratchy voice” — and slams the “politics of fear.” An ad like that, says Arun, would never make on air, but works well online:
The candidate was in Terre Haute, Arun says, when the news broke that Obama had earlier made remarks in California concerning “bitter” Americans. Obama inserted a response to the incident in his Indiana speech. The new media team, says Arun, edited, packaged, and released the candidate’s own words within 19 minutes of the speech’s delivery. A lesson learned, says Arun, is that people are actually interested in the “sound blast,” and will watch long clips in their entirety:
He also cites Obama’s speech at their Chicago headquarters.The 14 minute clip shows the candidate addressing his staff, both in person and through a conference call (which creates a few minutes of less-than-thrilling footage when the call goes dead and Obama has to stall while it’s reconnected). It wasn’t deliberately shot low-fi for an extra dose of authenticity, Arun says, as some people suggested. There was no intention to create some sort of “Tanner 88″ moment. It was just, he says, that there was an intern manning the camera:
Asked by Emily about what an Obama administration might bring, Arun says that the role of video in an administration would be even more powerful than in a campaign. He mentions the broadcasting of health care meetings — creating a broader base of people who are able to keep an eye on the proceedings. The idea, Arun says, is not ‘telling people who tell people to tell people,’ but to use video to tell people directly. The role of video in governing, he says, is to achieve the goal of “cutting out the middleman.”
Q&A
Question: There’s a discontinuity in your work with high video quality and no sound mixing. Why?
Arun: We shoot as high quality as we can because it might be used for broadcast, but get used to it — a lot of the networks are going so broke that they’re getting rid of their “sound guys.”Question: What role with user-generated content play in presidential campaigns?
Arun: Using voter-generated content while probably remain “an unrealized ideal.” Much of the content that gets sent to them is “a little strange.”
Question: Why is new media going to make young people come out and vote?
Arun: It isn’t. Barack Obama is what is going to make people come out and vote.
Question: If you embrace an interactive politics 2.0, how do you avoid politicizing governing?
Arun: I think we’re ready for 1.5. We’ll [ed. -- a clarification: "we" here is a reference to political campaigns in general, and to the tools that might come into common use -- not a reference to the Obama campaign in particular] have virtual townhalls, for sure.
* Updated to correct: The original line referenced political blogs; in making the joke, Arun was referencing hard-core blog commenters.
EU politics 2.0: Getting the citizen into European democracy
Julien Frisch, September 3, 2009 – Personal Democracy Forum
The European Union is a proto-democratic polity, focused on the city of Brussels, dispersed over 27 member states and 500 million citizens, based on a story of overcoming centuries of violence and held together by complex administrative procedures and a small number of Europeanised elites willing to invest time and effort in bridging the gaps that are still obvious.
Genuine European Union politics are limited to politicians, officials, and diplomats within the core EU institutions like the European Commission (the supranational political administration of the EU), the EU Council (where the 27 member states are represented), and the European Parliament, which has been newly elected in June and just re-started its activities.
Outside Brussels, these EU politics have always been low key, hardly noticed by anyone not involved in European administrative co-operation, EU-related lobbying, or rare transnational meetings of political associations with a European agenda. The best example was the European Parliament elections this year that passed almost unnoticed by the larger public.
In this centralised, Brussels-focused context, participation of individual citizens in EU politics was close to impossible. Yet, web 2.0 is offering new channels for involvement of ordinary citizens – and we are ready to use them.
When I say “we”, I am referring to a small but growing group of European citizens inside and outside Brussels using blogs, online social networks, and Twitter to communicate, discuss, and organise activities that are not born within the institutional setting of the EU – but still related to questions of pan-European interest.
Most of us are part of the Generation 2.0, but in the end this is more than a generational issue. We don’t want to accept the old top-down politics and we are trying to overcome a European perspective that doesn’t treat us as citizens but as simple beneficiaries of policies made in our so-called “best interest”.
Over the last year, there has been a rising amount of interaction between us, and especially the use of Twitter has finally brought some dynamics into EU politics that appear very static from an outsider perspective.
A good example was the European Parliament election night (7 June 2009): On that night, despite the lack of general interest in these elections, a significant number of people from most member states discussed the election results under the #eu09 and #ep09 hashtags (that a smaller circle of people like us had been using already before) in all major and many minor EU languages – still unthinkable at the 2004 elections.
What we see is the development of a slowly growing Euroblogosphere (summarised on the still developing platform bloggingportal.eu) complemented by a Eurotwittersphere that involves even more individuals (political citizens, journalists, scientists, EU officials, lobbyists, and politicians) who do not write blogs.
Together, we are trying to create a (hyper-)linked European public sphere, researching and spreading information that remained unnoticed so far, thereby creating publicly visible European debates that go beyond the old-style closed-door politics that still rule the Brussels world.
But I don’t want to create a false image:
These developments are still very young, they are not straightforward, and they include a very limited number of people that are already part of the Europeanised elites I have mentioned at the beginning of the article. We are starting what needs to become bigger, we are testing in how far modern technologies are able to spice up EU politics, and we are creating a basis that might be helpful in the future.
This is nothing but a beginning. What we will have to do is to figure out ways to get more citizens into the European democracy, extending our limited circle by creating communication networks and communities in which European politics can be both debated and influenced.
However, one of the major obstacles compared to the USA is the existence of 23 official languages within the European Union. Creating transnational and translingual debates around political processes – that in addition are also largely opaque and poorly communicated – under these conditions is not trivial; the evolution of common blogosphere hardly possible.
So we will have to find creative ideas and creative individuals to overcome these obstacles. But many of us are ready to accept the challenge, and already over the coming year I expect several initiatives in this regard.
From now on, I will use the possibilities of the Personal Democracy Forum blog to discuss with you such issues related to European politics 2.0; I will present my own ideas and the ideas of others, looking forward to input from you who are reading inside and outside Europe!
(The author is a Euroblogger writing about EU and European politics on his blog “Julien Frisch – Watching Europe”.)
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