Wanna Skype Tonight?
The ongoing war in Iraq does not appear to be coming to an end anytime soon. Our troops have been out there risking their lives and fighting for our country and their loved ones. Many of the men and women stationed out there are away from their families, boyfriends girlfriends and friends for at least a year a time with maybe one or two weeks of leave to visit, definitely making it hard on the soldier and his or her loved ones. But our soldiers now are in a different league then the men from World War II, Vietnam and even the Gulf War, they have the internet at their disposal. Social media allows them to keep in constant contact with their family and friends.
It may seem insignificant to you and I- we see our friends and family all the time, and may take Facebook and Skype for granted, however, for our troops overseas, it keeps them in the loop. they can see their children grow, they can make Skype dates with their girlfriends and wives and have an instant chat on Facebook or AIM with their friends. The thought that social media was keeping our troops sane and happy never crossed my mind until last week when a friend of mine sent me an instant chat on Facebook. He is stationed in Iraq and will be there for another 10 months, yet we were able to chat and catch up as if he was just around the corner. He was telling me that he Skypes with his wife once a week and loves to see new pictures that she uploads; often times that is the best part of his day. To talk to my friend, and to hear him tell me how much he values social media really hit me hard. It reminded me to not take the information that is passed and the conversations had for granted. It also reminded me of the power that the internet has and how social media is breaking so many barriers that once existed.
Social Media & Politics
Social Media Meets Politics: Are Politicians Embracing Twitter for All the Wrong Reasons?
The conclusion of our three part series of articles written by Jackson West of SF Appeal Online Newspaper. See parts one and two.
What few of these eager and ambitious men and women angling for higher office or their coteries of public and private aides have acknowledged are the real and current, or potential and future problems arising from new social media tools: ethical improprieties, interest conflicts and propaganda abuses are obvious consequences in theory and practice. Social networks and Web publishing make monitoring the majority’s public sentiment and mollifying it with a mouthful of rhetoric easier and more politically expedient than ever. “My job, and the job of all good journalists I think, is to put that message in context,” the Chronicle’s Audrey Cooper remarked when asked about statements and press releases issued by public officials.
Almost anybody who’s posted a significant quantity of text, photos or video online for an extended period of time has regretted at least one public revelation, and might have even deleted the embarrassing item from the public record (or at least used a Web site’s privacy tools to restrict access). Even then, deletions and access restrictions aren’t reliable, as search engines and other Web sites may keep copies which may remain publicly available, and motivated snoops can find ways around privacy barriers.
Elected officials are the very definition of public figures who’ve chosen to sacrifice their right to privacy. Obliged to serve the public openly and honestly, though constantly encountering opportunities for corruption through personal ambition and political gain, their choices between keeping private secrets or telling public truths (and lies) pits their individual interests against those of their constituents.
Shortly after the Cosco Busan freighter sprang a leak, spilling toxic fuel into San Francisco Bay, Mayor Newsom left on a planned vacation to Hawaii, assuring residents that he was in constant contact with local officials dealing with the environmental catastrophe. Yet after returning from his trip, Newsom refused to provide details of messages he sent or received while away — citing the use of a personal iPhone as reason enough deny access to records of any communication between himself and other public servants.
Presumably, the mayor updates his Twitter account from the same iPhone, or better yet, a newer model. But by using a personal device, he can not only avoid public disclosure statues by “co-mingles” both public and private business — also avoiding laws against using publicly funded facilities for political ends like soliciting donations and campaign support.
By the same logic, using privately owned Web sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, politicians can also ignore record keeping and public disclosure statutes while indulging in public business or personal promotion as they see fit. It allows the mayor to add “favorites” from his MayorGavinNewsom account to appear as thumbnails on his NewsomforCalifornia account, co-mingling purported city business with promotional efforts such as his campaign kickoff ad.
“The strategy of what they’re doing is have as little as possible go on their Web site,” explained online political strategy consultant Bob Brigham. Brigham is another Twitter user who was blocked from by Newsom’s account. “It was petty,” he said of the snub. Yet he defended the mayor’s use of the account for both personal publicity and public engagement.
“Some people would tell you there’s sketchy ethical issues, but I don’t believe [that to be the case],” he explained. For folks who ask simple, concise questions about city services, he felt the mayor was within his rights to answer as a sort of 311 operator by proxy. “Even though it is his personal account, with the way the world works, I think it makes sense if somebody asks ‘How do I get rid of my mattress?’ for him to point out large item disposal.” As an example, Brigham lauded California Secretary of State Deborah Bowen as “The best person in California politics of electeds on Twitter.”
Bowen’s Twitter stream is certainly personal, and the tone is certainly a familiar one for typical Twitter users. The updates on meeting schedules posted to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors account, with its strictly business mien, is tragically unendearing by comparison. But with Newsom, Brown and Villaraigosa, while it’s clear that the Twitter and Facebook updates serve their personal interest (namely, to woo voters in the hopes of getting elected), it’s not so clear that they are publishing updates themselves.
It’s not uncommon for celebrities and other busy people to hire someone as a ghost writer to manage their online media presence. Both Newsom and Villaraigosa occasionally make spelling or grammatical errors, which would be unlikely if written by an underling anxious about making a mistake. Yet Brown has help managing his LinkedIn account, some of Villaraigosa’s updates are signed DL by an aide named Daniel, and early updates on Newsom’s Twitter account were written in the third person.
The latter were probably handled by Deputy Communications Director Brian Purchia, who’s widely credited with maintaining Newsom’s Facebook profile and though working for the mayor’s office, describes himself as working in the “Online Media industry” on LinkedIn. And he probably has help in the form of interns who were solicited on Newsom’s Facebook profile. If not Purchia, certainly one of the nearly dozen staffers on the city payroll who work in the mayor’s office of communications are tracking activity and likely helping to keep all of Newsom’s accounts current.
So to some degree tools like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are being used to directly address voter questions and concerns, and also offer a little insight into the lives of our elected officials. But policies on disclosure and accreditation vary widely, and while it’s one way to reach a certain segment of constituents, many more are left out. And whatever public value it offers for conducting public business has generally proven minimal compared to the personal value for politicians chasing publicity, donor contributions and votes on election day.
Social Media Meets Politics: Technology Proves an Enabler for Ambitious Politicians
This is Part 2 in a three part series of articles written by Jackson West of SF Appeal Online Newspaper. See part one here.
If Twitter isn’t necessarily a chance to engage directly with critics instead of issuing statements through the press, then what is it for? Newsom argued in a Geek Entertainment Television interview that “for people who want to offer honest criticism or counsel and advice, it’s very meaningful.”
Even activists like Jeremy Pollock with the League of Young Voters rely on online tools. For Pollock, Facebook has become “my default place for keeping tabs on political events and fundraisers,” even though the organization still focuses on providing printed voter guides and more traditional peer to peer political engagement.
And from a campaign standpoint, social media also offers significant opportunities for fund raising. The perceived authenticity of communication over social networks means that unlike traditional online advertising, “click throughs” for social media appeals and recommendations are much higher. And unlike buying ads on search engines like Google, not to mention television, newspaper, billboard or even bumper sticker ads, there is no direct cost.
More importantly, unlike offline advertising methods, online methods make it much easier for individuals to go from inspiration to donation. There are no checks to fill out or envelopes to stamp, briefcases full of cash to smuggle or hookers and blow to surreptitiously deliver — while outsider candidates using Paypal to collect contributions have run afoul of local election officials when public financing is sought, privately financed campaigns can use sites like ActBlue to offer the same transaction ease. And subscription donations, like those that netted the Barack Obama campaign so much cash, mean that over the course of a long election supporters on a budget can offer small contributions over time — which can amount to significant money by election day.
The benefit of this is that candidates don’t necessarily have to rely on large institutional donors, at least in theory. But congressional candidate Adriel Hampton only managed to turn 10 of his 2,800 Twitter followers into donors with an appeal shortly after announcing his candidacy. “Unless you really tap into Marko Moulitsas favorites, fundraising is still a phone call operation,” Hampton concluded from the experience.
Newsom has done better, netting a total of $566,995 through ActBlue. A fundraising drive featuring a barrage of Twitter and Facebook status updates on April 31st netted a new record of 282 donations in a single day. Altogether, appeals broadcast online via email, Facebook and Twitter with a link to the Gavin Newsom for Governor account on ActBlue grossed a total of $361,619.74 by the end of April.
With 1,382 donors, that amounts to an average donation of $262.37. But with 338,605 followers on Twitter and 46,955 supporters on Facebook, ActBlue can only claim a conversion rate of 0.3 percent so far — which doesn’t include any “viral” distribution, such as followers and supporters copying, pasting and otherwise relaying a donation appeal link on their own profiles and pages.
Meanwhile, a single day campaign event in Sacramento cost $100,000. And it wasn’t paid for by small donors, but by more traditional sources including AT&T, PG&E, unions and a lobbyists, if filtered through the state chapter of the College Democrats. In the last California gubernatorial election, over $130 million dollars was spent among all the candidates. The half million dollars raised online so far would amount to only one percent of $50 million dollars, which is the kind of money a Democratic primary nominee is likely to raise and spend in order to fight an independently wealthy Republican challenger like billionaire businesswoman Meg Whitman.
And Whitman’s not exactly a technophobe — she previously served as CEO of eBay.
The six-figure Sacramento party was aimed at young people, and for good reason. Newsom has made a point of contrasting his comparative youth against former governor and likely primary opponent, Attorney General Jerry Brown. Yet, while still the mayor of Oakland, it was Brown who was the first to blog — long before Newsom’s missives were featured on Daily Kos or the Huffington Post. Meanwhile, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who has yet to formally throw his hat into the gubernatorial race, has already lobbed a cutting salvo over the bows of both the Newsom and Brown campaigns by declaring that as mayor of LA, he “is not going to Twitter while Rome burns.”
In his recent reelection campaign, Villaraigosa may have deduced that Twitter and Facebook are a great way to reach out to some voters, but not all voters — and certainly not key demographics in a statewide election. Speaking from his own experience organizing local constituents through the League of Young Voters, Jeremy Pollock noted that “the San Francisco Twitter culture seems a little older than the Facebook crowd and more of a techie type crowd than the political crowd.” (It should be noted that the Twitter account which the League of Young Voters maintains was another of those known to be blocked by the Newsom account).
Pollock pointed to a study by San Francisco’s YouthVote [PDF] that revealed Asian-American and “white” (caucasian) students at San Francisco schools were the most likely to use Facebook, while black and latino students were much more likely to use MySpace. Newsom and Villaraigosa both have MySpace profiles, though Newsom’s official Web site doesn’t link to it and neither candidates’ campaigns have updated their MySpace profiles since last year’s national and statewide elections (as of this writing, Newsom’s last login was April 21, three weeks ago). Brown has no obvious MySpace presence at all.
MySpace is owned by News Corp., which hasn’t exactly been friendly to the Democratic party machine. Newsom even caught flack over Twitter from his own cousin after a televised appearance on another News Corp. property, Fox News. But the lack of MySpace engagement signifies campaigns giving up on reaching out to marginal constituents. The choice of Twitter and Facebook over MySpace betrays any stated intent at radical inclusion, since choosing sides in the digital divide belies the crass algebra of class prejudice in online electioneering.
A certain class of constituents with the time to keep themselves interested and informed can now reach out to and interact with each other and their elected representatives as nominal peers, even anonymously (if careful). This surely opens up new avenues of both advocacy and dissent. “It does democratize information so that it’s not filtered by an editor of a newspaper,” said Newsom of Twitter and other online services in his GETV interview.
Does that mean statements presented directly by public officials online are more valuable to the public than excerpts, quotes and paraphrased details as part of a newspaper article or television report? Certainly, they’re invaluable as source documents for citizens, other officials, researchers and historians. But what of the emails, text messages and other private communications between government officials which aren’t published online — will Twitter and Facebook help “democratize” that information as well?
In the next and final installment, we’ll take a look at some of the ethical issues that arise and best practices that have been proposed for public servants who’ve turned to private Web sites and services for communication.
Business/Tech/Real Estate Social Media Meets Politics: Pols Chasing Publicity Find Web Waters Welcoming
Here is the first of 3 great blog articles on Social Media & Politics, written by Jackson West of SF Appeal Online Newspaper.
Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other popular sites for publishing online have become ubiquitous in the news media, if not in everyone’s actual day to day lives. Recently, public officials have successfully made it onto the bandwagon by adopting these tools in their campaigns, fundraising, volunteer recruitment and, of course, garnering publicity. But are these tools truly being used to connect directly to voters and their concerns, or are they just another way to campaign?
Barack Obama certainly made hay online, with plaudits, publicity and private contributions rolling in over the course of the campaign thanks to a popular Twitter stream, Facebook chatter, and a social network, MyBarackObama.com, powered by software from local company Six Apart. Yet once elected, the new media music died. His Twitter stream went silent for weeks, and only four updates have been made since election day.
Local politicians who are “tweeting,” or regularly posting messages to Twitter, include State Attorney General Jerry Brown, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera, State Senator Leland Yee, State Assemblywoman Fiona Ma, and San Francisco Board of Supervisors Clerk Angela Calvillo, on the Board’s behalf. Befitting a brand new form of communication, they’re all using it differently. The one common thread is that they would presumably all be relatively easy to reach, especially by a constituent and member of the press.
Adriel Hampton works as an investigator for the San Francisco City Attorney’s office and has kicked off a congressional campaign for California’s tenth district. An avid user of Twitter personally, he maintains a profile on Facebook, and is an active participant in a social network called GovLoop, where public employees are exploring ways to better connect public service with private taxpayers. It was at his urging that the City Attorney’s office created an account on Twitter.
“We’re trying to be transparent and apolitical in a way that advances the public interest, the public’s right to know and builds public trust in the office,” Hampton said of the tone and impetus of discussion on the site. Certainly transparency and authenticity seem to be two benefits most often cited by proponents using these new communications tools in government.
Some of the decisions made San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and his large communications staff and coterie of campaign aides seem to belie those types of good intentions. Newsom recently used Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to officially announce his entry into California’s 2010 gubernatorial election, garnering much media coverage and a few donations in the process.
Newsom’s aides in City Hall and his campaign team have been using these and other online tools for some time, but his office is not known for embracing radical transparency. For instance, while Newsom’s account often features replies to other Twitter users, responding to questions from the press is another matter. Repeated emails to his press secretary Nathan Ballard went unanswered (as did an email to Newsom’s likely gubernatorial opponent Brown).
Maybe the emails got lost in the shuffle. So why not play along and get in touch using Twitter? Because asking questions publicly using the service’s reply feature has gotten reporters in hot water.
“We don’t ask the mayor questions on his Twitter feed,” said San Francisco Chronicle city desk editor Audrey Cooper. There’s no need, she argued. “A press office has a lot of different ways to communicate with the press.” And they probably won’t start any time soon, especially in the wake of San Francisco Bay Guardian reporter Steven T. Jones’ experience.
Having been blocked from accessing Newsom’s updates after he asked a question publicly, Jones was accused of “flaming” or harassing the mayor online, and declared the equivalent of a -DCohn1 5/3/09 2:05 AM “troll” by Ballard. Not that it came as a particular surprise to Jones. “We’ve literally had the office door shut in our face before,” he said of his paper’s relationship with the mayor’s communications team.
So tools like Twitter don’t necessarily level the playing field for access, but they do offer an opportunity to make an end run around tough questions from critics and appeal directly to potential supporters without having to go through traditional media channels.
Tomorrow, in part two of this three part series, we’ll take a look at how well online tools work for organizing and funding campaigns. A candidate who could win office with only passionate volunteers and lots of small donations would presumably prove less beholden to the status quo of institutional support and corporate interests. Sounds great in theory, but does it work in practice?
Politics 2.0 – Real Democracy is close
Here is a great post by Rob Paterson on Politics 2.0
I had one of those coming out of the shower aha’s today. I think I see how Obama might be able to get the changes that we have all dreamed of – both for right and left.
So first I ask why is it impossible to get any real change – real change being defined as something that has to overcome the establishment in any field?
To have a real change – there has to be a President who will risk political capital and a majority vote in the house. By design right now this is impossible. Why?
Because until now the President has needed a lot of money to get elected and to have a chance of a second term. Because until now Congressmen and Senators need a lot of money to get and stay elected.
Because until now, the electorate were largely ill informed, passive and often even helpless. Their only involvement was to vote every few years and, even then, many chose not to do even that. Why should they? They knew that the decisions were being made by another process.
Washington has been bought by lobbyists. The lobbyists represent the establishment. The phone rings in a senator’s office. It is you the voter. A second phone rings, it is a major lobbyist. Which call gets priority?
No wonder we are all cynical.
How could health care or agriculture be reformed when all the money is behind the status quo and money is what is needed?
That is until now!
By building a vast grass roots organization by using 2.0 principles, Obama was able to raise more money than by using the traditional lobby pools. He not only got more money but he is less attached than any president in generations to the special interest himself.
Is this organization going to go away now? No – there are signs that Obama intends to grow this organization. Here is the link to his new site, Change Gov, just released yesterday. It is clear that he plans to go around the Hill.
He is preparing for the war of the future – A People’s War – where the President has a direct ongoing relationship with the people of America.
Roosevelt started this. His use of radio in the 1930’s was a masterstroke of using the then new media – to talk in a conversational way with the people. Now the President can listen to our conversation and converse with us.
I expect that we will start to see a new electorate – an engaged electorate – that will grow out of the grass roots campaign network.
I hear rumours of a new “Peace Corps” not to be deployed in foreign lands but at home. I see that community development and engagement will become paramount in the years to come.
So where does leave the old power brokers on the Hill? Isolated!
The smart Congressmen and Senators had better follow suit and fast – they will have to catch up with the people and the President. The real money that they do need will come from their engagement in the betterment of those that they represent.
The voters will awaken. They will start to be active. They will seek to take back their power so that what affects them most – so that decisions that affect them the most having access to good work, to energy, to food to a good environment and to better healthcare to a better education will be made by them and not a by a few who care only for themselves.
So politicians will have to awaken too. It will be more than their voting record that will be watched. It will be their larger actions to help their people. The greater transparency of our time will shine on them all. Those who serve the people will be rewarded and those that serve the elect will be punished.
Where does this leave the lobbyists? The best lobbyist will themselves have more than a check book. They will have to represent groups of active engaged voters or leave town.
A real change in health care demands that the insurance companies, the drug companies and the doctors have to be taken out of the position of political control.
A real change in energy policy means that the oil and coal companies have to be taken out of their control position.
A real change in how we spend money and on what in defense has to taken out of the hands of the main suppliers and the senior officers who serve them.
A rel change in how our financial system is governed means that control needs to be vested fram the leaders on Wall Street.
A real change in food systems means that BIG Ag has to lose control.
Without going around the Hill. Without directly engaging the People both in the policy and in the action – real change is systemically impossible.
This is Martin Luther all over again. The system cannot be reformed from within. A new direct model is the only way.
This is possible. For the first time, real democracy is possible.
Connectivity, Politics, & Diplomacy
Here is a great post by Rob Paterson on Connectivity, Politics, & Diplomacy.
Roger Cohen writes today in the Times about the cultural split between a world view that is all about division and one that is about connectivity.
Surely this is the heart of the 2.0 adoption cycle for anyone or any organization. Is it all about “me” and my tribe or is it about “us” and how we fit into the larger world and affect each other?
My sense is that what ever your politics “Me” or “Us” is the great divide.
So how do we get from “Me” to “Us”? Maybe results will help many decide:
This cultural failure has been devastating for Clinton. As Joshua Green chronicles in an important piece in The Atlantic, Obama has used social networking and his user-friendly Web site to develop the money machine, and the youthful engagement, that has swept him forward.
Green notes, “Obama’s claim of 1,276,000 donors is so large that Clinton doesn’t bother to compete.” He gives some other Obama campaign numbers: 750,000 active volunteers and 8,000 affinity groups. In February, a month in which he raised $55 million ($45 million over the Internet), 94 percent of donations were of $200 or less, a number dwarfing small contributions to Clinton and John McCain.
Obama has been a classic Internet-start up, a movement spreading with viral intensity and propelled by some of Silicon Valley’s most creative minds. As with any online phenomenon, he has jumped national borders, stirring as much buzz in Berlin as he does back home.
If you choose the “Me” you cannot compete with another who chooses “Us”. Also if you choose me – you miss the point that the larger world cares about you:
Her most crippling blindness has been to networks, national and global, the threads that bind and have changed society. As David Singh Grewal writes in his excellent new book, “Network Power,” a core tension in the world is that: “Everything is being globalized except politics.”
Grewal continues: “We live in a world in which our relations of sociability — our commerce, culture, ideas, manners — are increasingly shared, coordinated by newly global conversations in these domains, but in which our politics remains inescapably national, centered in the nation states that are the only loci of sovereign decision making.”
The Bush administration has accentuated global awareness of this disjuncture. Connected people around the world were appalled by Bush policies — from the trashing of habeas corpus to renditions — but felt powerless to influence them.
The overwhelming global interest in the current U.S. election is tied in part to a spreading belief that America’s leader may be as important to French lives, for example, as the incumbent in the Élysée Palace.
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