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Presidential candidate social media at a glance

Apropos of my previous post, Think Progress' NetTrends '08 is a site that has compiled a matrix of all of the social media vehicles currently in use by candidates from both parties. As of today, no Republican candidates are blogging, but this could change. NetTrends '08 is actively soliciting additional links.

I am not familiar with Think Progress, but according to the organization's web site: "Think Progress is a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, ... (which) is a nonpartisan organization. With the blog, CAPAF seeks to provide a forum that advances progressive ideas and policies."

2007: the year of social media in presidential politics

This week Hillary Clinton's blogHILLARY went live, signaling that the social media portion of the 2008 campaign is well underway. Clinton joins Sens. Barack Obama of Illinois and ex-Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, who both have 2008 campaign blogs. The candidates themselves don't seem to be posting to the blogs. Instead, all three of the blogs take a "community" approach, with posts generally authored by supporters and spokespeople.

We've all seen the power social media has to break a politician. Howard Dean was both made and unmade by the Internet, and Senator Ted Stevens (Democrat, Alaska), not a presidential hopeful, is thus far the politician most mercilessly attacked on the Web, most likely because his ill-conceived "Internet tubes" remarks were about the Internet.

The Democratic Party has demonstrated both a willingness to embrace social media, and the potential to be burned by it. But this year we will see social media-savvy candidates (at least on the Democratic side) backed by social media-savvy advisors, with an awareness of the risks of social media, and blogs and podcasts will have greater influence than ever before in political history.

The St. Louis Post Dispatch reports:

"An online arms race has erupted among Democrats in particular. Sens. Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Clinton of New York along with ex-Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina are deploying web-based video, social networking and citizen journalism to engage and motivate voters."

It will be interesting to see whether the Republicans can catch up, as they seem to be lagging the Democrats' online lead.  (Full disclosure: I am a Democrat.)

Thinking About the Future and Happy About It

I started writing a post that drew rather depressing conclusions based on connecting (well, associating at any rate) news in InfoWorld that “Yahoo Inc. is researching areas such as microeconomics to help it better understand the behavior of users, or of advertisers in areas such as keyword auctions” with comments by Jaron Lanier, who voiced some justifiable concerns in “Digital Maoism” and now concludes “Beware the Online Collective” with:

“What’s to stop an online mass of anonymous but connected people from suddenly turning into a mean mob, just like masses of people have time and time again in the history of every human culture? It’s amazing that details in the design of online software can bring out such varied potentials in human behavior. It’s time to think about that power on a moral basis.” [There’s more to the article than this, so check it out]

Then I read this:

“Paradoxically, one of the biggest reasons for being optimistic is that there are systemic flaws in the reported world view. Certain types of news — for example dramatic disasters and terrorist actions — are massively over-reported, others — such as scientific progress and meaningful statistical surveys of the state of the world — massively under-reported.

“Although this leads to major problems such as distortion of rational public policy and a perpetual gnawing fear of apocalypse, it is also reason to be optimistic. Once you realize you're being inadvertently brainwashed to believe things are worse than they are, you can... with a little courage... step out into the sunshine.”

It’s by Chris Anderson and appears in The Edge Annual Question 2007. The question is “What are you optimistic about?” and the 160 responses (I have yet to get through them all) are often encouraging. It can be hard to look at current trends – the environment, population growth, pandemics, politics and religion, and, yes, algorithmically fueled mass online activity, and remain all that sanguine about the future, so it’s great to see these impressive thinkers immersed in the power of positive thinking. Of course, the question was phrased to elicit some kind of optimistic response. It doesn’t ask if the respondents are on the whole optimistic about the future. Anyway, I’m going to use up a little of that courage, get back to coverage of CES, and see if there’s a new toy I can’t live without.

 

Trust and Deception

In 2003, the prescient William Gibson published Pattern Recognition, a novel about a group obsessing over and trying to discover the source of some mysterious video clips trickling out onto the Internet. This year, the Lonely Girl video series appeared on YouTube, causing a similar frenzy and turning out to be the work of a screenwriter, filmmaker, and hired actress. We also had the fake Wal-Mart blog and the fake Beer Ape commercial.  And the Jason Fortuny and Craigslist episode – publishing the responses to a fake personals ad – raised further questions about credibility, deception, privacy and abuse on the net.

So how long before algorithm-controlled deceptions actually destroy a company or bring down a candidate – or get one elected? In a world where you can’t believe what you read or watch, how do we make informed decisions? 

Even in pre-Internet/pre-digital photo days, documents and photos could be faked, personal information could be stolen, and private letters could be photocopied and passed around to create a scandal. And a well-placed lie could always be spread to harm candidates and companies. We used to trust (not always with good reason) our local newspaper editors and favorite newscasters to sort out the truth, and brick-and-mortar stores that had longevity not to cheat us.

But today, the problem is on a much larger scale, much faster, and more complicated. So now we seek trusted sources on the net.  Many of us rely on the online versions of our trusted off-line resources for both news and shopping. But how do we develop trust in valuable online resources, from auction and travel sites to bloggers, that have no offline equivalents?

Does it depend on personal time spent and testing the waters? Does it come from the type of community formed? Word-of-mouth? How have you developed trust? We’re curious. Let us know.

Why Are There IP Spats Among the "Civic Minded"?

We're excited that Corante has a new political blog called Civic Minded.   The blog aims to create a "new forum for exchanging ideas, news and information about the Internet's impact on politics, government, and democracy itself."  As we've been saying, the intersection between new media and politics is going to be a busy place in the next few years, and we will be following the conversation on this new blog. 

Looks like there are some very knowledgeable people on the blog roster.  That's a good thing, because the world of "civic engagement" is a competitive and contentious lot, and could really use some organizational -- and conversational -- talent.  In one of the blog's first posts, Alexandra Samuel notes:

It seems like civic engagement has joined the current of aggressive patent efforts and trademark assertions.

Just this week I noticed that Royal Roads University -- a B.C. institution that's well-respected for its online learning and dialogue activities -- has trademarked the term e-Dialogues. And James Fishkin -- who has made a very convincing case for his deliberative polling approach -- has registered the term deliberative polling. (Steve, maybe it's not too late to trademark "e-democracy".)

I understand that trademarking has become something of a preemptive war; show a little restraint, and someone else may beat you to the punch. But instead of making it harder for people to follow in your footsteps, why not establish the trademark and let other practitioners use it, too?

We agree.  It's sad and ironic that some folks in the general movement -- which stands for the principle that democracy should be more inclusive -- are scrambling for IP protection when they should be working toward consensus.   Can we deliberate on this point?

Bloggers Campaign for Reporter’s Release

In the news… I’ve been tracking the Jill Carroll story. Carroll, a freelance reporter working for the Christian Science Monitor, has been held captive in Iraq since Jan. 7, when she was abducted and her translator was killed. The Monitor has started an Iraqi television campaign, distributing a video PSA asking for Iraqis to help find and free Jill.

In the blogosphere, the Committee to Protect Bloggers is asking “every blogger who gives a damn about individual human life and the individual human voice, to post a link to this video on their blog, to blog about Jill and to pass along our concern to friends, family and other bloggers. Of greatest import are Iraqi blogs and blogs in the Arabic and Muslim worlds that may be read by people in a position to do good for Jill.”

"Bloggers are a huge community. If you begin with a few here in the U.S. and they link to Arab blogs, it's definitely an interesting way to renew this mobilization and push international opinion,” said a Reporters Without Borders representative. Read more here.